Counter-Strike 2: the Boulder guide and its 18 official callouts extracted from the game files

“Added the following community maps to Competitive, Casual, and Deathmatch: Boulder, Fachwerk, and Shelter”: it was with this line that Valve dropped three player-made maps into the official queues of Counter-Strike 2, on July 8, 2026. Fachwerk and Shelter already had their guides with us. That left Boulder, and it's by far the one with the most to tell: the strings file shipped with the game assigns it 18 callouts that belong to it alone, whereas Fachwerk only has one.

Boulder (de_boulder) is a defuse map — the de_ prefix and the entry "SFUI_Map_de_boulder" "Boulder" establish that — set in a Greek Orthodox monastery perched atop a rocky outcrop. It occupies eleventh place in the 15-map Competitive pool and does not belong to the Active Duty map pool: never in Premier, but you can run into it in Competitive or Casual without ever having loaded it up. The map is over a month old: this isn't news, it's an in-depth guide built on a source that no one exploits in French, the build files themselves.

The 18 callouts come from csgo_english.txt, the strings file shipped with the game

The game stores its interface labels in csgo_english.txt, under game/csgo/pak01_dir/resource/, whose version for the current build is published by the tracking repository SteamDatabase/GameTracking-CS2. In it, there's a commented block //Boulder: the callouts actually declared for the map, the ones that display when a teammate calls out a position.

The precision matters: English-language guides devoted to Boulder circulate names that do not appear in the file — “Arches”, “Garden”, “Tunnels”, “Balcony”, “Window”, “A Long”, “Monastery”. Using them amounts to speaking a language your team doesn't know.

Valve has never published French labels: these 18 names stay in English

A rule to remember. The French localization file, csgo_french.txt, is not public: the resource folder of the repository only contains the English version (checked on August 16, 2026). There is therefore no official French label for Boulder's callouts, nor for the map and weapon names. We write them as they are: translating "Bell Tower" or "Curtains" on your own is a way of inventing a private vocabulary that no one will understand.

The full list, in the order given by the file

In the order of the //Boulder block: CT, Split, B Short, Statue, Stair, A Upper, Drop, Backsite, Curtains, Souvenir, Reception, Cellar, Crossing, Painting, Museum, Bell Tower, Ninja, Crypt.

This is not the complete inventory of the lexicon: these 18 entries are added to the callouts of the generic block, declared at the top of the same section and shared by all maps (Bombsite A, Bombsite B, Middle, CT Start, T Start, Ramp, Stairs, Balcony, Window, Crates…). The table groups them by family, without placing them relative to one another — we'll see why further below.

The comparison with the other two maps from July 8, same file, is stark: Fachwerk has only one unique landmark, Kaffee, whereas Shelter and Boulder each have 18. On Fachwerk the generic vocabulary suffices; on Boulder, a precise call requires having memorized an actual list.

Eleventh in the competitive pool, absent from active duty, filed under the “reserves” tab

The gamemodes.txt file sets the actual composition of the pools. Its "competitive" block lists 15 entries: Cache, Anubis, Inferno, Mirage, Dust 2, Nuke, Ancient, Train, Vertigo, Overpass, then, under a // community comment, Boulder in eleventh position, Fachwerk and Shelter, and finally Office and Italy on the hostage side.

• Active Duty (Premier, 7 maps: Ancient, Anubis, Cache, Dust 2, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke): Boulder is not there, and should never be placed there.
• Wingman (Debris, El Dorado, Poseidon, Overpass, Vertigo, Nuke, Inferno) and Retakes: absent from both.
• mg_casualcharlie, of type reserves, tooltip de_boulder,de_fachwerk,cs_shelter: the “reserves” tab of the Play menu.

Bilingual Greek-English signage that matches two of the file's landmarks

The setting, based on the authors' screenshots: a square bell tower with twin-arched windows, an overhanging domed kiosk, an arcaded courtyard, Greek flags and red maples. Above all, the map is signposted in Greek and English: a sign, visible in this article's illustration image, reads “ΠΡΟΣ ΤΗΝ ΥΠΟΔΟΧΗ ← TO THE RECEPTION” and “B → ”. Two of the 18 landmarks, Reception and B Short, therefore match the in-game signage: the authors anchored their callouts in the setting instead of stamping them on top of it.

The monastery's compartmentalized geometry actually protects against the reworked C4

Since Season 5, the C4's blast wave starts from the center and dissipates around corners instead of dealing instant damage. The rule applies everywhere, but in a setting of thick walls, closed rooms and angled corridors, positioning yourself behind a corner at the end of a round becomes a real survival calculation.

The August 15 author revision is probably not yet live in-game

Boulder is signed by OrelStealth, Roald, morozov and MadsenFK; the Workshop item weighs in at 2.691 GB and its latest author revision dates from August 15, 2026 at 00:25. What's actually running on the servers remains to be seen: Valve resynced it on July 15, 20 and 29, 2026, then nothing more — it appears neither in the August 3 patch notes nor in those of August 12, which were limited to Fachwerk and Shelter. It is therefore very likely, though not confirmed, that what you're playing today is the July 29 state.

What this guide won't tell you

No route or relative positioning here: the game's overviews folder contains only 22 radars, all for Valve maps — there is no official de_boulder radar, the map's radar being bundled inside the Workshop item itself. The 18 names are certain, but their respective locations are not: we'd rather not make them up. There is also no official data on pick rate or win rate by side.

Key dates to remember

• February 9, 2026: published on the Steam Workshop.
• July 8, 2026: added to Competitive, Casual and Deathmatch alongside Fachwerk and Shelter; removal of Warden, Stronghold, Alpine, Sanctum; Debris and El Dorado moved to Wingman.
• July 15, 20 and 29, 2026: the three resyncs by Valve.
• August 12, 2026: latest game update, limited to Fachwerk and Shelter.
• August 15, 2026, 00:25: latest author revision, likely not yet deployed.

No deadline to watch out for: Boulder is here to stay in the "reserves" tab. The only thing left to do before your next match is to memorize these 18 names, in English.