It’s been a little over two years since the official release of VALORANT. Riot Games has done a ton over that timespan with their second marquee esports title and now they’re taking a huge step into the future of VALORANT esports with their latest announcement. Since the release of VALORANT, and the start of the VALORANT Champions Tour, top-level competitive VALORANT has revolved around a handful of regional tournaments that qualify teams for international events like Masters and VALORANT Champions. The new changes will shift VALORANT closer to the regional league format that Riot has used for League of Legends the past 10 years. However, the new era of the VCT will provide much more opportunity for teams not directly partnered with Riot in the aforementioned regional leagues to compete at the top level in VALORANT.
Starting in 2023, the VALORANT Champions Tour will expand to encompass over 20 regional leagues across the globe. These “Challenger” leagues will host competition over multiple splits with the stated goal of “surfac[ing] the up and coming stars through a fully connected ecosystem with larger events, new tournaments, and high stakes.” At the same time, 3 “International Leagues” will run in EMEA, the Americas, and the Pacific with 10 teams competing in each respective league.
Top teams in Challengers will then get the opportunity to compete and qualify for the International Leagues. Teams that qualify through Challengers will then get a two-year window to compete in their respective International League before having to go back to Challengers and requalify. This plan will allow for the expansion of VALORANT’s International Leagues to a cap of 14 teams per league by 2027. Qualifying Challenger teams will get to compete on the same level as the permanent International League teams for qualification into all Riot Global Events for VALORANT.
However, the most interesting part of the entire announcement might just be the fact that the team at Riot plans on integrating this competitive ecosystem directly into the game. According to the announcement, Riot and the VALORANT Esports team hope to give teams the opportunity to “qualify directly from the game into Challengers” by 2024. This would create a very accessible ecosystem for anyone to kickstart their competitive VALORANT career from home without the need for investment or getting signed by an organization. This system is reminiscent of the old “Ranked 5v5” system in League of Legends that was responsible for Challenger qualification in the early days of the LCS era in League of Legends.
In the end, the future looks incredibly bright for VALORANT Esports. With the wealth of opportunities for players and teams, as well a diverse and truly international structure that the team is building over at Riot, VALORANT looks poised to take over the esports world in the very near future.
For more information, check out the entire VCT announcement HERE.