The VALORANT partnership leagues for next year will include a promotion system to allow for any organization to qualify for the international leagues, Riot Games revealed today.
Teams will be able to qualify for the elusive international leagues by competing in the revamped Challengers leagues from next year. Organizations will need to qualify for the new promotion tournament, Ascension, which will feature the best VALORANT teams from the regional Challengers leagues.
In the North American region, for example, an org can qualify for the international league in 2024 because the season will begin next year. The team will need to place highly in the North American Challengers league to qualify for the Ascension tournament, which will feature other top teams from the Americas region, such as Brazillian and Latin American teams.
There will be 21 Challengers leagues across the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions, which will begin side by side with the international leagues next year.
Challengers leagues will feature two splits of multi-week regular season play, which will culminate in the Ascension tournaments.
There will be four leagues in the Americas region: North America, Latin America North, Latin America South, and Brazil. There are seven leagues in the EMEA region: Northern Europe, Southern Europe, France and Benelux, DACH, Turkey, Eastern Europe, and MENA. Finally, there will be 10 leagues in the APAC region: South Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia & Singapore, Korea, Japan, Chinese Taipai and Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, and Oceania.
Teams will be promoted for a maximum of two years and then sent back down to Challengers for the next year. That organization will then have to fight through Challengers once more to qualify for the next year of international competition.
Teams invited to partner with Riot can’t be demoted, however. The 10 partnered VALORANT teams for each league will be selected by Riot in mid-September.
