The academy program has become an integral part of the development of the Ukrainian esports organization NAVI. Over the past few years, the club has consistently built a system for training young players, combining talent scouting, player development, and a gradual transition to the professional scene.
Today, the academy serves several functions at once. It helps the organization identify promising esports athletes, build a reserve pool for the main rosters, and develop players in accordance with NAVI’s internal standards. Over time, the project has grown from an initiative focused on young talent into a full-fledged component of the club’s structure.
The Development of the NAVI Academic Program
The history of NAVI’s academic program dates back to 2019. It was then that the organization launched its first initiatives aimed at identifying promising players and developing its own training system for them.
Key milestones:
- May 2019 — The NAVI Esports Camp project was launched, targeting Counter-Strike players aged 16 to 19. It became the foundation for the club’s future academy system.
- May 4, 2019 — The NAVI Junior Counter-Strike roster was formed. The team served as the first step in the development of young esports athletes before their transition to the professional scene.
- After 2019 — the NAVI Esports Camp project gradually evolved into NAVI Academy, which focused on scouting, training, and developing new talent.
- August 2, 2022 — the academy model expanded to Dota 2 with the launch of NAVI Youth, marking the first step beyond Counter-Strike.
- July 2024 — the organization opened the NAVI Visa Academy for Counter-Strike 2, continuing to develop its system for selecting and training young players.
- March 2026 — the academy program expanded to Valorant, marking another stage in the growth of NAVI’s youth programs.
Following a change in ownership and the arrival of Maksym Krippa, the organization set a course for expansion. The academic program became an important component of this process, combining the development of a talent pool for the main rosters with the overall growth of the club’s structure. At the same time, the expansion of infrastructure in Kyiv and Berlin enabled NAVI to work not only with Ukrainian players but also to more actively recruit promising esports athletes from other countries.
The Players’ Path to the Big Stage
The effectiveness of NAVI’s academic system is confirmed by the achievements of its graduates. Players such as b1t, headtr1ck, npl, makazze, fear, and others came up through the organization’s youth teams and went on to compete at the professional level. NAVI applied a similar approach to Dota 2: following NAVI Junior’s successful performance and the team’s qualification for The International, the youth squad became the core of the main roster, which included pma, gotthejuice, Niku, and Riddys.
At the same time, the academy serves not only a competitive but also a strategic function for NAVI. It allows the club to both integrate the best players into its main rosters and view them as potential transfer assets. A prime example was the deal with FUT Esports, to which NAVI transferred four players and a coach from the NAVI Junior roster. Although the financial details were not disclosed, this transfer demonstrated that the academy system can serve not only as a source of talent for the club but also as a separate avenue for developing its competitive model.
The Scale of the NAVI Academy in Numbers
The scale of NAVI’s academic system can be gauged not only by the names of the players who have come up through its youth teams, but also by quantitative metrics—tournament results, prize money, and the number of players eager to join the club’s ranks.
Since the inception of its academy teams in Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and Valorant, NAVI has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money. The Counter-Strike 2 division accounted for the largest share of this amount—approximately $403,500. Dota 2 ranks second with roughly $214,700, while Valorant currently stands at nearly $3,000.
At the same time, interest in NAVI’s academy programs is not measured solely by the teams’ results. Over the years of running its youth projects, the organization has received several thousand applications from players who wanted to join the program. When the NAVI Visa Academy launched in 2024, over 350 candidates applied to participate in the Counter-Strike 2 program, from which the club selected 10 players aged 14 to 17 for a boot camp in Berlin.
The age ranges for participants depend on the specific discipline: in Counter-Strike and Dota 2, NAVI works primarily with players aged 14–17, while its Valorant programs are geared toward esports athletes aged 17 to 20.
According to publicly available statistics, NAVI’s total prize money since 2009 amounts to approximately $24.9 million. This figure includes the results of both the organization’s main rosters and its academy teams.