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The final four of Valorant Champions 2026 is set. Team Vitality will meet LOUD in the upper-bracket final on Friday, October 16, while 100 Thieves and G2 Esports play on in the lower bracket the same day, after the last two of the eight playoff teams fell on Sunday, October 11, according to Sheep Esports' coverage of the playoffs.
The Sunday round ended two of the campaigns that carried the event's biggest names. 100 Thieves swept the defending world champions NRG 2-0, and G2 beat T1 2-1 in the bracket's other lower-bracket quarterfinal, sending both eliminated teams home tied for 5th-6th place. What remains is a final four of three teams from the Americas circuit and one from EMEA, with no representative of the Pacific league or of the host region left in the event.
Bracket results from the tournament's published records and Sheep Esports; prize pool from the event's published distribution.
How the last eight fell
Eight teams reached the playoffs from the group stage, two from each of the four groups, with the winners' matches deciding the first places and decider matches the second. The groups themselves ran in a double-elimination format from September 24 to October 4, with rest days splitting the rounds, and the last two playoff seats went through those deciders: T1 beat FUT Esports 2-0 for Group A's second place, and LOUD beat Global Esports by the same score for Group B's. The quarterfinals ran on October 7 and 8 and split cleanly by region. NRG beat T1 2-0 and LOUD swept Paper Rex by the same score on the first day. On the second, G2 beat 100 Thieves 2-0, taking the opening map 13-5 behind Nathan "leaf" Orf's 19 kills and closing Ascent 13-11, while Vitality survived the toughest series of the round against Nongshim RedForce: Vitality took Split 13-6, Nongshim answered 13-4 on Abyss, and Haven went to overtime, where Elias "Jamppi" Olkkonen won a one-against-one clutch that put Vitality on match point before the team closed the map and the series, according to Esports Insider's report from October 9.
Related readESL Pro League Season 24: Team Vitality champions in KatowiceThe lower bracket's first round followed on October 9, and it was the closest round of the playoffs: both of its series went three maps, with T1 eliminating Paper Rex 2-1 and 100 Thieves doing the same to Nongshim. Two storylines ran underneath those scores. 100 Thieves arrived having won the Esports World Cup and a regional title this season, according to Esports Insider's earlier coverage, and had beaten G2 in the Americas league's second stage; the quarterfinal result reversed that order.
The upper-bracket semifinals on October 10 sent LOUD and Vitality directly to the upper final: the bracket records show LOUD beating NRG 2-1 in three maps, and Vitality sweeping G2 2-0. That left the two October 11 matches that set the final four, both reported by Sheep Esports.
The champions run out of rounds
NRG arrived in Shanghai as the defending world champions, and the defense looked intact through the quarterfinals: a 2-0 win over T1, earned without dropping a map. The semifinal flipped the series shape, with LOUD taking it 2-1 after dropping the first map, and the lower bracket offered no second recovery. 100 Thieves swept the champions 2-0 to end the title defense.
The exit places NRG and T1 both at 5th-6th, worth US$85,000 each from the event's published distribution. T1's run had recovered from a quarterfinal sweep by NRG and included the elimination of Paper Rex before G2 ended it in the lower bracket. The Pacific league's last playoff representation went home with that loss: T1's roster, built around the veterans BuZz and stax, had entered the playoffs as the league's second seed on championship points. The two twice-beaten teams are out before the final weekend, which leaves the title to a team that will have lost at most one series in Shanghai. The upper final's loser keeps its own second life: the October 16 defeat would be its first, and the lower-bracket final the next day would decide whether the grand final is a rematch or a fresh pairing.
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The host region's tournament ended without a single series victory. China's four representatives, JD Gaming, EDward Gaming, TYLOO and XLG Esports, all went out in the group stage in 13th-16th place, US$20,000 each, according to the event's published prize table. The Pacific league fared little better: TYLOO had come closest of the Chinese four to a win, taking a map off Team Liquid in the groups before the decider went the other way, and Global Esports left in 9th-12th place with FUT Esports, Team Liquid and Karmine Corp, while Paper Rex and Nongshim RedForce fell in the lower bracket's first round to finish 7th-8th.
The group stage had already sketched the shape of the knockout rounds. All four of the Americas' representatives advanced to the playoffs, the group stage's clearest story in the published results, while EMEA placed only Vitality and the host region placed none. The audience figures carried their own note: Esports Charts' October 6 release counted a higher peak than last year's group stage with about 11.5% fewer hours watched, so more people watched the decisive moments and fewer stayed for the full run.
The event runs from September 24 to October 18 in Shanghai, with the group stage and early playoff rounds at the Jing'an Sports Center and the top four and grand final at the Mercedes-Benz Arena, one of the city's largest indoor venues. The final four's composition makes the last week a regional statement: every remaining team plays in either the Americas league or Europe's, and the two regions that filled the other half of the bracket will watch the rest of the tournament from home.
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The playoff field was built with structure in mind. The sixteen qualifiers were drawn only after the Americas league's second stage had ended, with the draw held live in São Paulo, and the seeding pools separated the teams that qualified through stage results from the ones that came through championship points, so no group held two teams from the same pool. Vitality and LOUD know each other well by now: the group stage's winners' match between them ended 2-0 to Vitality on September 30, and the playoff bracket has delivered the rematch at the last stage before the final. The published schedule leaves five days between the October 11 round and the next matches.
| Date | Round | Matchup | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 16 | Upper-bracket final | Vitality vs LOUD | Best-of-three |
| Oct 16 | Lower-bracket semifinal | 100 Thieves vs G2 | Best-of-three |
| Oct 17 | Lower-bracket final | To be decided | Best-of-five |
| Oct 18 | Grand final | To be decided | Best-of-five |
Schedule from the tournament's published bracket.
The bracket is a double-elimination format, which gives each of the eight playoff teams two lives: a loss in the upper bracket drops a team into the lower bracket, where a second loss eliminates it. Vitality and LOUD hold the advantage that comes with never having lost, but the October 16 loser is not out; that team drops into the lower-bracket final on October 17, where the 100 Thieves-G2 winner will already be waiting after playing the semifinal earlier the same day.
Every remaining match matters more from here
The quarterfinals and semifinals were all best-of-three. From the lower-bracket final on October 17 through the grand final on October 18, every series is best-of-five, so no remaining team can be eliminated or crowned on a single close map.
What the winner takes
The event distributes US$2,250,000, with US$1,000,000 to the champion, US$400,000 to the runner-up, US$250,000 to third place and US$130,000 to fourth, according to the published prize table. The payouts below that line are already fixed by the results: US$85,000 to NRG and T1, US$30,000 to each of the four teams out in 9th-12th, and US$20,000 to each of the four that never won a series in China. The gap in that table says something about the format: fourth place earns six and a half times what a 13th-16th finish pays.
For the two lower-bracket survivors, the arithmetic of the week is unforgiving: 100 Thieves and G2 must win three consecutive series, two of them best-of-five, to take the title, while Vitality and LOUD can reach the grand final by winning one. The upper final's loser gets a day of rest before the lower-bracket final; the winner gets two days off and a place in the last match of the season, played on October 18 at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. The prize beyond the money is the season's last word: whoever lifts the trophy there ends the year as Valorant's world champion, a title no other event in the game awards.
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