Valorant Champions Tour

The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is a global competitive esports tournament series for the video game Valorant organised by Riot Games, the game's developers. The series runs multiple events throughout each season, culminating in Valorant Champions, the top-level event of the tour. The VCT was announced in 2020, with its inaugural season taking place in 2021.

History

2021–2022: First open qualifiers era

In November 2020, Riot Games announced the first Valorant Champions Tour, a tournament series divided into three tiers: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. Challengers would act as the lowest tier, split into seven regions: North America, Brazil, Latin America (Hispanic America), EMEA, Southeast Asia (which later included South Asia and Oceania, becoming the Asia-Pacific region), Korea, Japan. Teams that advance past Challengers would move on to Masters, where teams would not be divided by regions anymore, and the top 16 teams from Masters would move on to Champions, the final tournament of VCT. In February 2021, they announced the VCT Game Changers, a supplementary tournament initiative for women and marginalized genders.

Riot hired esports infrastructure company Nerd Street Gamers as operators and producers for all North American Challengers and Masters events. They also hired several third-party companies to broadcast their events, such as Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP) for their Spanish-language broadcasts and LetsPlay.Live for their Oceania broadcasts. The 2021 Champions tournament took place on December 1–12 at the Verti Music Hall in Berlin, Germany, concluding with team Acend defeating Gambit Esports in the grand finals by a score of 3–2.

Over 10,000 teams competed in the VCT in 2021. Outside of Champions, VCT saw its highest viewership at the Reykjavík Masters tournament in May, with a peak viewership of 1,085,850. The Champions grand finals match in December reached a peak viewership of 1,089,068, making it the VCT's highest peak viewership.

Riot made several changes to the format of VCT for its second iteration. While the overall structure of Challengers, Masters, and Champions remained unchanged, it reduced the number of stages of Challengers and Masters events from three to two. VCT Challengers began on February 11, 2022. The 2022 Champions Tournament took place from September 1 to 18 in Istanbul, Turkey.

2023–2026: Franchised era

Riot Games announced a new format starting in 2023. The season will be split into three international regions – Americas, EMEA, and Pacific instead of the 7 regions format used in previous years. Each international region will have its own International League that replaces the Challengers to become the domestic competitions to qualify for Masters and Champions. On September 21, 2022, Riot Games announced the thirty teams that had been selected as part of their new partnership format in 2023-2027.

In February 2023, Riot partnered with Grid Esports for performance analysis data.

For China, Riot Games showed favor towards players here by giving Chinese teams a number of direct slots to participate in global tournaments (Masters and Champions) through third parties competitions in Hong Kong server, instead of having to play through Pacific league. In a June 2023 press conference, Riot COO Whalen Rozelle confirmed that Valorant would launch in China in July under the name 无畏契约 (lit.'Fearless Contract'), with hopes to launch a VCT league there in 2024. Shortly after in August, Riot announced an own regional league for China, and raising the number of partnered teams to 40.

This era later was decided to end in 2026, one year earlier than originally planned.

2027–future: Second open qualifiers era

Immediately after its first year of implementation, the franchising system that Riot Games had made for VCT was criticized as being unsuitable. It created significant difficulties for non-partner teams, as the path to going professional and qualifying for Masters/Champions was no longer open, requiring more time and financial resources. These teams also did not receive the same level of support as partner teams unless win the Ascension, facing the risk of having their talent poached and struggling to maintain both financial stability and competitive strength. In the fact, many non-partner teams were eventually forced to disband after failing to win Challengers and Ascension tournaments. A lot of criticisms were directed at Riot Games, specifically from the 2021 Champions winner team Acend and the two-time Masters winner player TenZ, for focusing primarily on tier 1 while gradually ignoring the tier 2 scene.

Therefore, to fix the failure of the franchising system, on April 8, 2026, Riot Games announced another format overhaul starting from the 2027 Valorant Champions Tour. The new format retains the three-split system but using the regional open qualifier system from the pre-2023 era. All teams will have to play through the qualifiers, including partner teams, meaning there will be no tier 2 system. In Stage 1 and Stage 2, the top teams from open qualifiers will compete in a new type of international event known as Cups, which qualifies the top teams to Masters and Champions. The Kickoff stage will continue to utilize a separate format for its international tournament. Leagues will be disbanded but the four major regions will remain intact, with each region hosting their respective cups. The partnership system will also switch to a two-year cycle in 2027, retaining existing incentives in addition to placement to a later round of open qualifiers. Non-partner teams will also receive additional financial support for sustainability.

Leagues and format

Franchised leagues

International Leagues

In 2023, 30 teams are selected to be partner teams in International Leagues for five years (to 2027) with 10 teams per region. Non-partner teams compete in many sub-regions of Challengers events to qualify for "Ascension" events. The Ascension events in 2023 and 2024 had one winner per region, which earned them a temporary (initially two-year) promotion into their regions' International League. The promoted teams have a chance to qualify for the global tournaments (Masters and Champions), as well as get benefits provided to other partnered teams. Through the Challengers promotion system, International Leagues expanded by one team each, until they reached a cap of 12 teams in each region in 2025 (beforehand this was supposed to be a 14-team cap by 2027).

For 2025, the two temporary teams per International League can stay up via qualifying for Champions, compete in Ascension to stay in the league if they finished 5th to 8th, or get relegated back to their Challengers region if finishing 9th to 12th; only one of the guest teams per region can stay up via Champions, with the best performer of the two guests taking the spot if both qualify.

Riot Games later decided to end the first era of franchising in 2026, one year earlier than originally planned (2027), in order to reassess existing partners and prepare for the next franchising era.

Teams in each International League play on LAN in a centralized local: the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles for VCT Americas, Riot Games Arena in Berlin for VCT EMEA, and Sangam SOOP Colosseum in Seoul for VCT Pacific.

China League

Right from global launch, although Valorant had not been licensed for release in China, Riot Games showed favor towards Chinese players by allowing Chinese teams to participate in global tournaments (Masters and Champions) through achievements in domestic tournaments organized by third parties, played at Hong Kong server.

Since 2024, with Valorant licensed for release servers in mainland, Riot launched the VCT CN specifically for the only country that they considers a pro region on the same level as the three International Leagues for many countries, as well as competition slots for only teams from China at Masters and Champions. They also announced the second Masters event of the year to take place in Shanghai and released a new Chinese agent Iso alongside previous agent Sage.

Similar to three International Leagues, ten Chinese teams were selected as partner teams for the first franchising era of the China League (originally planned to run until 2027, but later decided to end in 2026 at the same time as International Leagues), with two additional non-partner teams qualifying through China Ascension. The China League is based at the VCT CN Arena in Shanghai.

Former teams and timeline

Global tournaments

Valorant Masters

The Valorant Masters is a biannual Valorant international tournament organized by Riot Games in the middle of the year since 2021. Similar to the Mid-Season Invitational for League of Legends, it is the second most important international Valorant tournament after Champions. There are usually two Masters tournaments each year. Teams must place near the top of their regional league to qualify for Masters.

Valorant Champions

The Valorant Champions is the annual professional Valorant world championship tournament hosted by Riot Games and is the culmination of each VCT season. It includes spots with points earned throughout the year. Teams compete for the world champion title of Valorant esports.

Non-partner leagues as tier 2

Challengers and Ascension

Non-partner teams compete in Challengers events of sub-regions in Americas, EMEA and Pacific to qualify for "Ascension", the yearly promotion event to the respective International Leagues. Originally, it was announced that teams would have two-year stays in their International League after winning Ascension, with one team promoted every year until 2026, when two teams would be promoted every year until 2028. The leagues would have 14 teams each, totaling to 42 teams across the three leagues.

On June 21, 2024, Riot announced changes to the Ascension format from 2025, with teams promoted to the International Leagues for one-year stays instead, after which they would be relegated to Challengers again if they did not finish in the top 8 in their region's regional League; if they qualified for Champions however, they get to stay for another year; if they finished in the playoffs of the International League, they qualify for that year's Ascension for a chance to keep their place in the league.

In 2023-24, there are 23 minor regional leagues across the three international territories. From 2025, they got decreased to 15.

In 2026, due to end the first franchising era one year earlier, Ascensions will be not hosted. Instead, Challengers teams will have chance to join their respective VCT league's in Stage 2 play-off, giving them a pathway to qualify for Champions directly.

Valorant Game Changers

Valorant Game Changers is a series of domestic competitions for women and other marginalized genders within Valorant esports. Teams that finish in top places qualify for the Valorant Game Changers Championship, the world championship event of Game Changers, and also earn the chance to be promoted to their region's Challengers league.

Results

International Leagues & China League winners

(*) Non-partner teams in franchise system

Global tournaments

Teams' titles

* Team or organization no longer participates in Valorant esports.

Regions' titles

Ascension winners

Valorant Game Changers Championship

Awards

Masters

The original masters trophy was unveiled by Riot at a May 2021 media preview event in the build up to Masters Reykjavik. It features a metal bottom and a glass top.The trophy was redesigned in 2023, again by Volpin Props, to be reusable for Masters tournaments in multiple regions. It stands at 18 inches (46 cm) and features a swappable 'Radianite' core. The body of the trophy is palladium-plated with plastic components.

Each trophies were designed with motifs reflecting the game's agents or maps. For Masters Tokyo, it featured duelist Yoru's ultimate Oni mask. For Madrid, it featured butterflies, which is the motif for the newest controller, Clove. For Shanghai, it featured duelist Iso's lilac-themed shield. For Bangkok, it featured a diamond, which is the ability icon for the newest duelist, Waylay. For Toronto, the trophy's core is redesigned in an pink-colored iceberg, which is the theme for the newest map, Corrode. For Santiago, it featured a soundbox, which is the motif for the newest controller, Miks.

Champions

The Valorant Champions trophy was first unveiled ahead of Valorant Champions 2021. Also designed and built by Volpin Props of Atlanta, Georgia, it stands at 2 feet (61 cm) tall and is partially 3D-printed, with 24 karat gold decoration overlaid.

Notes

External links