Riot sets out Masters London: Copper Box, 13 match days, a new map

Seven of the twelve teams that will play Masters London were not at the first global Valorant event of the year. That is the first thing the field shows, and it comes from the guide Riot Games posted on its esports site on Saturday, May 30, 2026, one week before the opening match. The page lists the teams, the two stages of the tournament and the calendar, from Saturday, June 6 to the grand final on Sunday, June 21.

Masters London is the second global event of the 2026 season of the VCT, the Valorant Champions Tour, the circuit Riot Games runs for its tactical shooter. It is played at the Copper Box Arena, in London, and follows Masters Santiago, held in Chile from February 28 to March 15. The structure is the one used there: eight teams start in a Swiss stage, a format that pairs teams with the same record, and four enter directly in the playoffs. The publisher adds one item to the last day that has nothing to do with the bracket: a new map of the game is revealed on June 21.

Twelve teams, seven of them new since Santiago

Three teams come from each of the tour's four international leagues: Americas, Pacific, EMEA, which covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and China, which Riot Games lists as VCT CN.

Five teams make both trips, and no league sends the same three twice. The widest change is in EMEA. The guide to Masters Santiago listed BBL Esports, Gentle Mates and Team Liquid for that league; the London page names Team Heretics, Team Vitality and FUT Esports, three teams that were not in Chile. The Pacific league keeps Paper Rex and replaces NS Redforce and T1 with FULL SENSE and Global Esports. In the Americas, Leviatán take the place FURIA held in Santiago. In China, Dragon Ranger Gaming come in for All Gamers.

The guide lists the teams by league and gives no seeding, the ranking that decides who meets whom.

How a place in London was won

The two Masters of the year are filled in different ways. For Santiago, the places went to the top three teams of each league's Kickoff, the tournament that opened the season in January and February. For London, they were decided in Stage 1, the first of the two league phases of the year.

Riot Games set out the mechanism in its presentation of the season, published on December 2, 2025. In Stage 1, the twelve teams of a league are split into two groups of six. Each team plays every other team of its group once, in best-of-three series, a series being won by the first team to take two maps, and a map being one full game of Valorant. The top four of each group go to the Stage 1 playoffs, and the top three teams of Stage 1 qualify for Masters London.

The publisher's guide to the Americas league, posted on March 19, 2026, shows how that looked in one region. Stage 1 began on April 10 at the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles, with two groups named Alpha and Omega, drawn in a broadcast show. The playoffs that followed were a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out only after its second defeat, and the guide confirmed three places for London at the end of it.

Eight teams in the Swiss stage, four with a bye

Where a team enters in London depends on how it finished Stage 1. According to the guide, the winner of Stage 1 in each league skips the Swiss stage and goes straight to the playoffs. That is a bye, a free pass through a round. The other eight teams, the second and third qualifiers of each league, play the Swiss stage from June 6 to June 10.

A Swiss stage has no groups and no fixed bracket. After each round, teams are paired with opponents that hold the same record of wins and losses. The rule in London is the one used in Santiago: a team that wins two series advances, a team that loses two is eliminated, and every series is a best-of-three. Four teams go through and four go home.

The format fixes the amount of play. The eight teams play four series in the first round. In the second, the four winners meet each other and so do the four losers: two teams reach two wins and advance, two reach two losses and leave. The four teams left, each with one win and one loss, play two deciding series. That makes ten series over the five days, and no team plays more than three.

The playoff bracket and the points

The playoffs gather eight teams, the four survivors of the Swiss stage and the four Stage 1 winners, in a double-elimination bracket. A team that loses once drops into a lower bracket and keeps playing. A second defeat ends its tournament. The winner of the lower bracket meets the winner of the upper bracket in the grand final. The guide does not state how many maps the playoff series are played over.

The pairings are not known yet. Riot's page on the event's prediction game, published on May 27, says the playoff draw and the schedule are released on June 10, the last day of the Swiss stage, at around 6:00 PM Pacific time.

Results in London weigh on the end of the season. The guide says each playoff win earns Championship Points toward Champions Shanghai, the world championship that closes the 2026 VCT. Championship Points are the points teams collect across the year. In its December presentation, Riot Games said the season continues to qualify two teams through those points and two through the Stage 2 playoffs. The London guide gives no point values.

One individual award is attached to the event. A single most valuable player of Masters London is named after the grand final, chosen by a panel of broadcast talent, media and co-streamers, the creators allowed to show the matches on their own channels.

Sixteen days, thirteen with matches

The calendar has the same outline as in Santiago: 16 days from the first series to the last, 13 of them with matches, and three pauses. One falls between the two stages. The other two, which the guide assigns to technical work and rehearsal, come before the final weekend.

The ticket announcement Riot Games published on March 15 gives the hours inside the hall. During the Swiss stage and the first five playoff days, doors open at 1:30 PM and the show starts at 3:00 PM. On the last three days everything moves one hour earlier, with doors at 12:30 PM and a 2:00 PM start.

The Copper Box Arena and what a seat costs

Every one of the 13 match days is played before spectators, the same announcement shows. General sale opened on March 27 through Ticketmaster, with a limit of four tickets per purchase. All seats are reserved, in five price tiers, and prices climb from the weekday dates to the grand final.

The cheapest seat of the event costs £10 and the most expensive £125, a tier 1 place for the grand final. Tier 1 also gives access to an area near the stage that Riot calls the Super Fan Zone, within the limits of its capacity. Tier 5 is sold with a warning: the announcement describes a minor obstruction of the screens, caused by the low ceiling above those seats. Friday, June 12, the first playoff day, is priced as a weekend date.

A new map and a fan festival on the last weekend

The final Sunday carries more than the title. The guide announces that a new Valorant map is revealed on June 21 through a showmatch, an exhibition game without competitive stakes, played by content creators. Riot Games used the last day of its first Masters of the year in the same way: its news page lists a new agent, the name the game gives its playable characters, revealed at the Masters Santiago grand final.

Outside the arena, a Fan Fest is held at Hackney Bridge during the finals weekend. The guide says it is free for fans attending Masters London, and the March announcement described drop-in access from June 19 to 21 for people without a ticket as well, with chances to meet players and creators, community showcases and an artist alley. The guide also lists the Red Bull Gaming Sphere On Tour, present from June 19 to 21, and a Pro Zone that hosts the official press conferences and meetings between players and fans.

For viewers at home, the publisher names two tools. Shotcall is an extension of the Twitch broadcast, available on desktop, in which viewers predict moments of a match as it is played. The prediction game on series results, called Pick'Ems, opened for the Swiss stage on May 27 and locks on June 6 at 8:00 AM Pacific time, when the stage begins. Entries for the playoffs open on June 10 and lock on June 12 at the same hour. Viewers of the live broadcast can also earn in-game items, among them a special title.

In Riot's presentation of the season, the Stage 2 playoffs are the last chance to qualify for Champions Shanghai. The first series at the Copper Box Arena begins on June 6.

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