The IEM Cologne 2026 sticker capsule cycle is five days into its standard 21-day Major arc. The May 25 snapshot:
Current-Major capsules
Group A capsule: $1.04 mean across Skinport / Waxpeer / Steam Market — up 5% from the $0.99 launch floor. Holos pulled from Group A capsule openings sit at $0.84-$1.10 mean depending on the team, with Vitality, Spirit, and NAVI holos at the top of the tier (+12% three-day average for the top-three team holos collectively).
Group B capsule: $1.01 mean, near the launch floor. The flatter trajectory reflects Group B's weaker team mix on the Stage 1 side - the speculative bid for Stage 2 team holos is what drives Group A's mean above floor.
Champions capsule: $0.99 flat at launch floor. Champions are the Stage 3 (top-8) capsule and will only populate after Stage 3 closes June 21, so the current price is purely speculative-positioning.
Legends and Challengers Autograph capsules: Legends at $1.07 (+8% off floor), Challengers at $1.01 (essentially flat). Autograph capsules carry deeper long-tail value because each opening produces a player gold or silver autograph rather than a team sticker.
The speculative rally on older capsules is unwinding
The pre-Major rally on legacy holos has begun to unwind. Berlin 2019 holos peaked at +18% three-day on May 20 and have given back half that gain (+9% three-day current). Stockholm 2021 papers are flat against their May 20 high. Boston 2018 gold-tier capsules are the outlier - they continue to rally, now +28% three-day from the May 20 baseline, with the rarest seed listings sitting at 12-month highs.
What the May 25 reads imply for the rest of the cycle
The standard Major-cycle pattern is: launch +30-45% in the first 96 hours, retrace 50-60% by the Champions stage opening, and a Champions-stage rally on the capsules of the finalists. The current cycle is tracking softer on the first-leg rally than the 2025 Cologne pattern - the day-5 read on Group A is +5% versus the +18% same-point read in 2025. The likely cause: the speculative demand pulled forward into older Major capsules rather than concentrating in the current-Major line. Traders building positions for the Champions-stage rally should size accordingly.
The SkinPulse Skin Database tracks daily medians across all four price sources for the full Major sticker catalogue, including legacy capsules and their underlying holos.
