When is Lotus getting added to VALORANT’s competitive mode?

You just have to wait a bit.

The Lotus map in VALORANT.
Image via Riot Games

The newest VALORANT map Lotus was loaded into the game on Jan. 10 at the start of Episode Six.

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Lotus, however, won’t be available in competitive from the get-go. Riot Games has made Lotus available only in Swiftplay queue for the first week of launch, so players get to learn the map before heading to competitive matches.

Related: VALORANT’s competitive map pool rotation, explained

After the Switfplay-only period, Lotus will officially become a competitive map in VALORANT, rounding out a map pool that also features Haven, Ascent, Icebox, Fracture, Pearl, and Split. Bind and Breeze were removed from the map pool rotation on Jan. 10 at the start of Episode Six.

When is Lotus being added to VALORANT competitive?

After a week period available only in Swiftplay mode, Lotus will officially enter VALORANT’s map pool rotation on Jan. 18 alongside the changes made in Patch 6.1. From there on, players can play Lotus on unrated and competitive play.

From Jan. 18 onwards, Lotus will also become playable in professional matches, should the tournament organizers decide to enable it. Given that the last chance qualifiers for VALORANT Challengers North America will run from Jan. 17 to 22, it’s possible we only see Lotus in professional NA matches after the end of January.

You can start learning Lotus before the maps becomes available for competitive play on Jan. 18. In case you feel like playing some games on Lotus, here are the best agents you can play on this new map.

Author
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Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.