Valorant at the EWC 2026: peripherals, Paris servers and round rollbacks

Sixteen teams arrive at the Valorant tournament of the Esports World Cup 2026, and none of them will play on a computer they brought. Each player carries a keyboard, a mouse and a pair of in-ear headphones; everything else belongs to the organizer. What happens when one of those machines freezes in the middle of a round, or when the server drops all ten players at once, is written down in advance, and in a game where a round can turn on a single shot, those lines matter as much as the bracket.

The rulebook published for the event, the Esports World Cup 2026 VALORANT Rulebook, sets the tournament from July 2 to July 12, 2026. It prints no version number or date, and it hosts matches on a Paris server. It sits under the jurisdiction of the EWC Global Rulebook, which covers every game of the event, and the organizer may change it without prior notice and rule on cases it does not cover. This guide reads it for its technical side.

It covers the format the rules serve, the hardware split between organizer and players, the setup routine, the tournament server and game version, the map veto, agent select and banned tricks, the three kinds of pause, how bugs are classified and rounds rolled back, the coach's challenge, what happens after a crash, and the penalties and prize money that close the loop.

Esports World Cup 2026 VALORANT Rulebook, sections 3.1, 5.5.2 and 5.9.

The tournament the rules serve

Valorant is Riot Games' tactical shooter: two teams of five play rounds in which one side attacks a bomb site and the other defends it, and each player controls an agent, a character with a set of abilities. At the Esports World Cup, the rulebook places the 16 teams in four GSL groups. A GSL group is a small double-elimination bracket of four teams: each team gets up to three matches, two wins send it through, and two losses send it home.

The top two of each group reach an eight-team single-elimination bracket, where one defeat ends the run. Every series in the group stage, the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the third-place match is a best-of-three, the first team to win two maps. The grand final is a best-of-five.

The rulebook's schedule has the group stage from July 2 to 7, no matches on July 8, the quarterfinals on July 9 and 10, the semifinals on July 11, and the third-place match and grand final on July 12. The Esports Foundation's own schedule, published on May 27 with the announcement of Paris Expo Porte de Versailles as the venue, lists Valorant in the first week of the event, from July 9 to 12, the days of the playoffs.

The draw follows pools. Each group holds one team from Pool 1, two from Pool 2 and one from Pool 3, drawn at random with a single team per region in each group. In the playoffs, the teams that win through the upper bracket of their group are drawn against those that qualify through the lower bracket, and two teams from the same group cannot meet again before the grand final.

Every participant must be at least 18 at their first match. A roster holds five players and up to one substitute, with one or two coaches and an optional team manager, and the Esports World Cup covers travel for up to eight members.

What the organizer supplies and what players bring

Section 8.1 splits the hardware in two. The organizer provides the parts that decide performance and fairness; the players bring the parts that touch their hands and ears. The table below sets out the split as the rulebook gives it.

The ban on old keyboard connectors is written in one line: "Our machines do not support PS2-keyboards." PS/2 is an older keyboard connector, and a player who still uses one has to switch before arriving.

Approval is the rule for everything a player brings. The administration may refuse any equipment or device it judges to give an unfair competitive advantage, and it may ask for a piece of equipment to inspect it. Using more than one item of the same kind, two mice for example, also needs approval. The rulebook says nothing specific about wireless devices, so they fall under the same general approval as every other peripheral.

The rulebook makes backups the player's job. A mouse that dies during a match is replaced from the player's own spare, not from a store cupboard at the venue.

Setup time and the ready check

Before each match, section 5.3 gives players a setup period. It covers checking the quality of the equipment, connecting and calibrating peripherals, testing voice chat, adjusting in-game settings and a limited in-game warm-up. Any problem with the equipment is reported to the administration immediately, and a delay in setup may be allowed at the administration's discretion.

The period ends with a ready check. Players confirm that their setup is complete at least two minutes before the match. Once all ten have confirmed, they join the match lobby and may no longer enter a warm-up game.

The match then begins only when everyone is in. Section 5.5.5 deals with a slow client load: if a crash, a disconnect or another failure keeps a player from joining at the start, the match is paused at once until all ten players are connected. Nobody starts a map four against five because one machine took too long to load.

A tournament realm on a Paris server

Players do not compete on their own accounts. Section 5.2 provides them with Tournament Realm Accounts for use in all official matches, so every player logs in to an account issued for the event rather than the one they use at home.

Section 5.4.2 hosts every match on the tournament realm's Paris server, and the administration may change the server if it notifies the teams. The lobby itself has two settings named in section 5.4.1: Tournament mode, and Overtime: Win by Two switched on, so that a map tied at the end of regulation continues until one team is two rounds ahead.

The game version is fixed for the event. Section 5.1.1 sets the patch used for the main event at 13.00, and section 5.1.2 sets a pool of seven maps: Ascent, Breeze, Fracture, Haven, Lotus, Split and Sunset. A fixed patch means that an update to the public game cannot change an agent or a weapon between two days of play.

The tournament computers are also cut off from the outside. Section 8.3 states that internet access on tournament computers is disabled for all participants. The rulebook carries no clause on anti-cheat software. Riot's own anti-cheat, Vanguard, is changing as well: on June 24, Riot Games announced Vanguard On-Demand, an optional mode in which the Vanguard driver no longer starts with Windows but with the game, on PCs that pass a list of security checks including Secure Boot and TPM 2.0.

Seeding, the skirmish and the map veto

Which maps are played is settled by a veto, a sequence of bans and picks between the two teams. Section 5.5.1 lets the higher seed choose to be Team A or Team B. Where no seed exists, a skirmish decides the better-seeded team.

The skirmish is a short duel before the veto. Each team names one player or its head coach, who must be on that match's starting roster, and the first to win five rounds takes it. Abilities are disabled by default, officials may impose gameplay restrictions at any point, and they may fall back on a coin flip after a technical or network failure. A late arrival can cost a team its draft choice.

Section 3.2.3 says when the skirmish is used. The first round of the groups follows the initial seeding; the second uses skirmish results; in the third, the team coming from the upper bracket is the higher seed. In the quarterfinals the group winner is the higher seed, and the semifinals, the third-place match and the grand final use the skirmish again.

In a best-of-three, Team A bans a map, then Team B bans one. Team A chooses the first map and Team B its starting side; Team B chooses the second map and Team A its side. Each team then bans one more, the last of the seven maps becomes the decider, and Team A picks the side on it. The best-of-five follows the same back-and-forth over four chosen maps, with the fifth left over and its side chosen by Team B.

Agent select and what is off limits

Once agent select starts, section 5.5.2 gives every player 85 seconds, with both teams picking at the same time. A player who locks the wrong agent must say so before the timer runs out; otherwise they play the agent they chose. Between the end of picks and bans and the launch of the map, players may not quit the game, and officials may start the match in a controlled way using the last valid pick and ban process if something goes wrong.

Officials can also narrow the game. Section 5.1.3 allows them to restrict agents, weapons, skins or abilities that carry a known bug, at any time. Section 5.8.1 lists tricks that are banned outright. A Cypher camera, the surveillance device of the agent of that name, may not use map textures or geometry to become indestructible or to give a one-way view: it must be destructible and visible to both teams. Agent abilities may not exploit textures or geometry to become indestructible or unseen, or be used outside the map's boundaries when that gives useful information, with a special case for KAY/O's ZERO/POINT, which may be placed outside the boundaries. Using another agent's model as a step to boost beyond normal jumping range is also prohibited.

Section 5.8.2 lists what officials weigh when they judge an exploit: whether it is on the Esports Bug List or close to one listed, whether that list was shared in reasonable time, its effect on the round, the map and the reputation of the sport, and the player's intent, including how easily it happens by accident and whether the team reported it to the referee at once.

Three kinds of pause

The rulebook separates the pauses a team may want into three, each with its own owner and its own limits. The table sets them side by side.

Timeouts are tactical. Regulation covers the first 24 rounds of a map, and timeouts are not tied to a half. Unused ones do not carry into overtime. A request made after the first 10 seconds of the buy phase, the short period at the start of each round when players buy weapons and abilities, is queued to the next round. During a timeout, only players and coaches may talk, nobody leaves the match area, and agents cannot be moved.

The technical pause belongs to the referee. A player who has a problem stops, tells the officials and gives the reason, and the Head Referee pauses the game only if the reason is valid. A player who pauses the game on their own risks a delay-of-game sanction. Section 5.6.2.3 lists reasons that do not count: accidentally hitting a monitor's power button, minor audio adjustments and adjusting in-ear headphones. Headsets stay on during the pause, and players and coaches may not talk unless an official tells them to.

The emergency pause covers a player who cannot continue for a moment. Section 5.6.3.2 rules out minor illness, injury or disability as a reason. If the ten minutes run out and the players concerned still cannot play, the team forfeits the match unless an official decides otherwise.

Bugs and the round rollback

Section 5.7.1 defines a bug as an error, flaw or fault that gives an incorrect, unintended or unexpected result, and sorts each one into four categories through the Esports Bug List, which is shared with each patch. A Play Through bug does not significantly alter competitive integrity, and play continues. A Major bug significantly affects a player's ability to compete or alters statistics or mechanics, with no reasonable way around it. An Unknown bug is one not on the list; if it meets the Major criteria, it is treated like one. A Game Breaking bug makes the outcome of a round impossible to determine.

What officials do depends on the category and on when the bug strikes. Before any player has damaged an opponent, officials may roll back the round for a bug that affects a player's ability to compete through no fault of their own. Once damage has been dealt, they do not roll back a round outside the challenge process. A Game Breaking bug is handled at any point of the round: under section 5.7.2.3, officials then roll the round back to its start.

A rollback replays the round from its first second, as if it had not happened. The line drawn at the first damage keeps that tool for rounds still untouched by combat, where restarting takes nothing from either side.

Section 5.11.2 asks players to report any technical difficulty to the administration directly after the game ends, so that issues are recorded even when they did not stop play.

The coach's challenge

For rounds that have already turned into fights, the rulebook gives teams a review process. Only the match coach may request a challenge, and section 5.9.2 allows one per map. It targets the round just played and nothing earlier.

A challenge may be raised for a Major bug, an Unknown bug or an exploit; Play Through bugs are excluded. The timeout works as a stake. If the challenge succeeds, the team keeps both its challenge and its timeout. If it fails, the team loses the challenge and one of its remaining timeouts for the map. A team with no timeout left cannot challenge, and a request that delays the game may be sanctioned.

Section 5.9.3 strongly suggests that players record their screens so they can submit the footage if an investigation needs it.

Crashes, outages and the start-of-round crash

Section 5.10 deals with interruptions, which are not bugs in the game but failures around it. When an interruption is beyond the players' control, such as a server crash, a power outage or a denial-of-service attack, officials use the game's restore feature to bring the match back to the beginning of the most recent round.

Problems a player causes are another matter. The match is not stopped for a mistaken purchase, a player switching out of the game window or a monitor turned off. Transient interruptions, such as a brief alt-tab or a moment of packet loss, do not lead to a replay either, although officials may treat several of them in the same round as a discontinuity. If two or more players cannot finish a round for reasons beyond their control, the round is restored; an interruption after a player's agent has been eliminated does not count.

The rulebook adds that failing to play the round out to the best of a team's ability is not grounds for a restore. Officials may also award a round to a team that had undisputedly won it before the interruption.

Penalties, forfeits and the prize money

Exploits carry a scale of sanctions in section 5.8.3: a warning, a round rollback, the loss of a round, the forfeit of a map, or the forfeit of a whole match in cases such as cheating and match fixing, with fines and suspensions also possible. Officials' decisions on exploits are final and cannot be appealed.

Time is policed too. A late player receives two penalty points for every five minutes after the deadline, and a team that is not ready ten minutes after the scheduled start loses with the worst score possible and receives ten penalty points. Section 5.11.1.1 records a forfeited match at the minimum winning score, 2-0 in a best-of-three and 3-0 in a best-of-five, and every forfeited map as 13-0, with no other statistics kept. Misconduct beyond these lines is handled by the Global Rulebook.

Section 7 lists the prize money in US dollars. The winner receives US$600,000, the runner-up US$340,000, third place US$220,000 and fourth US$140,000. Each team placed fifth to eighth receives US$90,000, ninth to twelfth US$55,000 and thirteenth to sixteenth US$30,000. Across the 16 places that adds up to US$2 million, with a further US$25,000 for the most valuable player. Payment is made no earlier than five weeks after the end of the competition.

In Valorant, the rules of a LAN draw one line again and again: before the first damage, a round can start over; after it, the round belongs to the players.

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