The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) is a global competitive esports tournament series for the video game Valorant organized 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 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 where LOUD defeated OpTic Gaming 3-1 to become the 2022 World Champions.
2023–2026: Franchised era Riot Games announced a new format starting in 2023. The season would 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 (), with hopes to launch a VCT league there in 2024. Shortly after in August, Riot announced a regional league for China, raising the number of partnered teams to 40.
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 (a.k.a "tier 2 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 ("tier 1 teams") unless they won Ascension, facing the risk of having their talent poached and struggle to maintain both financial stability and competitive strength. In fact, many non-partner teams were eventually forced to disband after failing to win Challengers and Ascension tournaments. A lot of criticism was 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. Although Riot Games never made an official statement, their subsequent actions seemed to implicitly acknowledge that the franchising system had suffered irreparable failures at the tier 2, ultimately leading to the early termination of the franchising era in 2026, one year ahead of schedule, and to the unveiling of a new Valorant esports system, which will be applied from the start of the 2027 season.
2027–future: Second open qualifiers era To fix issues with the franchising system, on April 8, 2026, Riot Games announced a new format overhaul starting from the 2027 season. It 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 (2023–2026)
International Leagues In 2023, 30 teams were selected to be partner teams in International Leagues for five years (up to 2027, this ended up being shortened to 2026 with the 2027 VCT Format overhaul) 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.
Ultimately, with the growing crisis in tier 2, Riot Games later decided to end the franchising era in 2026, one year earlier than originally planned (2027), in order to reassess existing partners and prepare for the new open qualifiers era.
Teams in each International League played on LAN in a centralized location: 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.
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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 China, Riot launched the VCT CN specifically for the only country that they considered competitive against the three International Leagues for many countries, as well as competition slots for 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 VCT CN (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. VCT CN was centralized in Shanghai during 2024-25, before moving to various venues across the country in 2026.
Partner teamsAll GamersBilibili GamingEdward GamingFunPlus PhoenixJD GamingNova EsportsTitan Esports ClubTrace EsportsTylooWolves EsportsNon-partner teamsDragon Ranger GamingXi Lai Gaming
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