LOUD sign erde from LEVIATÁN Academy to lead its VCT Americas roster

LOUD have announced the signing of erde to their 2026 Valorant Champions Tour roster, Esports Insider reported on March 5, 2026. The 18-year-old arrives from LEVIATÁN Academy and takes over as in-game leader, the player who decides the team's plan round by round and calls it out during play. He replaces pANcada in the active line-up.

The signing comes with LOUD out of competition. The team finished second-last at VCT Americas Kickoff, the opening tournament of the season, and did not qualify for Masters Santiago, the international event that runs until March 15. Its next match is in VCT Americas Stage 1, which starts for LOUD on April 10 according to the same report. The team has just over five weeks to learn to play under a new voice.

Age and start date as reported by Esports Insider on March 5, 2026; line-up compared with the outlet's list of 2026 rosters, last updated on January 16, 2026.

What LOUD announced

The move is a signing to the main roster, made ahead of Stage 1. Esports Insider reports that erde joins as in-game leader, often shortened to IGL, and that he will play controller. In Valorant, each player picks a character with a set of abilities, and the characters are grouped by job. Controllers are the ones who block lines of sight with smoke so that their teammates can cross open ground or hold a position.

Both of those jobs belonged to the place pANcada held in the active five. The report says erde replaces him there. It does not describe a release, a move to the bench or a transfer to another team for pANcada, and it gives no reason for the change. What is established is narrower: the starting line-up LOUD will take into Stage 1 no longer includes him.

No fee, no contract length and no other term of the deal is given. The outlet does not describe an agreement between LOUD and LEVIATÁN, the organization whose academy team erde played for. It reports where he came from and where he now plays.

One detail of timing is given. According to Esports Insider, erde only became eligible to compete in the VCT in February 2026. He was therefore not available to any team of the top circuit when the season started in January, and LOUD signed him within weeks of the date on which it became possible.

One change in a five that stays together

LOUD did not rebuild. The roster Esports Insider published for the team in its list of all 2026 VCT line-ups, last updated on January 16, had five players and one head coach. Four of those players and the coach are still there.

The change is small in number, but it touches the role that organizes the other four. The in-game leader decides how each round is approached, so the players who remain will be carrying out a plan called by a new teammate, one who was not yet eligible for this league when the season began.

The staff side is stable. Romanilly remains head coach. The March report also mentions LOUD's psychologist, Baje, who posted on X after a bootcamp, a period in which a team lives and trains together away from competition. He wrote that the group had covered a lot of ground during the bootcamp and that only a collective effort could bring it results.

Where erde comes from

Esports Insider gives the outline of the route that brought the new leader to LOUD, and it is the route of a player raised below the top circuit. He began his professional career in 2022 with LEVIATÁN Academy, the development team of LEVIATÁN, which is itself one of the twelve teams of VCT Americas.

In November 2023 the academy loaned him to Furious Gaming, where he spent a year. A loan means a player competes for another team for a set time while remaining tied to the organization that lends him. With Furious Gaming he won Challengers 2024 LAS Split 3, the outlet reports. Challengers is the tier of regional competitions that sits under the VCT.

He then went back to LEVIATÁN Academy for another year before LOUD signed him. Esports Insider adds that he received offers from other partner organizations, the teams that hold a long-term place in the league, and that he chose LOUD because he saw more potential in its roster than in the others.

The record erde inherits

LOUD's name still carries the weight of 2022, when the team won Valorant Champions, the world championship of the game. The years since have been harder, and Esports Insider sets them out plainly.

The team has not played an international event since Masters Madrid in 2024. In 2025 it went out in the group stage of both league phases of the season, Americas Stage 1 and Americas Stage 2. It then began 2026 by finishing second-last at the Kickoff.

That Kickoff was played from January 15 to February 15 under a new format. Riot Games, the game's publisher and the organizer of the circuit, used a triple-elimination bracket for the first time, Esports Insider wrote in its presentation of the season in December 2025: a team is only eliminated after three defeats. Twelve teams took part and the top three earned places at Masters Santiago.

Those three places went elsewhere. When Esports Insider published the opening matches of the Masters Santiago playoffs on March 5, the teams from the Americas league still in the tournament were FURIA, NRG and G2 Esports. The playoffs begin on March 6 and the winner is decided on March 15.

The Kickoff also paid out the first Championship Points of the year, the points that decide which teams go to the world championship. The December presentation lists four, three, two and one point for the top four teams of each Kickoff. A team that finished second-last is outside those four places.

A group with erde's former organization in it

The draw for Stage 1 was made before the signing. Esports Insider reported on February 16 that each region's groups were drawn after the lower-bracket final of its Kickoff. Teams were placed in seeding pools according to their Kickoff results; the first team drawn from each pool went to Group Alpha, the second to Group Omega.

LOUD is in Group Alpha. Each group is played as a single round robin, in which every team meets each of the others once. With six teams in a group, that gives LOUD five matches, one against each of G2 Esports, MIBR, Cloud9, LEVIATÁN and ENVY.

Two of those five opponents have a particular link to this signing. LEVIATÁN is the organization whose academy trained erde, so his first weeks as a VCT leader include a match against the senior team of the club he has just left. G2 Esports is one of the three Americas teams that reached the playoffs in Santiago.

How Stage 1 works

The stage has three steps between a team and the next international tournament, according to the season format Esports Insider published in December 2025.

The first threshold is the one LOUD missed twice in 2025. Four of the six teams in each group go through, so a team needs to finish ahead of two others over five matches to keep playing.

Every match also counts for the end of the season. The same format gives one Championship Point for each match won in Stage 1, then six, four, three and two points to the top four of the Stage 1 Playoffs. Those points determine which organizations qualify for Champions, which is scheduled in Shanghai from September 24 to October 18. A team without points from the Kickoff starts collecting them with its first win in April.

The dates ahead

The calendar leaves LOUD a clear run of preparation. The season schedule published in December placed Stage 1 between March 31 and May 10 for the circuit as a whole, with the Stage 1 Playoffs from May 6 to 24. Esports Insider's February report on the groups says the stage begins in April, after Masters Santiago, and its March 5 report gives April 10 as the date on which LOUD starts.

From the day the signing was reported to that first match, there are 36 days. In that time the team has to fit a new leader's calls to four players who began the season with another one, and erde has to move from the tier below to a league that includes the reigning world champion, NRG, and three teams currently playing in Santiago.

After Masters London, the same calendar continues with Stage 2 from June 30 to August 16. The second league phase offers a second set of match-win points before the places at Champions are settled.

What the sources leave open is on the other side of the move. pANcada's situation has not been described beyond his absence from the active five, and no new team has been reported for him. The line-up as it has been reported for Stage 1 is cauanzin, lukxo, Virtyy, Darker and erde, with Romanilly as head coach.

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