Nongshim RedForce Sweep Paper Rex to Win Valorant Masters Santiago

Nongshim RedForce swept Paper Rex 3-0 in the grand final of Valorant Masters Santiago 2026 on March 15 at Espacio Riesco in Santiago, Chile, becoming the first team promoted into the VCT Pacific League through Ascension to win an international trophy. The South Korean organization won every map of its bracket run without dropping a single series, closing the tournament as it had opened it: unbeaten.

Lee "Dambi" Hyuk-kyu was named Finals MVP in his first international appearance, while Kim "Xross" Dong-wook posted the highest rating of the grand final at 1.52 and 280 ACS across the sweep. The result also extended Paper Rex's pattern of falling short on the biggest international stages, with the Singaporean roster losing yet another grand final despite entering the event as a favorite and the reigning Masters Toronto 2025 champion.

Results reported by a Valorant esports outlet, Espacio Riesco, Santiago, March 15, 2026.

A sweep across three different maps

Nongshim RedForce won Corrode 13-11, Split 13-4 and Abyss 13-3 to close out the series in straight maps, with each map showing a wider margin than the one before it as the South Korean roster's control over the series grew. The best-of-five grand final never reached a fourth map, a result that matched the rest of Nongshim's unbeaten run through the tournament's upper bracket.

A promotion secured only months earlier

Nongshim RedForce's place in the 2026 VCT Pacific League, the top-flight circuit that fed into Santiago, was secured only months before the tournament, when the team beat BOOM Esports 3-1 in the decisive final-day match of VCT Ascension Pacific 2025. That win, which the tournament's own coverage described as Nongshim proving "the stronger side when it mattered most," sent BOOM down to Tier 2 Valorant and gave Nongshim the last of the league's promotion spots alongside SLT Seongnam, who was promoted in the same cycle.

Dambi's double MVP run

Lee "Dambi" Hyuk-kyu's Finals MVP award at Santiago came after he had already won Finals MVP at the Ascension promotion match against BOOM Esports months earlier, giving the player back-to-back MVP honors across the two biggest matches of Nongshim's rise from Tier 2 to an international title. Kim "Francis" Mu-bin, who had been named Player of the Tournament across the full Ascension Pacific 2025 season, rounded out a core of South Korean talent that the organization built its promotion and title run around within the same year.

A mixed debut season turned unbeaten run

Nongshim's first season in competitive Valorant carried mixed results, with the team needing a strong finish, including wins over Team Secret and Gen.G Esports, just to force the decisive Ascension match against BOOM. That inconsistent build-up made the team's run through Masters Santiago, upper bracket wins without a dropped series followed by a clean sweep in the final, a sharp turnaround from the uneven form that had defined its debut campaign only months earlier.

The first all-Pacific international final

Santiago's grand final marked the first time two teams from the same region, VCT Pacific, had met in the championship match of an international Valorant event, with Nongshim RedForce and Paper Rex both representing the region that had also produced four straight Masters champions before Leviatán ended that run later in the year. The all-Pacific final underlined just how deep the region's talent pool had become, even as it meant one of the two Pacific representatives was guaranteed to leave Santiago without the trophy regardless of how the series went.

Beating the reigning Valorant Champions along the way

Nongshim RedForce's unbeaten run through the upper bracket included a win over NRG, the reigning Valorant Champions 2025 winners, who had themselves beaten Paper Rex 2-0 to reach the upper bracket final against Nongshim. Eliminating the defending world champion before the grand final was even played gave Nongshim's title an extra layer of weight, since the South Korean roster had already beaten one of the sport's most decorated active teams on its way to beating Paper Rex for the trophy itself.

Ivy's milestone moment

Rb "Ivy" recorded his first international ace during Nongshim's run through the tournament, a personal milestone inside the team's broader title run that the tournament's own coverage singled out alongside Dambi's MVP performance. For a roster making its first appearance on the international stage as a unit, individual milestones like Ivy's ace added texture to a result that was, on the scoreboard alone, as dominant a tournament run as Valorant's circuit had produced in some time.

Paper Rex's familiar final-stage disappointment

Paper Rex entered Santiago as the reigning Masters Toronto 2025 champion and a clear favorite, with d4v41 posting the highest individual rating of the grand final at 0.97 and 204 ACS even in a losing effort. The straight-maps defeat extended a pattern the roster's own recent history had already shown, reaching major international stages only to fall short at the final hurdle, a frustration that Santiago's result did nothing to end for a team long regarded as one of the region's most talented.

A first-ever meeting decided at the biggest stage

Santiago's grand final marked the first competitive meeting between Nongshim RedForce and Paper Rex, meaning neither side had any head-to-head history to draw on heading into the series. That the two teams' first meeting came in a Masters grand final, rather than in an earlier qualifier or regular-season match, gave the result an added significance: whichever way the series went, it was going to define the two teams' relationship for the rest of the season.

A quieter broadcast than past Masters

The grand final's broadcast peaked at roughly 883,000 concurrent viewers, below the 1.3 million peak for Masters Bangkok and the 1.1 million peak for Masters Toronto the previous year, with average viewership across the event settling around 409,000. The dip came even as the final itself delivered a clean, decisive result, suggesting the smaller audience reflected the tournament's broader shape, an all-Pacific final without a North American or European finalist to drive interest in those regions, rather than any lack of quality in the matches themselves.

What the win means for Nongshim and Korean Valorant

Nongshim RedForce's title gives South Korea's Pacific region a result to point to after a Masters Toronto 2025 cycle that had gone to a different roster from the region, with Nongshim's win coming from a team that had not even secured its top-flight place until the back end of 2025. The result also reinforces Ascension's role as a genuine pathway to the top of the sport, rather than a consolation route for teams that fall short of direct qualification, with Nongshim's run from relegation threat to international champion covering less than six months from start to finish.

A quiet tournament for Europe and China

EMEA's representatives struggled through Santiago, with Team Liquid eliminated at the Swiss stage and Gentle Mates reaching the Playoffs without winning a single series along the way, while China's representatives fared little better: Xi Lai Gaming lost to both NRG and G2 Esports, and EDward Gaming, the reigning 2024 world champion, lost to Gentle Mates and T1 in the same stretch. That left the tournament's latter rounds as effectively a contest between the Americas and Pacific regions, setting up the all-Pacific final that Nongshim and Paper Rex ultimately played.

What comes next

The VCT 2026 calendar continues from Santiago toward the rest of the season's regional play, with Nongshim RedForce carrying a Masters title and the confidence of an unbeaten run into the stretch ahead. Paper Rex's latest final-stage loss leaves the Singaporean organization still searching for the signature title its talent level has long promised, while BOOM Esports begins life in Tier 2 Valorant after the relegation that opened the door to Nongshim's promotion in the first place.

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