Valorant community tournament rules: what creator events may do

A streamer who invites viewers to a weekend bracket, a creator who gathers friends from the scene for a charity show match, a local group that rents a room for a LAN: none of them is running an official Valorant competition, yet all of them are using Riot Games' game, its name and its audience. What they may charge, which sponsors they may sign, where they may broadcast and what the publisher keeps in return is set by one text, Riot's Valorant Community Competition Guidelines.

Riot rewrote that text on June 18, 2026, in a post signed by its Valorant esports staff. The publisher tied the update to the next era of the Valorant Champions Tour, its top-level circuit, in 2027, and said its goal was to make organizing events easier, with most organizers no longer needing to wait for a Riot approval.

This guide reads the rules from the side of the people who run creator and community events. It covers what changed, who the guidelines cover and who needs a separate license, the visibility form, money and sponsors, streaming, naming and branding, the license and the rights Riot keeps, and how creator teams and community events fit into the 2027 circuit as Riot has described it so far.

Riot Games, Valorant Community Competition Guidelines, published June 18, 2026.

What changed on June 18

Riot's post opens by calling tournament organizers a critical part of the Valorant ecosystem. It then lists what the update does, in seven points.

The direction is clear from the list: fewer categories of event to sort into, fewer numbers to stay under, and more information flowing back to Riot. Riot also says the page will serve as a permanent home for organizer resources, including asset kits, event tools and reporting forms, so the text is meant to be the reference rather than one announcement among others.

Who the guidelines cover

The guidelines are written for tournament organizers, and they are broad about what an event can be. Riot says competitions can be of nearly any scale, from local events to large multi-day tournaments, online and offline formats are both allowed, and events may be open to all or by invitation. The removal of the duration limit means a one-evening show match and a league that runs for weeks sit under the same text.

The page does not single out creators as a group. It speaks to organizers in general, and a creator who hosts a bracket is, under its terms, an organizer like any other. Whether a creator's event is covered by the community license therefore depends on the categories the page sets out, not on the size of the audience.

Riot also sets out the spirit it expects. Organizers are asked to act in good faith and to uphold the spirit of the Valorant community, and the page lists three things not to do: make misleading promises to players, teams or partners; mishandle prize money or sponsorship commitments; and engage in abusive, exclusionary, fraudulent or harmful behavior. It adds that organizers are solely responsible for making sure their events comply with all applicable laws, regulations and third-party obligations.

That last sentence matters for creators who take entry fees or run prize pools. The guidelines remove Riot's own caps, but they do not replace the law of the country where the event takes place: that remains the organizer's responsibility.

The text also leaves several practical points to the organizer. It sets no player eligibility rules of its own, so who may enter a bracket is for the organizer to define. Format and size are the organizer's choice, within the limits that follow.

Who needs a separate license

Some organizations are outside the community license altogether. Riot names four groups: government entities, professional Valorant teams and players under separate agreements, streaming, broadcast and media platforms, and corporate brands that are not established tournament organizers. Events organized on behalf of or at the direction of any of them are excluded too, regardless of who is listed as the organizer.

Government entities have an exception. Schools, libraries, local or municipal government organizations and after-school programs may run events under the community license.

For creator events, two of these lines deserve attention. The exclusion of professional teams and players concerns who runs an event: the page sets no rule on who may play in one. And the clause on events run on behalf of an excluded group closes the obvious route around the rules. A brand that is not a tournament organizer cannot put a creator's name on the poster and run the event under the community license, since Riot looks at who directs the event, not at who is listed.

Excluded organizations are told to work with Riot directly on a separate license agreement.

The visibility form

The update adds a visibility form. Organizers are asked to tell Riot about their events through it, and Riot says that in most cases an organizer does not need to wait for a response from Riot before running the event.

The page explains the purpose rather than the fields. Riot says it is trying to get a better understanding of where and when events take place, and that the form helps it keep visibility into the competitive ecosystem, identify bad actors and, potentially, promote standout events.

For a creator, the sequence before an event is short.

The form is a notice, not a permit. It does not change what the rest of the guidelines allow or forbid, and it does not limit Riot's right, described below, to step in.

Entry fees, prize pools and tickets

The money rules lost their limits. Entry fees and sponsorship agreements are allowed, and Riot's page states the principle in one line: "There are no fixed caps on entry fees, sponsorship revenue, prize pools, or spectator ticketing under these guidelines."

The cap-free rule has one request attached. Riot asks organizers to act reasonably and to provide fair value to players, fans and partners taking part in the event. The page sets no number behind that request, so it is a standard of conduct rather than a ceiling, and it sits next to the conduct rules on misleading promises and on handling prize money.

In practice, the update means a creator event is no longer sorted by size of prize pool. A small bracket with a symbolic prize and a large invitational with a sizable pool are under the same license, as long as the organizer is covered and the other rules are kept.

Sponsors a community event cannot sign

The freedom on sponsorship stops at a list of restricted categories. According to the guidelines, a community competition may not take sponsorship from:

• gambling, sportsbooks and casinos;
• fantasy esports operators, daily fantasy included;
• prescription and non-over-the-counter drugs, CBD included;
• firearms, ammunition, weapons and related accessories;
• pornography or adult content platforms;
• tobacco products or paraphernalia;
• regulated alcohol and intoxicants;
• counterfeit or illegal virtual item marketplaces, and sellers that break Riot's terms of service;
• cryptocurrencies, NFTs and unregulated financial instruments;
• political campaigns and political action committees;
• charities tied to partisan political or religious advocacy, or that lack established reputability.

A last line covers sponsor content itself: anything unlawful, threatening, obscene, harassing, discriminatory or otherwise harmful to Riot, Valorant or the community is ruled out whatever the sponsor's category.

The list applies to the sponsors of the competition. A creator's own channel deals are not the subject of the guidelines.

Streaming yes, television no

The broadcast rule is simple and generous online. Organizers are free to stream their event on the platform of their choice, and they may charge spectator fees or put access to the stream behind a gate.

There is one firm limit, stated in the guidelines in plain words: an organizer may not broadcast the tournament on linear television, meaning traditional broadcast TV.

The two rules work together. A creator can stream a bracket on their own channel, or on any platform, with the paid or gated access they choose. What the community license does not cover is the platform itself becoming the organizer, or the event moving onto a traditional television channel.

The same freedom applies in a room. A creator who runs an in-person LAN may sell tickets to spectators, and the guidelines set no cap on spectator ticketing, just as they set none on the paid stream of the same event. The fair-value request applies to fans as much as to players.

Names, logos and sponsors in the title

The naming rules are relaxed but not removed. Organizers may not use Riot Games logos or Riot's official esports branding, and the page names "Masters" and "Champions" as examples. An event may not be presented as an official Riot competition.

Riot may require a descriptor that makes the status clear, such as "community tournament" or "community competition". Sponsors may be credited as presenting or supporting partners, but the guidelines state that a sponsor may not be part of the name of the competition itself. Riot may add further restrictions on its assets for events that have brand sponsors.

Valorant's own assets are open to organizers for one purpose: promoting the competition, limited to what is reasonably necessary to market it. They may not be used to promote any brand, product or service, sponsors included, and Riot keeps the final say on their use, with organizers bound to follow its directions, including an instruction to stop.

Put together, a creator can call an event after the creator, the community or the city, credit a sponsor as presenting partner on the broadcast, and use game art on the poster. What the event cannot carry is the sponsor in its title, a Masters or Champions name, a Riot logo or any suggestion that Riot is behind it.

The license and what Riot keeps

Everything above is granted on conditions. Riot gives organizers a license that the guidelines describe as personal, non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable, revocable and limited, on condition that they follow the guidelines, Riot's legal terms for the use of its intellectual property, its Community Pact and its terms of service.

Each term of that list has a practical meaning. Personal and non-transferable means the license belongs to the organizer and cannot be handed to someone else; non-sublicensable means the organizer cannot grant it onward to a partner; non-exclusive means others can hold the same license; revocable means Riot can take it back.

The license is tied to those four texts together. Because it is granted on condition that they are followed, and because it is revocable, an organizer who breaks the Community Pact or the terms of service puts the license itself at stake, not only the event in question.

Riot keeps two rights of its own. Organizers who receive permission grant Riot the right to use tournament footage and related content for promotional purposes, on a royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable and sublicensable basis, without compensation, approval or attribution requirements. For a creator, that means clips of a community event can appear in Riot's own promotion without payment or credit.

The second right Riot keeps is the right to intervene. The guidelines state that Riot reserves the right to intervene, revoke permissions or shut down any event at its sole discretion when the event breaks the guidelines, Riot's values or its policies. Riot may also act on a competition that misreads the rules or uses its intellectual property inappropriately. The page sets out no procedure for that decision.

Community events and the 2027 Open Qualifiers

The guidelines arrived as part of a larger change. On April 8, 2026, Riot announced that the Valorant Champions Tour would move in 2027 to what it called a unified system and single tier of competition, with a new two-year partnership cycle starting with the 2027 season. The year is built around eight Cups, two per territory each year, held on LAN like the Kickoffs, and Riot counted more than 20 tournaments a year in more than 16 cities.

The central change for teams outside the partnership is entry. Riot promised Open Qualifiers available to any team across the world, and said that the paths into them could include community tournaments, partner events, collegiate events and Premier. The season-opening Kickoff, Riot added, will also be open to any team, with its qualifiers held in the fourth quarter of the previous year, after Champions.

Riot set that against the old system. In previous seasons, the April article said, teams without a partnership had to compete for a whole season for a single team to be promoted through Ascension, the promotion route Riot names in its article.

On June 18, the same day as the guidelines, Riot put numbers on the first step. The Kickoffs of the Americas, Pacific and EMEA territories will have twelve teams, eight partner teams and four from Open Qualifiers; in China the field is eight partners, two visitor teams and two Open Qualifier teams. Teams with no previous results, or that performed poorly at the previous Opens, start again at the beginning of the next Open Qualifiers.

The publisher has not described how a community event would feed into those qualifiers. What the two texts establish together is the direction: an open circuit in 2027, community tournaments named as one of its possible doors, and rules for community organizers rewritten the same day the circuit's numbers were published.

Creator-led teams in the 2027 system

Riot's June 18 article on the 2027 circuit addressed creator teams directly: "Open and creator-led teams can compete, qualify, and build toward larger events just like any other team." The same article covers how creator-led teams fit in, next to how the season is structured, how teams qualify and what financial support is available, and it says Riot updated its Community Competition Guidelines to make it easier for organizers around the world to run Valorant events.

The two statements concern two different roles. A creator-led team is a team playing in Riot's own system, and it enters the Open Qualifiers like any open team. A creator who runs an event is an organizer, and the community guidelines described above are the rules for that role. A creator can hold both: field a team in the Opens and host a community bracket, under two sets of rules.

The Valorant page states no effective date beyond its publication on June 18, 2026, and Riot has said it will keep its organizer resources there.

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