Riot opens applications for a new two-year VCT partnership cycle

Organizations that want a guaranteed seat in top-level Valorant have a new form to fill in. On April 8, 2026, Riot Games, the game's publisher, said on its Valorant esports site that a new two-year partnership cycle will begin with the 2027 season, and that applications for prospective teams opened the same day.

The announcement sits inside a wider redesign of the Valorant Champions Tour, the game's worldwide professional circuit, usually shortened to VCT. For an organization, the useful part is narrow and concrete: what Riot will judge an applicant on, and what a selected team receives in return.

Riot's article answers both questions with two short lists. It leaves several others open, among them how many partner places exist and how much a place is worth.

Riot Games, article by the Valorant Esports Staff published on April 8, 2026.

What Riot announced on April 8

A partner team, in the VCT's vocabulary, is an organization that holds an agreement with Riot rather than a place won in a qualifier. The publisher's article says the next set of those agreements will run for two years, starting with the 2027 season.

Applications opened on the day of publication. Riot gives no closing date in the article, and it names one channel for a specific group: established teams that are not in the program today are told to contact the Riot esports team of their region.

The article is signed by the Valorant Esports Staff. It describes the 2027 circuit through three principles. Every match should carry weight, the path to global events should be open, and live events should visit more locations.

The partnership is the part of that plan that keeps some stability for organizations. The rest of the text is about opening the circuit up.

Five criteria for an applicant

Riot lists five things it will weigh when it evaluates an organization. None of them comes with a threshold, a score or a weighting in the article.

The first is a commitment to growing the Valorant community. The second is what Riot calls community resonance, across fandom and content: in plain terms, whether people follow the team and watch what it publishes.

The third is business sustainability and responsible operations, which concerns the health of the company behind the team. The fourth is operational excellence and established infrastructure, meaning the organization can already run a professional team and does not need to build one from nothing.

The fifth is competitive success and performance development. Results count, and so does the ability to bring players on.

Only one of the five is about winning. The other four describe an audience, a company and an operation. An organization with a strong roster and a fragile business is measured on both, and so is a popular brand whose team has yet to win anything of note.

What a partner team receives

The second list is the return. Riot names four benefits, each in a line or two.

The base payment is the only one of the four that the article calls guaranteed. Partner teams receive it each year, the text says, without a figure.

The performance bonus is tied to partnership goals. The article does not define it by match results, although competitive success is one of the five criteria used to choose partners in the first place.

A team capsule is a bundle of in-game items in a team's colors that players buy inside the game. Riot's article of January 6, 2026, on the capsules of the current season described one: an updated skin for the Classic, a player card, a team spray and a team gun buddy. It was priced at 2,320 VP, the unit the game's store prices are given in, or 1,650 VP for a player who already owned that team's capsule from 2024 or 2025.

Direct seeding is the competitive side of the deal. In a circuit where places are won in qualifiers, a partner team starts further along the bracket and skips the opening rounds.

The money around the slot

The April 8 article gives no amount for any of the four benefits. It does give three figures for the circuit as a whole.

Riot says it shared more than US$86 million from digital goods with teams in the VCT last year. Digital goods are the items sold inside the game, the team capsules among them. The article does not split that sum between teams. In its January article on the 2026 capsules, the publisher had put the total it shared with VCT teams in 2025 at US$100 million.

Prize pools add up to more than US$6 million a year, according to the April article, and travel to global events is fully funded.

Each competition also carries a cash amount that grows with the size of the event. Riot says it roughly doubles from the Cups to the Masters, and roughly doubles again from the Masters to Champions. Cups are the new regional tournaments of the 2027 format, Masters are the international events held during the season, and Champions is the world championship that ends it.

A portion of the funds will go each year to Game Changers, a separate circuit run by Riot. The mechanics are to be shared later in 2026.

How the circuit worked until now

The value of a partner slot depends on what the other teams can reach, and that part has moved twice in two seasons.

Until the end of 2025, the route into the international leagues for a team outside the partnership ran through Ascension, a promotion tournament held in each territory. Riot's schedule for 2025 listed four of them between October 11 and October 26, for China, the Pacific, the Americas and EMEA, the region covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The April article sums up the cost of that route in one line: non-partnered teams had to compete for a whole season for a single team to be promoted.

For 2026, the publisher's season guide of December 2, 2025, said Ascension was no longer part of the system. It named ENVY, PCIFIC, ULF and SLT Seongnam as the newly ascended teams of the season, with Nongshim Redforce and Dragon Ranger Gaming returning after qualifying again. In its place came a "Path to Champions": teams from Challengers, the circuit played outside the international leagues, play for places in the Stage 2 Playoffs of their league and meet partnered teams there for a place at Champions. Each league takes four of them, Riot had said on October 3, 2025, and the December guide set a US$75,000 cash stipend for qualified teams to help with travel, visas and attendance.

That October article already said the VCT was preparing to move into its next phase in 2027. The April 8 text is the first to describe it.

The December guide put twelve teams in Kickoff, the tournament that opens the season in each of the four international leagues. VCT Americas begins its Stage 1 on April 10, two days after the announcement, with twelve teams playing for places at Masters London.

What changes for teams without a slot

From 2027, Riot writes, the route to the Masters and to Champions starts with Open Qualifiers that any team in the world can enter. "Starting in 2027, all teams will compete in a unified system and single tier of competition," the article says.

The paths will differ from one region to the next. Riot mentions community tournaments, partner events, collegiate events and Premier, the game's built-in team competition, as possible entry points, with details to follow later in the year. Teams outside the partnership get several chances a year, where they used to get one.

Regular league play is replaced by VCT Cups: two per territory each year, eight in total. They are played on LAN, meaning with the teams in the same venue, in a mix of Riot studios and other venues, and each ends with a finals weekend in front of fans. The Cups qualify teams directly for the Masters and for Champions.

Kickoff stays a tournament with its own format. Any team can enter it, through qualifiers held in the last quarter of the previous year, after Champions.

The line that matters most to an applicant comes in the passage on money. The best non-partner teams can collect championship points and competitive payouts all season, and in what Riot calls extraordinary cases could earn more than the partner teams at the bottom of the ranking.

In all, the publisher counts more than 20 tournaments a year, in more than 16 cities.

What Riot has still to publish

Several pieces are announced for later. Riot says the details of open qualification and of the Game Changers funding will come later in 2026.

Regional calendars, the allocation of slots, further Game Changers details and the event locations are promised closer to Champions. The 2026 edition of that tournament will be played in Shanghai.

Until then, an organization preparing a file has two lists to work from: five criteria on one side, four benefits on the other, and the Riot esports team of its region as the point of contact. The season that decides the last results under the current system is under way, and the Stage 1 that starts on April 10 in the Americas sends teams to Masters London.

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