Riot Games has officially ended the league era of VALORANT esports. On April 8, the publisher announced that the VCT 2027 season will replace all regional league play with a fully tournament-driven system built around open qualifiers, LAN events, and a new competition tier called VCT Cups. It is the single biggest structural overhaul since franchising launched in 2023.
The message from Leo Faria, Global Head of VALORANT Esports, was blunt: every match should carry weight, the path to global events should be open, and live events need to reach more cities. The format delivers on all three.
How VCT Cups Replace Leagues in 2027
The familiar Stage 1 and Stage 2 league splits are gone. In their place, each of the four VCT territories will host two Cups per year, totaling eight LAN-based regional tournaments across the global calendar. Cups function as the primary qualification pathway to Masters and Champions, concluding with live finals weekend events in new host cities.
The season itself follows a three-cycle structure. Cycle 1 opens with regional Kickoff Open Qualifiers online, feeding into the international Kickoff on LAN, which leads to Masters 1. Cycle 2 runs online open qualifiers into a regional Cup on LAN, with top teams advancing to Masters 2. Cycle 3 feeds directly into Champions. Kickoff qualifiers begin in Q4 of the prior year, immediately after Champions concludes.
Teams that miss one qualification window get another shot in the next cycle. Multiple entries, multiple times per year.
Valorant Open Qualifiers in 2027: Who Can Compete
This is the headline shift. For the first time since 2023, any team can enter VCT and qualify for Masters and Champions through open qualifiers. The Ascension format is gone. The two-tier system separating partner and non-partner rosters is dissolved into a single competitive tier.
Regional qualification paths will vary. Riot confirmed that open qualifiers could include community tournaments, partner events, collegiate competitions, VALORANT Premier pathways, and more. Based on official visuals shared by Riot, the territorial breakdown splits Americas into North America, LATAM, and Brazil; EMEA into EU, MENA, and Tรผrkiye; Pacific into SEA, Japan, Korea, and South Asia; while China retains its own qualifier system. Exact qualification paths within each subregion have not been finalized and are expected to be detailed closer to Champions 2026 in Shanghai.
What Happens to Partnered Teams
Franchising is not dead, but it is significantly diluted. A new two-year partnership cycle begins in 2027, with applications now open. Every current partner must reapply. Riot has not locked a final number of partner slots.
Partner benefits include a guaranteed annual base payment, performance bonuses, revenue share through in-game Team Capsules, and direct seeding into later rounds of qualifiers. That last point is critical: partnered rosters skip the earliest open qualifier stages but no longer hold a guaranteed seat at international events. Performance is now the only ticket to Masters and Champions.
Partnership applications are evaluated across five criteria: community growth, fan resonance, business sustainability, operational infrastructure, and competitive success.
The Money
Riot is committing $6M+ in annual prize pools across all tournaments, with fully funded travel for global events. Financial incentives are attached to each stage and scale with prestige: payouts roughly double from Cups to Masters, and double again from Masters to Champions. Non-partner teams receive early fund distribution for Cup attendance to cover travel and visa logistics.
The broader picture is arguably more significant. Riot disclosed that it distributed over $86 million to partner teams in 2025 through digital goods revenue alone. The new model extends revenue-sharing deeper into the ecosystem, allowing top-performing non-partner rosters to potentially outearn lower-ranked partner teams across a full season.
A portion of the annual fund allocation will also go to Game Changers, though specific figures have not been confirmed.
What Is Still Unknown
Riot left several key details for later. Regional calendars, slot allocations for international events, specific event locations, and the future structure of Game Changers will all be finalized ahead of Champions 2026. The 2027 Champions host city has not been officially confirmed, though Riot indicated in 2024 that the season would conclude in the Americas.
The full picture of qualification paths, format specifics for each Cup, and how community or collegiate events feed into the system remains to be seen. Riot is pressure-testing these internally, region by region.
Early Reactions and What It Means for the Scene
Initial response from the community and competitive scene has been broadly positive. Fans and analysts have called the new format a balanced hybrid of the pre-2023 open circuit and the stability that franchising brought. The return of open pathways is widely seen as a fix for the stagnation that plagued Tier 2 VALORANT under the current system.
Not everyone is convinced. One experienced VCT coach, speaking anonymously, expressed skepticism about the first-year execution, noting that the calendar could prove far more demanding than people expect and that the marketing line of “every game matters” is a stretch when the outgoing format already had very few meaningless matches.
The structural bet Riot is making is clear: more tournaments, more cities, more teams with a real shot at the top. Whether the ecosystem can sustain 20+ events across 16+ cities without diluting competition quality is the question that will define VCT 2027’s success.
For now, this is the most significant competitive restructuring VALORANT has seen since its esports circuit launched. The league era is over. The tournament era starts in Q4 2026 with Kickoff qualifiers.
