Valorant Champions Tour 2021 schedule and format

The Champions Tour, which is Riot Games’ first attempt at an official international tournament for Valorant, is about to kick off in a few days' time.

The whole tournament will be a year-long circuit of regional competition and will finally culminate in an international Champions Event by the end of 2021, just like League of Legends’ World Championship.

The Champions Tour will be the biggest competition in Valorant so far, and Riot has finally revealed the circuit structure that will come into play in the competition along with the intended format.

Format for the Valorant Champions Tour

The Valorant Champions tour will start with the Challenger series matches (Image via Riot Games)

The Valorant Champions tour will begin with the Challenger series matches, which will commence this month.

There will be a total of three sets of Challenger events, each spanning over three sets of weekends. The open qualifiers will decide on 8 teams to participate over each of the sets, and only the top 4 from each set will be able to move on to the next round, which will take place the weekend after.

The top 4 from the second weekend will advance to the Challenger Final while the bottom 4 will be allowed to bypass the third weekend's qualifiers.

It is during the Challenger finals that the representatives for each region will be determined. The representatives will move on to play three Master events.

Valorant region distributions for the 16 Masters team:

• Three teams from North America (Oceanic teams will have qualifications through NA)
• Four teams from Europe (CIS, Turkey, and the Middle East/North Africa teams will have qualifications through EU)
• Two teams from Brazil
• Two teams from Korea
• Two teams from Japan
• Two teams from Southeast Asia
• One team from Latin America

Valorant teams who participate in the Master events will get the opportunity to earn points and qualify for the Champions event, which will take place later on in the year.

The representatives for each region will be determined in the Challenger finals (Image via Riot Games)

More importantly, the team that wins the Masters event finals, will automatically be seeded into the final event, regardless of the points that they collect.

Valorant regional distribution of Champions teams:

• Three teams from North America: two via circuit points and one via Last Chance Qualifier (Oceanic teams will have qualifications through NA)
• Three teams from Europe: two via circuit points and one via Last Chance Qualifier (CIS, Turkey, and Middle East/North Africa teams will have qualifications through EU)
• Two teams from Brazil via circuit points
• One team from Latin America via circuit points
• One team from Japan via circuit points
• Two teams from Southeast Asia via circuit points
• One team from Korea via circuit points
• One team from Brazil-Latin America Last Chance qualifier
• One team from Japan-Southeast Asia-Korea Last Chance qualifier
• The winner of the Masters 3 event

Riot has not revealed any details on whether the qualifiers will be held in the best-of-three format, so more information is expected in the coming weeks.

Schedule for Valorant Champions Tour

The first series of Challenger events will begin at the end of this month (Image via Riot Games)

There is yet to be any definitive information on the full schedule of the Valorant Champions tour proceedings, but it’s confirmed that the first Challenger events will be taking place by the end of January 2021.

The Challenger events for various regions will take place on different dates, starting with LATAM on January 26, with Brazil and Korea to follow suit on Jan. 30

North America will see its professionals on stage from February 3 to 7, while the competition for Europe will start on February 4.

The Valorant Champions Tour for Southeast Asia begins on February 5, and February 11 for the CIS region.