How Riot's College League of Legends and College Valorant work

Each season, thousands of students in the United States and Canada register to play League of Legends and Valorant for their school in a competition run by the company that makes both games. College League of Legends and College Valorant, known as CLOL and CVAL, are Riot Games' official intercollegiate leagues in North America. For the 2026 season, their operator counts more than 4,000 students on 600 teams from 300 schools.

The competition follows official rules published by Riot Games for each season, and those rules are the place to start. This guide explains who runs the program, which schools and students may take part, how a team is put together, how conferences and playoffs lead to a national title, what the scholarship prizes are, and which game rules apply on the day of a match.

Official rules of the 2025 College League of Legends and College Valorant seasons, published by Riot Games.

Who runs Riot's college leagues

The program belongs to Riot Games through the Riot Scholastic Association of America, the RSAA, the body that oversees Riot's school and college competition in North America. Since the 2023-24 school year, the daily running of the leagues has been in the hands of GGTech Entertainment, a company that operates college competitions under the UNIVERSITY Esports name. Its North American branch, UNIVERSITY Esports NA, is the operator named on the 2026 season announcement.

Riot set out that arrangement on July 18, 2023. In an announcement signed by J.T. Vandenbree, Riot wrote that GGTech would be the official provider of the North American collegiate program for three years, beginning in the 2023-24 school year. The scope covered College League of Legends, College Valorant and the college club program. Riot added that the RSAA would stay closely involved in the operations, strategy and direction of the college ecosystem, and that GGTech had been working with colleges for eight years.

The same announcement promised continuity for players. Riot said the North American season would stay largely the same as in previous years, including its dates, its formats and a live final event for both games, and that scholarship prizes would match earlier seasons. It also said there would be no change to the competition guidelines for the scholastic community in either game.

GGTech described its own role in November 2023: from the 2023-24 season, UNIVERSITY Esports NA would operate the official RSAA college competitions in both games and act as the RSAA's broadcast partner. Riot's July 2023 announcement listed Josh Williams, Global Director of UNIVERSITY Esports at GGTech Entertainment, for the company.

Which schools can enter

The school comes first. Under the official rules of the 2025 season, every team and every player must be associated with an accredited institution of higher learning in the United States or Canada. The Valorant rules spell out what that covers: four-year colleges, two-year colleges, universities and graduate schools.

A school with several campuses is not one entry by default. The rules treat each campus as a separate institution unless the school officially asks for its campuses to be unified.

A school may also enter more than one team. Several teams from the same school may compete in the Regional Conferences. The limit comes later: if two or more teams from one school qualify for the Championship Division, the top tier of the playoffs, only the highest-ranked of them stays there, and the others play in the Open Division instead.

Who may play for a school

The eligibility rules set out who counts as a student-athlete in Riot's sense. They are the same in both games under the 2025 rules, with small differences of wording.

• Age. A player must be at least 17 years old at the time of competition. A player who turns 17 during the season may compete from that birthday on.
• Enrollment. A player must be enrolled in a degree program lasting at least two years and be in good academic standing. The player must be a full-time student, or a part-time student who was full-time before and is within one academic year of expected graduation.
• Leave. Students on a sabbatical, a gap semester or another temporary leave of absence are not eligible until they return.
• Campus status. A player must also be eligible to take part in club or competitive sports sanctioned by the school.
• One school per season. A player may compete for only one school during a single College Season.
• Account. Each player needs a game account in good standing, uses it for every official match and may not list more than one account on the roster. A current disciplinary suspension from Riot-affiliated competition bars a player.

Graduation has its own rule, and here the two rulebooks differ. In the League of Legends rules, a player who graduates before the end of the Conference Regular Season is no longer eligible. In the Valorant rules, the cut-off comes earlier: a player who graduates before the start of Phase 1 of the Winter Tournament is no longer eligible, and graduation is defined as the calendar end of the student's final semester or term of classes.

There is also a ceiling on a career. Players may compete in Riot College Esports for no more than five school years in total, counted from the 2023-24 school year. Playing in several official Riot or RSAA competitions in the same school year counts as a single year.

How a team is built

The roster is wider than the five players who start a game. Under the 2025 rules, a team must have at least five and no more than ten eligible players on its roster at all times.

Every team also needs one designated team manager, named before the season starts. The manager must be present in the league's official channels and must be replaced straight away if they leave. A team may list one or two further staff members. Under the Valorant rules, additional staff need no declaration and no eligibility check.

Within that roster, the starting line-up is flexible. A team may field any five players from its active roster at the start of a match and may swap players between games, as long as the opponent gets at least five minutes' notice. Rosters for each week lock two days before a match: for a match played on a Saturday, both teams' rosters lock on the Thursday.

The rules also allow a cross-team substitute, a player borrowed from another team, within limits. In the Valorant rules, a player may stand in for only one team at a time and for up to two matches unless officials approve more, and the receiving team must stay within the ten-player cap.

Conferences and the regular season

Teams are grouped into conferences, the word American college sport uses for its leagues of schools. For the 2026 season, the operator lists four regional conferences, named North, East, South and West, and seven partner conferences. The 2026 announcement does not name the partner conferences. GGTech has described teams from schools in partner athletic conferences as playing their own regular-season tournaments inside the program.

The regular season is played in a Swiss format. In a Swiss system, teams are paired each round with opponents on the same win-loss record, so that teams with winning records meet each other and nobody is knocked out in the first weeks. For 2026, the operator scheduled five weeks of Swiss play, from January 24 to February 22, to decide the 32 teams that advance to the Conference Playoffs. During the Swiss stage, the League of Legends rules say officials assign first side choice by hand and show it on the match schedule.

The 2026 season moves through five steps from registration to the final.

Championship Division and Open Division

At the playoffs, the field splits in two tiers. The Championship Division is the top tier. For 2026, it is a 32-team modified double-elimination bracket. In double elimination, a team must lose twice before it is out: a first defeat sends it to a lower bracket, from which it can still climb back toward the final.

The Open Division is built for a wider field. It runs as a seven-week single-elimination bracket, in which one defeat ends a team's season. Teams holding automatic qualification bids, places earned through their results, go straight into the Open Divisional Playoffs, which the operator schedules from April to May with 16 teams in a single-elimination bracket.

Between the two tiers sits a Selection Committee. According to the operator, the committee identifies the teams that did not qualify automatically, completes the Open Division field and finalizes the seeding of the brackets. The 2026 announcement does not say who sits on it.

The rule on several teams from one school applies at this point. A school can have two strong teams in a regional conference, but only its highest-ranked team can take a Championship Division place. Its other qualified teams go to the Open Division, where they can still play on.

The College Championship and the Grand Finals

The College Championship is the national stage. The top teams from the Conference Playoffs advance to it directly. For 2026, the operator describes a double-elimination bracket of the top 32 teams in North America, starting on April 18, with a winner crowned in late May or early June. The exact dates of the last rounds were listed as to be determined when the season was announced on February 5, 2026.

The 2025 edition shows how the end of the road works in practice. GGTech announced in March 2025 that North Carolina State University in Raleigh would host the Grand Finals. The bracket started in mid-April and ran to the live finals, with College League of Legends crowning its champion on May 31, 2025 and College Valorant on June 1. Only the top two teams of each game traveled to play the final in person.

That 2025 bracket was a modified double elimination. GGTech explained that the top-seeded teams start in the upper bracket and the lower-seeded teams start in the lower bracket.

Live play brings extra rules. The League of Legends rules say that teams reaching the College Championship are subject to additional rules for live gameplay. Both rulebooks say the Championship may be played on a Tournament Realm server, a server set up for competition, and the Valorant rules add that its patch may be restricted at the officials' discretion. Conduct rules on language also apply to social media, live streaming and player communications during live events.

What the scholarship prizes are

Prizes in Riot's college program are scholarship prizes. When it opened registration for the 2024 College League of Legends season in November 2023, GGTech said scholarship prizes would go to the players and student staff of the top 16 schools of the College Championship.

Riot's July 2023 announcement promised scholarship prizes equal to previous seasons for both games. Neither page gives an amount, and the 2026 season announcement does not list prizes.

The rulebooks protect the scholarships in two ways. Both treat pre-arranging to split scholarship money, or any other form of compensation, as collusion, a breach of fair play between teams. The Valorant rules also list scholarship or prize forfeiture among the penalties officials may impose.

A Riot college title is decided on a game server, but its reward is a scholarship, not a paycheck.

Game rules on match day

The match rules follow each game's own design, but the frame is shared. In both games, play uses the current live patch, the version of the game everyone plays at home, on North American servers, and both rulebooks hold back brand-new content for a few days after its release.

Punctuality is enforced by the clock. In both games, a team with no member in the lobby within 10 minutes of the official start time, or of the end of the previous game, forfeits. If at least one member was present for the first game, the window stretches to 15 minutes in all. A forfeit is recorded at the minimum winning score of the match format.

Penalties climb a ladder. In both rulebooks they start with a verbal warning and end, at the top, with a team's disqualification. The Valorant list shows the steps between: the loss of side selection or map bans, the forfeit of a map or a match, and a player suspension. Repeated offenses bring escalating penalties, officials need not impose them in order, and the League of Legends rules let them honor penalties handed out in other Riot-sanctioned competitions.

Why the rules matter to a school

For a campus, the rulebook decides more than who plays. The enrollment rule ties a roster to the academic calendar: a student on leave is not eligible until they return, and a player who graduates before the cut-off of their game's rulebook stops being eligible. Any replacement has to fit within the ten-player cap and the weekly roster lock. The five-year limit, tracked since 2023-24, gives every college career in Riot's leagues a fixed end.

The entry rules are broad: any accredited two-year, four-year or graduate institution in the two countries may enter, and a school may field several teams in its regional conference. The operator's figures show how far the field reaches: in October 2023, the College League of Legends Fall Warmup, a preseason tournament in one game, drew more than 1,700 students on 250 teams from 172 schools. The 2026 season of both leagues counts more than 4,000 students on 600 teams from 300 schools.

The tier system then sorts that wide field. The Swiss regular season keeps every team playing for five weeks, the Championship Division gathers the strongest programs, and the Open Division with its automatic bids and Selection Committee gives the rest a bracket of their own. Each season brings its own rulebook, so the details of a rule can change from one year to the next.

Where the 2026 season stands

In mid-March 2026, the Conference Playoffs are under way. They run until April 12, and the College Championship opens on April 18. Open Division teams play their divisional playoffs between April and May.

The operator has said the national champions of both games will be crowned in late May or early June, with the dates of the final rounds still to be set. Under the agreement Riot announced in July 2023, the 2025-26 school year is the third of the three years for which GGTech was named the program's provider.

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