Riot Games has announced the VALORANT Champions Tour for 2021. The season-long competition tour will include locations like North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, with a global Champion to be crowned at the end of the year.
The tour will have teams progressing through three levels: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. The Challenger events, which kick off in late January, will be on the regional level. For Masters events, which will take place three times a year, the press release says that they will be on the international level, but the Valorant blog states that they will be limited to regional events while “COVID-19 continues to impact international travel”. However, Riot is looking to turn the Masters events into international LANS “as soon as possible”.
The top performers at the Masters events will accumulate points that will help them qualify for the Champions event near the end of the year, which will feature the top sixteen teams. The winner of the final Masters event automatically qualifies for Champions and an extra team slot for their region. In addition, there will be Last Chance Qualifiers to give another chance for teams who didn’t make it into Champions initially to qualify for it.
“The Champions Tour is our next step to grow VALORANT into a global esport worthy of the passion of our fans,” said Senior Director of Esports at Riot Games Whalen Rozelle. “We've spent a couple of years now talking to players, teams, fans, prospective partners, and other stakeholders, and we're extremely excited to launch our first official season. Our focus will be on elevating and showcasing the creative and talented players who are shaping this game across the globe. Fans and players both wanted high stakes competition, and that's what the VALORANT Champions Tour is designed to do.”
Red Bull and Secretlab are the initial founding partners for the VALORANT Champions Tour, with more partners to be announced in 2021.
Currently, Riot’s popular competitive shooter is having its First Strike event, which will end on December 6.
For more details, head over to the Valorant blog here.
