VCT 2027: eight partner teams in every twelve-team Kickoff

The 2027 season of top-level Valorant now has a starting grid. In an article published on Thursday, June 18, 2026, Riot Games, the game's publisher, said that the opening tournament of each territory will have twelve teams, and that in three of the four territories eight of them will be partner teams and four will come from Open Qualifiers.

The text, signed by the Valorant Esports Staff, is the second chapter of a redesign announced on April 8. That first article said the Valorant Champions Tour, the game's worldwide circuit known as the VCT, would drop its long league season in 2027 for a calendar of tournaments. It gave the principle. The June article gives the first mechanics: who starts where, who can fall out, what happens to a team that changes players, and how much an outside team is paid for getting in.

It appeared while the circuit was in London. Masters London, the second global event of 2026, runs at the Copper Box Arena until June 21, with its finals weekend starting on June 19, according to the event's ticket announcement.

What April said and what June adds

The April 8 article set the frame. Regular league play is replaced by VCT Cups, two per territory each year and eight in total. The season still opens with Kickoff, a tournament with its own format, and the Cups qualify teams for the Masters, the international events of the season, and for Champions, the world championship. Riot counted more than 20 tournaments a year in more than 16 cities, and opened applications for a new two-year partnership cycle.

A partner team is an organization that holds an agreement with Riot instead of a place won on the server. An open team, in the vocabulary of the June article, is everyone else: a team that reaches an event through qualifiers that any team may enter.

In April, Riot did not say how many partner places there would be. June answers for the start of the season: eight partner teams in each Kickoff. "Eight partner teams gives us enough room to bring at least four open teams into every major event," the article says.

It adds four other things. Partners are not guaranteed a place in every Cup. Teams that finish low drop into a qualifying layer. A roster keeps its standing if most of its players stay. And open teams receive fixed sums for each event they reach.

Twelve teams at each Kickoff

The four territories of the VCT are the Americas, the Pacific, EMEA, which covers Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and China, which Riot lists as VCT CN. Each holds its own Kickoff, and each Kickoff has twelve teams in 2027.

Added up, the four Kickoffs hold 48 teams: 32 partners, 2 visitor teams and 14 teams from Open Qualifiers.

The size of the field does not change. Riot's presentation of the 2026 season, published on December 2, 2025, already put twelve teams in each Kickoff. What changes is the mix. In the Americas, ten of the twelve teams of the 2026 Kickoff were partner teams and two had come up through Ascension, the promotion tournament of the previous system, according to the roster list Sheep Esports published on January 6, 2026. In 2027 that league starts with eight partners and four teams that qualified in the open.

Two territories carry rules of their own. In China, the league uses what Riot calls a visitor team model, which provides a path of promotion and relegation. Two visitor teams play the Kickoff alongside the eight partners and two Open Qualifier teams, and both partner and visitor teams have direct entry to the Kickoff and to the first two Cups.

In the Pacific, a Last Chance Qualifier is reserved for the top teams of South Asia and Oceania, which play it for places in the Kickoff and in the Cups.

No guaranteed place after Kickoff

The title of Riot's article announces no guaranteed paths, and the rule behind it concerns the partners. A partner team enters the Kickoff directly. It is not automatically qualified for every Cup after that: its place depends on how it keeps performing.

The top three teams of each territory's Kickoff qualify for the Masters. From there, the article describes a system that sorts teams by their latest results.

The article names two levels of qualifying. The Open Playoffs receive the teams that come down from a Cup or a Masters. The start of the Open Qualifiers is the entry point for teams with no previous results and for those that did badly at the previous Opens.

Riot does not say in this article how many places each Cup holds, how many teams a Cup sends down, or where the line between the top positions and the rest is drawn. The April article had given the dates of only one part of the route: the qualifiers for Kickoff are held in the last quarter of the previous year, after Champions.

Fixed payments for teams outside the partnership

The part of the article that carries figures is the one about money. An open team that qualifies for an event receives a fixed payment, set by the level of the event.

The scale matches a sentence of the April article, which said the cash attached to each competition roughly doubles from the Cups to the Masters, and roughly doubles again from the Masters to Champions. The payments come on top of results: open teams remain eligible for the prize pools, which Riot put in April at more than US$6 million a year across the circuit.

A worked example shows the order of magnitude. Take an open team that qualifies for its Kickoff and for both Cups of its territory, and reaches no global event. It collects three payments of US$100,000, or US$300,000 for the season, before prize money. The example assumes nothing about results; it only counts the three entries.

The figure can be set beside the one Riot uses in 2026. This season, a team from Challengers, the circuit played below the international leagues, that qualifies for the Stage 2 Playoffs of its league is granted a cash stipend of US$75,000 for travel, visas and attendance, according to the December 2025 presentation. That stipend is paid once, for one stage. The 2027 payment is due at each event reached.

One more sum concerns Game Changers, the separate circuit Riot runs. A non-partner team that qualifies for the Game Changers Championship receives an additional US$100,000.

Three players out of five keep a team's place

A system built on qualification has to say what a team is. Riot's answer fits in one line of the article: "If a team keeps at least three out of five players, it keeps its points and progress."

The rule answers a practical question of an open system. Points and progress are earned by five players on a server, and the article ties that record to a majority of them: three stay, the record stays.

The same passage says that open teams and teams led by creators, the streamers and video makers of the game's community, can compete and qualify like any other team.

New rules for community tournaments

Riot published a second text the same day: an update of its Community Competition Guidelines, the rules under which organizers outside Riot may run Valorant tournaments. The publisher presents it as part of the move to 2027.

The update replaces the former tiers of licenses with a single community competition license, inside one framework for all supported regions. It removes the fixed caps on entry fees, sponsorship revenue, prize pools and spectator ticketing, and lifts the limits on how long an event may last. Events may be online or in a venue, open or by invitation.

Some limits stay. A sponsor may be credited as a presenting or supporting partner, but its name may not be part of the name of the competition. Organizers may not use official esports branding such as Masters or Champions, or present their event as an official Riot competition. A tournament may be streamed on any online platform, with paid access if the organizer wishes, but not on linear television. A list of sponsor categories is excluded, among them gambling operators, fantasy esports operators, tobacco and alcohol.

Organizers are asked to declare their event through a form, and in most cases do not need to wait for an answer from Riot before running it. Professional teams, media platforms and brands that are not established tournament organizers fall outside the community license and must deal with Riot directly.

The link with the circuit was drawn in April, when Riot named community tournaments, partner events, collegiate events and Premier, the game's built-in team competition, as possible entry points to the Open Qualifiers. The guidelines page itself does not describe how a community event feeds into them.

What the article leaves open

The June article carries no calendar. It gives no date for a Kickoff, a Cup or a qualifier, and no host city, although it repeats that the Cups will bring more live events to more cities.

It does not name the eight partner teams of any territory. Applications for the partnership have been open since April 8, and Riot has not published a closing date in either article.

The format of a Cup, the number of teams it holds and the way Championship Points, the season-long points that lead to Champions, are awarded in 2027 are not described either. In April, the publisher promised the regional calendars, the allocation of slots and the event locations closer to Champions, which is played in Shanghai this year.

Until then the 2026 season runs under its own rules. After London, the four leagues play Stage 2. Its playoffs take in four Challengers teams per territory, which can reach Champions directly for the first time, according to the December 2025 presentation.

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