February heralded the start of a new season for one of the gaming world’s most popular eSports. After taking home the Esports Awards “Esports Game of the Year” trophy in 2023, Valorant is back with more excitement than ever before.
Whether you’re a returning fan or want to get more involved in eSports, this guide will explain all you need to know about the upcoming VCT 2024 season!
What Is VCT?
VCT stands for the Valorant Champions Tour, and it is the main international eSports circuit for this popular tactical shooter game. In Valorant, this is where the top teams (and the game’s top players) all battle to win multiple international trophies.
The VCT is split into four regional leagues for 2024 as China is a new addition from the 2023 season:
- Americas (consisting of North and South American teams)
- EMEA (collecting teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa)
- Pacific (includes teams from Japan, Korea and other Southeast Asian Countries)
- China
Which Teams Are Taking Part in VCT 2024?
Riot Games employs a “partnership system” for VCT whereby 10 teams in each league are locked in each year. There’s also a promotion system that ties into the lower leagues of Valorant eSports, and each league saw one team promoted from the Challengers System in 2023.
This means every league has 11 teams in 2024 and they’re all listed below:
VCT Americas
- LOUD
- Evil Geniuses
- NRG
- Sentinels
- Furia
- MIBR
- Leviatan
- KRU
- 100 Thieves
- Cloud9
- G2 (promoted from Challengers 2023)
VCT EMEA
- FNATIC
- NAVI
- Team Liquid
- Team Vitality
- Team Heretics
- GIANTS-X
- Karmine Corps
- KOI
- BBL
- FUT
- Gentle Mates (promoted from Challengers 2023)
VCT Pacific
- Paper Rex
- DRX
- T1
- Gen.G
- Talon
- Team Secret
- RRQ
- Zeta Division
- Detonation Focus Me
- Global Esports
- Bleed Esports (promoted from Challengers 2023)
VCT China
- AG VALORANT
- Bilibili Gaming
- Edward Gaming
- FunPlus Phoenix (FPX)
- JD Gaming
- Nova Esports
- Trace Esports
- Titan Esports Club
- TYLOO VALORANT
- Wolves Esports
- Dragon Ranger Gaming (promoted from Challengers 2023)
Where Can I Watch VCT 2024?
Good news, VCT is widely available for free across a range of platforms with HD streams available all the time. Fans can watch the action at a worthy non-UK casino to enjoy the streams without adverts – or join popular streaming platforms YouTube and Twitch.
You don’t need to pay to watch the Valorant Champions Tour and many of the game’s biggest streamers will hold watch parties during the events.
When Will I Be Able To Watch VCT Matches?
There will be ample opportunities to watch a tonne of Valorant this coming year. The full season began in February with a Kick-Off tournament in each league. This was done to find out which teams qualified for the Master Madrid event (which is happening at the time of writing).
A full breakdown of VCT dates can be found below so you can mark them on your schedule and make time to watch the games:
- VCT Americas Kickoff: Feb 16 – Mar 4
- VCT Pacific Kickoff: Feb 17 – 25
- VCT EMEA Kickoff: Feb 20 – Mar 1
- VCT China Kickoff: Febb 22 – Mar 3
- VCT Masters Madrid: Mar 14 – 24
- VCT EMEA Stage 1: Apr 2 – May 12
- VCT China Stage 1: Apr 5 – May 13
- VCT Pacific Stage 1: Apr 6 – May 12
- VCT Americas Stage 1: Apr 7 – May 13
- VCT Masters Shanghai: May 23 – Jun 9
Following these matches, there will be another stage of games across each regional league, culminating in VCT Champions, which will be hosted in Seoul this year. The complete schedule hasn’t been released yet, though we suspect the regional leagues will return a week or two after Masters Shanghai.
How Does VCT 2024 Work?
If there’s one thing we’ll criticize Riot for, it’s their management of the VCT 2024 schedule. It’s extremely confusing for people who don’t follow the eSport, but we’ll do our best to explain how the schedule works and what the matches mean.
As noted before, the season began with regional Kickoff tournaments. The top two teams from each region went to Masters Madrid – the winners of each tournament also won “circuit points”, which we’ll get into in a moment.
After the conclusion of Masters Madrid, teams will return to their regional leagues, which are split into two separate groups based on the kickoff tournament results. In Stage 1, teams from one group will play the teams in the other group in their region.
The top six teams will move to a playoff bracket.
After navigating a double-elimination playoff bracket, the top three teams from each region qualify for Masters Shanghai, with the winner earning more circuit points.
Details on Masters Shanghai haven’t been announced, but all twelve teams qualifying from the four regions will fight it out to take home the trophy – and more circuit points.
When Shanghai concludes, the regional leagues start up again, but this time the teams will only play teams in their group. This means that during the season, every team has played every other team in its regional league at least once.
Again, details haven’t been announced for Stage 2 yet, though we imagine the top teams will go to a playoff bracket again. Here, we think the team with the most circuit points in each region will qualify for VCT Champions plus the three best-performing teams in the playoffs.
This leaves 4 teams from each region going to Champions, which will be a 16-team event. The winner of Champions is declared the overall winner of VCT 2024!
You now know what VCT 2024 entails, how to watch the matches, who’s taking part and when the games are broadcast. There’s been a lot of feisty action already and it’s shaping up to be the biggest and most competitive season yet.
