Valorant Champions Tour
The Valorant Champions Tour 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: 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, EMEA, Southeast Asia, 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 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.
2023–present: Partnerships 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.For China, Riot Games showed favor towards players here by giving Chinese teams a number of direct slots to participate in global tournaments 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 an own regional league for China, and raising the number of partnered teams to 40.
Leagues and format
Franchised leagues
International Leagues
As of 2023, 30 teams are selected to be partner teams in International Leagues for five years 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 promotion into their regions' International League. The promoted teams have a chance to qualify for the global tournaments, as well as get benefits provided to other partnered teams. Through the Challengers promotion system, the four International Leagues expanded by one team each, until they reached a cap of 12 teams in each region in 2025. From 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.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 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 are selected to be partner teams in China League for four years, and two non-partner teams qualified from the China Ascension. The China League is based at the VCT CN Arena in Shanghai.
| Partner teams |
| All Gamers |
| Bilibili Gaming |
| Edward Gaming |
| FunPlus Phoenix |
| JD Gaming |
| Nova Esports |
| Titan Esports Club |
| Trace Esports |
| Tyloo |
| Wolves Esports |
| Non-partner teams |
| Dragon Ranger Gaming |
| Xi Lai Gaming |
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.
''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| Year | Event | Americas | EMEA | Pacific | China |
| 2023 | League | LOUD | Team Liquid | Paper Rex | League did not exist |
| 2024 | Kickoff | Sentinels | Karmine Corp | Gen.G | Edward Gaming |
| 2024 | Stage 1 | 100 Thieves | Fnatic | Paper Rex | Edward Gaming |
| 2024 | Stage 2 | Leviatán | Fnatic | Gen.G | Edward Gaming |
| 2025 | Kickoff | G2 Esports | Team Vitality | DRX | Edward Gaming |
| 2025 | Stage 1 | G2 Esports | Fnatic | Rex Regum Qeon | Xi Lai Gaming |
| 2025 | Stage 2 | G2 Esports | Team Liquid | Paper Rex | Bilibili Gaming |
Global tournaments
Teams' titles
Team or organization no longer participates in Valorant esports.| Team | Region | Champions | Masters | Total |
| Acend | EMEA | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Edward Gaming | China | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Evil Geniuses | Americas | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| LOUD | Americas | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| NRG | Americas | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Fnatic | EMEA | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Sentinels | Americas | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| FunPlus Phoenix | EMEA | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Gambit Esports | EMEA | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Gen.G | Pacific | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| OpTic Gaming | Americas | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Paper Rex | Pacific | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| T1 | Pacific | 0 | 1 | 1 |