CS2 Trade Up Contracts: How They Work (2026 Guide)

A trade up contract in CS2 takes 10 of your skins of the same rarity and gives you one skin from the next rarity up. Since October 2025 it also takes 5 Covert skins and returns a knife or a pair of gloves, and since May 2026 Souvenir skins can go in alongside normal ones. The result is random, but less random than it looks: the collections you put in decide which skins can come out, and the floats you put in decide the wear of whatever does.

This guide covers the rules as Valve wrote them in the CS2 release notes, how the odds and the output float are worked out, and how to put a number on a contract before you sign it. Every skin we name links to its live price, and you can pick up inputs for any of the contracts below on SkinsMonkey.

Trade Up Contract Rules: 10 Skins In, One Grade Up

The Trade Up Contract is a default item that every CS2 player has in the inventory. Valve added it in September 2013 as the Arms Deal Contract, renamed it a week later, and since May 2014 one contract can mix skins from different collections. The official description has barely changed: give 10 items of identical quality, get one item of a quality one higher, from a collection of one of the items you provided. These are the five versions that exist in October 2026:

Contract	What goes in	What comes out
Regular	10 normal skins of one grade, Consumer Grade to Classified	1 normal skin, one grade higher
StatTrak	10 StatTrak skins of one grade	1 StatTrak skin, one grade higher
With Souvenirs (since May 2026)	10 skins of one grade, normal and Souvenir mixed	1 normal skin, one grade higher
Knife or gloves (since October 2025)	5 normal Covert skins	1 knife or 1 pair of gloves
StatTrak knife (since October 2025)	5 StatTrak Covert skins	1 StatTrak knife

1. Sep 12, 2013 Valve adds the Arms Deal Contract.
2. Sep 19, 2013 It is renamed the Trade Up Contract.
3. May 14, 2014 One contract can mix skins from different collections.
4. Oct 22, 2025 Five Coverts trade up into a knife or gloves.
5. May 21, 2026 Souvenirs can go in alongside normal skins.

A few rules decide whether the Submit button lights up at all:

• One rarity per contract. All inputs share a grade, see our CS2 rarity guide for the full ladder. Mil-Spec and Restricted in the same contract will not go.
• No mixing StatTrak and normal. StatTrak inputs always give a StatTrak result.
• Knives and gloves are never inputs. They are only an outcome, and only from the 5-Covert contract. Contraband skins cannot go in either.
• The top grade of a collection is locked out of the 10-skin contract, because there is nothing above it in that collection. A Mil-Spec skin from a collection that stops at Mil-Spec cannot be used.
• Consumer Grade is never an outcome, and Covert is the highest weapon grade a 10-skin contract can give.

In the game, right-click a skin in your inventory and pick Use With Trade Up Contract, select the rest of the inputs, sign the contract with your mouse and press Submit Contract. You get one last chance to cancel before that final click.

Trade Up Odds: Every Input Is One Vote for Its Collection

Valve has never published exact odds. Its release notes only say the result comes from a collection of one of the items you provided. Since the October 2025 update, players’ tests describe the system like this: each input gives its collection an equal share of the roll, 10% in a 10-skin contract and 20% in a 5-Covert contract, and the game then picks one of that collection’s next-grade skins, each with the same chance.

A quick example with 10 Classified inputs: 7 come from collection A, which has two Covert skins, and 3 come from collection B, which has one. Collection A gets 70%, so each of its two Coverts has a 35% chance. Collection B’s single Covert gets the remaining 30%. Ten inputs from one collection give a 100% chance of a skin from that collection, which is the safest way to aim at a specific result.

Older guides weighted the odds by how many possible outcomes each collection had, which is why they recommended cheap “filler” skins from collections with a single outcome. According to the same player tests, that trick stopped working with the October 2025 update, so do not copy a recipe from an older guide without checking its date.

Covert to Knife: How the 5-Skin Contract Works

Valve extended the Trade Up Contract with the Retakes update on October 22, 2025. The release notes set two rules: 5 StatTrak Covert items give one StatTrak knife from a collection of one of the items provided, and 5 regular Covert items give one regular knife or one pair of gloves from a collection of one of the items provided. More on the update itself is in our news post on the CS2 knife crafting update.

• The pool is the case’s rare special items. A Covert from a case whose gold is a knife gives one of that case’s knives, a Covert from a glove case gives one of its gloves. You cannot pick the model or the finish.
• The collection needs a knife or glove pool. Collections without rare special items, such as the Cobblestone map collection, give their Coverts nothing to turn into.
• StatTrak only leads to knives. StatTrak gloves do not exist, so StatTrak Coverts from glove cases have no StatTrak result to give.
• Each Covert is a 20% share. Three inputs from one case and two from another give 60% and 40% odds on the two pools.

Five Coverts are usually more expensive than the cheapest knife they can produce, so treat the contract as a way to aim at one pool of knives or gloves. It is rarely the cheapest way to get one. Our list of the cheapest Covert skins shows what an input costs in each case.

The Kukri route: Kilowatt and Gallery Coverts

Only two cases have the Kukri Knife as their rare special item: the Kilowatt Case from February 2024 and the Gallery Case from October 2024. Both carry the same 13 options, the vanilla Kukri and 12 classic finishes. That makes four Coverts the only inputs that return a Kukri in any mix: AWP | Chrome Cannon and AK-47 | Inheritance from the Kilowatt Case, and Glock-18 | Gold Toof and M4A1-S | Vaporwave from the Gallery Case.

The glove route: seven cases and the Dead Hand Collection

Gloves are the rare special items of seven cases: Glove Case, Operation Hydra Case, Clutch Case, Operation Broken Fang Case, Snakebite Case, Recoil Case and Revolution Case. Each family has its own set. Glove Case and Operation Hydra Case carry the original set with Bloodhound Gloves, Clutch and Revolution carry the set with Hydra Gloves, and Broken Fang, Snakebite and Recoil carry the set with Broken Fang Gloves. Since March 11, 2026 there is an eighth source, the Dead Hand Collection. It came with 22 new gloves as its rare special items, and its skins come from the Dead Hand Terminal, a weekly drop.

Two examples per route: AK-47 | Head Shot and M4A4 | Temukau are the Revolution Case Coverts, and Glock-18 | Fully Tuned and AWP | Queen’s Gambit are the Coverts of the Dead Hand Collection. Remember that only the normal versions work here.

Trade Up Float: The Formula and a Worked Example

The output float is not random. It comes from the floats of your inputs, and players worked out the formula long before CS2. The current version, as players measured it after the October 2025 update, takes three steps:

1. Adjust each input to its own range: adjusted float = (input float minus that skin’s minimum float) divided by (its maximum float minus its minimum float).
2. Average the adjusted floats of all 10 inputs, or all 5 in a Covert contract.
3. Scale the average to the outcome’s range: output float = outcome minimum + average × (outcome maximum minus outcome minimum).

Before that update the game averaged the raw input floats and skipped step 1. For skins with a full 0.00 to 1.00 range both methods give the same number, so the change only matters for inputs with capped ranges. Every possible outcome has its own float range, which means one contract can produce a Factory New result on one skin and a Field-Tested result on another. If floats and wear brackets are new to you, start with our guide to CS2 wear levels.

Our example is a 5-Covert Kukri contract with three AWP | Chrome Cannon at 0.20 and two AK-47 | Inheritance at 0.16. The Chrome Cannon has a 0.00 to 1.00 range, so 0.20 stays 0.20. The Inheritance only goes up to 0.80, so 0.16 adjusts to 0.16 ÷ 0.80 = 0.20. The average is 0.20. With the old raw average the same five skins would have counted as 0.184.

This is where an average of 0.20 lands on each of the 13 possible Kukri results, with the SkinsMonkey price for that wear on October 20, 2026:

Possible outcome	Float range	Output float	Wear	SkinsMonkey, Oct 20
Kukri Knife (vanilla)	no float	no float	no wear	$113.48
Kukri Knife | Fade	0.00 to 0.08	0.016	Factory New	$222.03
Kukri Knife | Slaughter	0.01 to 0.26	0.060	Factory New	$174.45
Kukri Knife | Case Hardened	0.00 to 1.00	0.200	Field-Tested	$130.75
Kukri Knife | Crimson Web	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$111.55
Kukri Knife | Blue Steel	0.00 to 1.00	0.200	Field-Tested	$93.59
Kukri Knife | Stained	0.00 to 1.00	0.200	Field-Tested	$79.62
Kukri Knife | Night Stripe	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$63.80
Kukri Knife | Urban Masked	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$62.49
Kukri Knife | Scorched	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$59.37
Kukri Knife | Forest DDPAT	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$56.20
Kukri Knife | Boreal Forest	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$55.35
Kukri Knife | Safari Mesh	0.06 to 0.80	0.208	Field-Tested	$53.30

The Fade and the Slaughter come out Factory New because their ranges are narrow, and everything else lands in Field-Tested. To push every outcome into Minimal Wear or better, the average adjusted float has to drop to about 0.12. Factory New on the camo finishes needs an average under about 0.013, which means near-perfect inputs that cost far more than the cheapest copies.

Expected Value: What a Contract Is Worth Before You Sign It

Expected value is the average result of a contract if you ran it many times. It does not tell you what one contract will give you, but it shows whether the inputs are worth more than the average outcome. Four steps:

1. List every possible outcome from the collections you put in.
2. Give each outcome its probability, using the collection shares from the odds section.
3. Price each outcome at the wear the float formula gives it, not at its cheapest wear.
4. Multiply each price by its probability, add everything up and compare the total with what the inputs cost.

For our Kukri contract: on October 20, 2026 the cheapest Field-Tested AWP | Chrome Cannon was $36.79 on SkinsMonkey and the cheapest Field-Tested AK-47 | Inheritance was $47.20, so the five inputs cost about $204.77. Copies near the bottom of Field-Tested usually cost more than the cheapest listing. If each of the 13 outcomes is equally likely, the average result was worth $98.15 that day, and only one of the 13, the Fade at $222.03, was priced above the cost of the inputs.

We read that as a clear signal: as a way to get a Kukri, this contract cost about twice the average knife it returns, while the cheapest Field-Tested Kukri, the Safari Mesh, was listed at $53.30. Patterns move the math too. A Case Hardened, Fade or Crimson Web with a sought-after pattern can be worth well above the base price, while listing prices are higher than what you would get back for the same item in a trade.

Souvenir Skins in Trade Ups: What Changed in May 2026

The update Valve released on May 21, 2026 (the early hours of May 22 in Europe), the same one that opened the IEM Cologne 2026 Major hub, added one line to the contract rules. Souvenir items can now be selected in a Trade Up Contract alongside normal items, all Souvenir attributes are removed from them, and the result is a single normal item one grade higher, from one of the collections of the items you selected.

• The result is always a normal skin. No Souvenir status and no gold tournament stickers carry over.
• Souvenirs mix with normal skins, not with StatTrak. Valve’s note only mentions normal quality items.
• The grade rules stay the same. Most Souvenirs come from map collections, and the top grade of a collection still cannot be traded up.
• Valve did not mention the 5-Covert contract. The note describes the one-grade-up result of the 10-skin contract.

A Souvenir usually carries a premium for its stickers, and the contract throws that premium away. We would only use one as an input when it costs less than the normal version of the same skin. Our list of the best CS2 Souvenir skins shows which ones hold their value as Souvenirs.

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Buying Inputs and Pricing the Result

Most of the work in a trade up happens before you open the contract. Look up the current price of every possible outcome at the wear your floats will give, check the float of each input you buy, and only pay extra for low floats when the better wear on the outcomes is worth the difference. If you already own a pile of skins of one grade, our CS2 Inventory Value Checker shows what they are worth at our prices, so you can compare that with the expected value of a contract.

If the numbers say the contract returns less than you put in, skip it and trade for the outcome you actually want on SkinsMonkey.

AC

Bottom line

Trade up only into a pool of skins you actually want, and trade for the exact skin when that costs less.

If you hold ten skins of one grade that you no longer use, the 10-skin contract swaps them for one skin a grade higher. Fill it from a single collection when you want a specific result, and check the input floats first, because they set the wear of whatever comes out.

The 5-Covert contract fits a player who wants any knife or gloves from one case pool and does not care about the finish. In our Kukri example the five inputs cost about twice the average knife they return, so if you want one particular Kukri, trade for it directly. Leave Souvenirs out unless one costs less than the normal version of the same skin.

Compare knife pricesEvery CS2 knife with live prices on SkinsMonkey

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