Mirage has 53 named positions. You need about twelve of them to play the map, and the rest you will pick up by hearing them. What no callout map teaches is the part that actually decides whether a call helps: the order you say things in.
The twelve that matter first
Learn these and you can play the map without ever saying “over there, near the yellow thing”.
| Area | Callouts worth knowing immediately |
|---|---|
| A site | Palace, Ramp, Triple, Default, Palm, Ticket |
| Middle | Mid, Connector, Catwalk, Window |
| B site | Apartments, Market |
Two of those deserve immediate comment. Palace is the raised room above A, and it is where attacking pressure and lurks come from. Apartments is the corridor onto B and the place attackers die in most often, which is why the call needs to be instant.
The order that makes a call usable
This is the part missing from every map image, and it matters more than knowing all 53 names.
A useful call has three pieces in a fixed order: how many, where, what they are doing.
- How many. “One”, “two”. This decides whether anyone should move.
- Where. The callout, nothing else.
- What. One word: pushing, holding, falling back.
“Two Palace, pushing” takes under two seconds and contains everything. “There’s someone up in that room above the site, I think maybe two of them” takes five seconds and arrives after the round decided itself.
Why mid decides rounds
Mirage is three lanes and the middle one connects to both bombsites. Whoever holds it can rotate faster than the other team, and that advantage compounds every round.
Practically, this means information from mid is worth more than information from either site. Knowing an attacker crossed into Connector changes what four people do. Knowing someone is standing on a site changes what one person does.
It also means the Window position is the most contested single spot on the map. Control of it decides who can cross safely, which decides who takes mid, which decides the round.
What each of the twelve actually refers to
A list of names is useless without knowing what they point at, so here is the short version for the ones above.
Palace is the raised room overlooking A, reached from the attacking side. Ramp is the other approach to the same site, at ground level. Triple is the stack of three boxes in the plant area, and Default is the spot beside it where the bomb usually goes down.
Palm and Ticket are the defending positions on A, near the stairs and the booth respectively. The first is a common sniper perch, and that explains why it gets called so often.
Mid is the central lane, Window the elevated position overlooking it, Connector the passage from mid toward A, and Catwalk the one toward B.
Apartments is the corridor onto B, and Market the building beside the site that defenders rotate through.
The names everyone gets wrong
Three pairs cause most of the confusion, and confusing them sends teammates the wrong way entirely.
Connector and Catwalk. Both lead out of mid, in opposite directions. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive callout mistake on this map.
Short and Cat. Different players use these for the same route, so expect both and do not correct anyone mid round.
Palace and Balcony. The same raised area, two names, depending on who taught the player.
The rule for all of them: if a teammate uses a name you do not recognise, ask once after the round, not during it. Clarifying names in the middle of a fight costs more than the misunderstanding.
Learning them properly
- Open the map alone on a local server, with no bots and no timer.
- Walk the attacking route, saying each name aloud as you pass it.
- Walk it again from the defending side. The same places look completely different, and that is where mistakes come from.
- Do it three times. After the third pass they stop needing recall.
An empty server with the timer disabled takes one command to set up, and the file that does it is over in our short guide to the CS2 practice server config.
If you want to see where opponents typically stand while you learn the geography, the skeleton display makes it obvious, and we covered it in the CS2 wallhack command for practice.
Callouts and the rest of your setup
Communication is one of three things that decide whether information reaches your team, and the other two are not about vocabulary at all.
Audio. If you cannot hear footsteps clearly, you have nothing to call. Sound settings matter more than any list of names.
A microphone people can understand. A perfect callout through a distorted microphone is noise, and teammates stop listening within two rounds.
Keys you can reach. If push to talk sits somewhere awkward, you will skip calls under pressure without noticing. That is a bind problem, and the same principle applies as with the jump bind we covered in the CS2 bhop bind: put the action where your hand already is.
Calling as a solo player
Most people queue alone, and calls work differently there than in a practised team.
Not everyone knows the names. If two rounds pass with no reaction to a callout, drop to plain description: “middle, going towards B”. The goal is a reaction, not correctness.
Nobody is going to rotate on your word. Calls in solo queue mostly stop a teammate walking into the place you just died in. That is still worth saying.
The most valuable call is the one after your own death. You know how many there were and where they stood, and your team still has a round to play. Say it immediately, before commenting on anything else.
When silence is better
The voice channel has limited bandwidth, and three moments are worth staying quiet through.
While someone is defusing. They need the audio, not your commentary.
When one teammate is left alive. They are making the decisions and every voice is a distraction. The exception is the time remaining and the last known position, once.
Immediately after a lost round. Analysis can wait until the buy.
Where the names came from
None of this was designed. The callouts grew out of how players described the map to each other, and they stuck because they were short and unambiguous.
That explains their apparent randomness. Palace is named for the building, Triple for three boxes, Ticket for a booth. Nobody planned a naming system, it accumulated.
It also explains why they survived the visual overhaul in CS2. The names describe shapes and positions rather than textures, so new lighting and new models changed nothing about them.
Calling what you did not see
The most useful information in a round is often the absence of something, and almost nobody says it out loud.
“Nobody mid” tells four teammates that an entire lane is empty, which is a bigger piece of information than one enemy spotted on a site. It means the attack is elsewhere and the rotation can happen now rather than after someone dies.
The same applies to utility. “No smoke yet” and “they used flashes early” both shape the next thirty seconds, and both are things you know without seeing an opponent.
Adding this one habit changes a player from someone who reports kills to someone whose team knows what is happening, and it costs nothing but the words.
After Mirage
A good share of these names transfer. Site, mid, short, long and connector appear on most maps in the pool, so the second map is mostly about learning what is unique to it.
Inferno and Dust2 are the sensible next steps, both because they appear often and because their naming is equally settled.
And the habit matters more than the vocabulary. A player who says “one Apartments” every time beats a player who knows all 53 names and stays quiet, which is worth remembering while you learn the list.
Frequently asked questions about Mirage callouts
How many callouts does Mirage have?
Around 53 named positions, though roughly twelve cover ordinary play.
Which ones should I learn first?
Palace, Ramp, Triple, Default, Palm and Ticket on A, Mid, Connector, Catwalk and Window in the middle, Apartments and Market on B.
What is the correct order for a callout?
How many, where, what they are doing. Anything else arrives too late to matter.
Did the names change in CS2?
No. The map was visually rebuilt but the callouts describe positions, so they carried over unchanged.
What is Apartments?
The corridor attackers use to reach B, and the most common place for them to die on the way in.
Why is mid so important on Mirage?
Because it connects to both bombsites, so controlling it means rotating faster than the opposing team.
What if a teammate uses a name I do not know?
Ask after the round. Correcting names during a fight costs more than the confusion does.
Last updated: September 2026
