In March 2023, when our category index first covered every major bucket, the CS2 skin market was a two-horse race. Knives held 36.3% of total category value. Weapon skins held 34.7%. Basically neck and neck.
As of October 5, 2026, knives are 52.8% of the index and weapon skins are 20.0%. More than half of everything this market is worth at the floor now sits in one category, and it is not the one the game is named after.
Three years of a tie, then three weeks of a gap
This was not a slow, steady drift. For most of the last three years knives and weapons kept trading places. In March 2024 it was 37.4% knives against 37.9% weapons. In January 2026 weapons were actually ahead, 42.6% to 36.3%. As late as May 15, 2026, weapons still led, 41.2% to 35.4%.
Then it broke. On May 22, 2026 knives moved ahead of weapons and have not given the lead back since. By June 1 the split was 41.5% to 34.4%. By June 10 it was 46.8% to 24.6%. By July 1 knives were at 49.7%, and since August 8 they have been above half every single day.
A gap that did not exist for three years opened in about three weeks, and it has only widened since.
Knives did not win. Guns lost.
Here is the part the percentages hide. Between May 15 and October 5, 2026, the knife index barely moved: $1.91 million to $1.95 million, up 1.8%. Over the same period the weapons index went from $2.22 million to $0.74 million, down 66.8%.
Most of that is rifles. The rifle index fell from $1.60 million to $0.52 million, a drop of 67.3%. Heavy weapons lost 87.7%, pistols 59.2%, SMGs 25.6%.
And this is not a coverage artifact. We tracked 3,348 rifle items on May 15 and 3,349 on October 5. Same rifles, two thirds less value at the floor.
It also did not bounce. The weapons index stood at $0.85 million in mid-August and $0.74 million in early October. Four and a half months after the break, the category is still drifting lower.
So the headline "knives are now half the market" is true, but the mechanism is the opposite of what it sounds like. Knives stood still while the other half of the scale emptied out.
The same picture against 2023
Stretch the comparison back to March 15, 2023 and the pattern holds:
Knives: $1.22M to $1.95M, up 60% (share 36.3% to 52.8%)
Weapons: $1.16M to $0.74M, down 36.6% (share 34.7% to 20.0%)
Stickers: $0.61M to $0.76M, up 23.8% (share 18.2% to 20.5%)
Gloves: $0.36M to $0.24M, down 33.0% (share 10.7% to 6.5%)
Over three and a half years, knives are the only large category that clearly gained ground. Stickers roughly held their place, and are now a bigger slice of the index than weapon skins. Gloves and weapons are both worth less at the floor today than they were when CS2 was still called CS:GO.
The takeaway
"The market is up" or "the market is down" tells you less and less, because the market is no longer one thing. Half of it is knives, and that half has been flat since spring. Most of the damage of the last few months landed on rifles, the category most players actually think of when they think of skins.
If you only watch one number, you would have seen a market that lost nearly a third of its floor value between mid-May and early October. Look by category and you see something more specific: one half that did not move, and one category that lost two thirds.
That is a very different market than it was two years ago.
Explore the data
Building something with skin prices? The data behind this article is available through the CSMarketCap API, with a free 3-day trial and no card required: csmarketcap.com/pricing
