Riot Games has released a detailed five-year plan for VALORANT’s competitive scene, including what 2023 will look like for the teams who don’t make it into the partnership program. Now, fans know what the next five years will look like for the VCT ecosystem.
Because of the new partnered league, there is a completely revamped path-to-pro for teams that don’t get partnership status in 2023. Next year, players looking to make it to the top tier of competitive VALORANT will have to climb a lot farther and for a lot longer before they can reach the top.
Luckily, those who want to make the attempt will have a solid path to get there starting in 2023. The VALORANT Champions Tour continues in 2023 with regional Challengers events, which is the tournament for up-and-coming talent aspiring to play in the international tournament leagues.
In 2023, players in more regions will be able to start playing in Challengers, which will still serve as the beginning of the path-to-pro for competitive VALORANT. There will be larger events, new tournaments, and a more structured competitive ecosystem for the game starting in 2023.
New and expanded Challengers leagues
Challengers, which is currently the entry point for VCT in 2022, will continue to be the entry point for global events for organized teams going forward. Challengers leagues will begin with an open qualifier like it has before and will ladder the best teams into two splits of multi-week regular season play.
Each Challengers split will have a playoff tournament where one team will be crowned the winner. The biggest Challengers leagues will have dedicated broadcast windows that will not interfere with the international league’s matches.
Twenty-one Challengers leagues will take place across the globe: four in the Americas, seven in EMEA, and 10 in APAC. The leagues are listed below:
Americas
- NA
- LATAM North
- Brazil
- LATAM South
EMEA
- Northern Europe
- Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, and Portugal)
- France and Benelux
- Dach (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland)
- Turkey
- Eastern Europe
- MENA
Pacific
- South Asia (Includes India)
- Thailand
- Vietnam
- Malaysia and Singapore
- Korea
- Japan
- Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong
- Philippines
- Indonesia
- Oceania
A new league – Challengers Ascension
A new tier of competition is called Challengers Ascension. There are three Ascension leagues: EMEA, Americas, and Pacific. This tournament is the culmination of the Challengers leagues and will end with the top teams in each of the Challenger leagues moving on to the Ascension league, where they will crown the best team in their territory.
One team from each of the three regions will compete for the prize of a spot in the next year’s international league. This means that the winners of the 2023 Challenger Ascension tournament in their region will move up to the international league for 2024.
In 2023, 10 teams per international league will compete in global competitions while Challengers and Ascension leagues fight their way to the one spot in the 2024 international roster of teams. Each region will allow for one additional team to go into the international league, which means that in 2024, there will be 11 teams per international league.
Challengers promotion means more teams competing in the top level of VALORANT esports
The 10 partnered teams in each region will not drop from the international league, and instead, the leagues will only grow based on Riot’s five-year plan. Because the promotion calendar takes league expansion quite slowly, this won’t mean much for teams competing in 2023.
Those participating in Challengers and Ascension tournaments will not compete in the international league in 2023. They will be fighting for a spot in 2024. Teams that win that spot will earn two years in the international league before they are forced to go back to the Challengers circuit after the second year is up.
Although this means there won’t be any additional teams in the 2023 season of VCT, it does mean the stakes are high for the first teams that try their hand at the new VALORANT path-to-pro. There’s only one new spot for the 2024 season in each region, meaning teams will have to fight through a great deal of matches before they can claim victory and participate in the international league.
2023’s international league will have 10 squads each
For the 2023 international season, there will be 10 teams from each of the three regions competing to be the best squad in the world. These leagues will look similar to the Masters and Champions events that fans are so used to, but instead of open qualifiers culminating in these events, there will simply be the 10 partnered teams.
The teams that will compete in the 2023 season’s international league haven’t been announced yet, although sources tell Dot Esports that Riot has completed its final interviews and that it received over 150 proposals from teams wanting a spot in the inaugural season of the league.
The international league will begin in mid-February 2023 and conclude in September, according to sources. Teams will receive some sort of stipend for being a partnered team, although that dollar amount will depend on a number of content deliverables.
Partnered VCT 2023 teams
Here is the full list of official teams for each partnered league.
- EMEA: KOI, Karmine Corp, Fnatic, Team Vitality, Natus Vincere, Team Liquid, Heretics, BBL Esports, Giants, FUT Esports
- Americas: Cloud9, Sentinels, NRG, KRÜ, Leviatán, LOUD, FURIA, MIBR, 100T, Evil Geniuses.
- Asia: ZETA DIVISION, DetonatioN Gaming, Gen.G, T1, DRX, Team Secret, Paper Rex, Rex Regum Qeon, Talon Esports, Global Esports
The season will kick off with a 30-team, three-week tournament in Brazil
For the start of the 2023 international season, all 30 teams will travel to São Paulo, Brazil for a three-week international kick-off tournament. This tournament will take the place of the first split of the VCT year, which will resume in place of the kick-off tournament beginning in 2024.
The winner of the 2023 kick-off tournament will earn an extra spot for their respective international league at the next Masters, plus a trophy and cash prize.
More details about the 2023 season and the Game Changers tournaments will be made available closer to the end of the year, likely sometime around the Champions tournament, which is set to take place in September.
