Team Vitality Beat 100 Thieves 3-1 to Reach Valorant Champions Grand Final

Team Vitality beat 100 Thieves 3-1 in the lower bracket final of VALORANT Champions 2026 on October 17 in Shanghai, booking a spot in Sunday's grand final against LOUD. 100 Thieves opened the best-of-five with a win on Split, but Vitality took the next three maps in a row, closing out the series 13-9 on Ascent.

The result sends Vitality into their first Champions final, with a shot at the title that has eluded the roster's biggest name, Timofey "Chronicle" Khromov, through three straight international finals last year. It also ends the tournament for 100 Thieves, who finish third and collect $250,000 of the event's $2.25 million prize pool.

How the lower final went

Vitality and 100 Thieves had never met in a competitive series before this tournament, and the opening map suggested an upset was coming. 100 Thieves took Split in commanding fashion, pushing Vitality to the brink of elimination with two more losses needed to end their run. Vitality regrouped from there. 100 Thieves' American roster, built around Matthew "Cryocells" Panganiban and in-game leader Jordan "vora" Pulwer, kept the pressure on through the middle of the series, most notably on Ascent, a map 100 Thieves had leaned on throughout the playoffs. Vitality held them off in the decider, closing the map and the series 13-9.

The win keeps alive the Champions run of a Vitality roster built in the off-season around Chronicle, the Finnish-Russian star who joined from Fnatic ahead of the 2026 season specifically to chase the Champions title that had slipped away from him in three different finals the year before, at Masters Toronto, the Esports World Cup and VALORANT Champions Paris. He plays alongside Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev, Elias "Jamppi" Olkkonen, Ștefan "Sayonara" Mîtcu and Dawid "PROFEK" Święć.

A fourth international final for Chronicle

Sunday's grand final will be Chronicle's fourth appearance in a title match on VALORANT's biggest international stages in roughly a year, a run that has turned into one of the sport's more pointed individual storylines. Each of the previous three ended the same way: a final played, a trophy lost. The sequence has shadowed Vitality's entire project since the organization built its roster specifically around him, and it is part of why Saturday's win carried weight beyond the bracket position it secured. A fourth final without a title would extend a narrative that has already outlasted most teams' entire competitive cycles; a win would close it out in the same city, Shanghai, where the franchised era of VALORANT Champions Tour plays its last event before the format changes.

That subplot has also shaped how Vitality has been covered through the second half of the season. Where other rosters built around a single marquee signing are usually judged purely on results, Vitality's run has been read increasingly through Chronicle's individual ledger, and Saturday's comeback from a 0-1 deficit against 100 Thieves was framed by several outlets as much as a step toward erasing that record as it was a step toward the title itself.

Vitality's road to a second grand final chance

Vitality's path to Sunday has not been a straight line. The roster, assembled as a self-described superteam, took time to come together: Sayonara's age kept him out of EMEA Kickoff at the start of the year, and the team finished seventh-to-eighth at both the Esports World Cup and EMEA Stage 2 of the regional season, well below the level expected of its roster. Vitality reached Shanghai only on accumulated VCT Points rather than through a regional league title.

The slow start drew criticism through the middle of the year that the roster's individual talent had not translated into a cohesive team structure, criticism that followed the group through two stage finishes well short of what a roster assembled with five established internationals was expected to deliver. None of that carried into Shanghai. Vitality arrived as one of the lower-seeded EMEA representatives by regional standing, and have instead played their best VALORANT of the year when the stakes were highest, a reversal that has become its own talking point in tournament coverage heading into the final.

Once in the group stage, the team found its footing. Vitality opened with a 2-1 win over Global Esports before beating LOUD 2-0 in the Group B winners' match on September 30, a result that made Vitality the first EMEA representative to reach the playoff bracket at this Champions, according to Insider Gaming's tournament coverage. In the playoffs, Vitality beat Nongshim RedForce 2-1 in the upper quarterfinal, closing the series with a 14-12 overtime win on Haven, then swept G2 Esports 2-0 in the upper semifinal to reach Friday's upper bracket final.

That match was the rematch with LOUD, and this time the Brazilian roster came out on top, winning 2-1 after Vitality had taken the opening map. The loss dropped Vitality into Saturday's lower bracket final against 100 Thieves, with their tournament on the line. A loss would have meant finishing third; the win instead sends them into the grand final for the first time in the organization's Champions history.

100 Thieves end the tournament in third

For 100 Thieves, the run ends one step short of a second grand final in three months. The North American roster, built around Cryocells, Peter "Asuna" Mazuryk and vora, won the VALORANT Esports World Cup title in Riyadh in July, beating domestic rival NRG 3-1 after trailing deep into the deciding map, and arrived in Shanghai as one of three Americas teams to reach the semifinal stage alongside LOUD and G2.

100 Thieves' path through the lower bracket included eliminating the reigning Champions titleholder, NRG, in the second round after NRG's title defense stalled following an earlier Esports World Cup final loss to the same opponent. 100 Thieves then beat G2 Esports 2-1 in a lower bracket rematch on October 16 to set up Saturday's meeting with Vitality. The loss to Vitality leaves 100 Thieves without an international trophy since their Esports World Cup win, and with a third-place finish at the final Champions held under the current franchised format before VALORANT Champions Tour moves to a more open structure in 2027.

For a roster that entered the playoffs as one of three Americas teams given a realistic shot at the title, third place is a respectable if incomplete result. 100 Thieves leave Shanghai having beaten the tournament's reigning champion along the way, but with the same gap that has defined the Americas region's recent international record: a region capable of reaching the final four, but still without a Champions title since LOUD's debut run in 2022.

LOUD's route to a second straight final

LOUD arrive at Sunday's final off the back of their win over Vitality in Friday's upper bracket final, a result that secured their spot without needing to play again before the final itself. That two days of rest mirrors the position Karmine Corp has carved out at the League of Legends World Championship Play-In on the same weekend, and gives LOUD the same recovery advantage into the final that Vitality had hoped to secure for themselves before Friday's loss. The Brazilian organization reached the upper bracket final by advancing through the tournament's group stage and playoff rounds alongside 100 Thieves and G2 as one of three Americas teams to reach the final four, continuing a run of international consistency that has made LOUD one of the region's most reliable playoff teams across the current VCT era, even as the title that defined their 2022 debut has stayed out of reach since.

What a Champions run is worth

Saturday's result also settled two of the tournament's four remaining prize brackets. Vitality are now guaranteed at least the runner-up's $400,000 regardless of Sunday's outcome, while 100 Thieves take home the third-place prize.

Prize breakdown reported by Dot Esports, based on Riot Games' official VALORANT Champions 2026 placement payouts.

The full placement table runs from the $1 million top prize down to $20,000 for the eight teams eliminated in the group stage, with the semifinalists NRG and T1 collecting $85,000 each and Paper Rex and Nongshim RedForce taking $50,000 for their seventh-to-eighth finishes.

Sunday's result will finalize the top two lines of that table. For Vitality, the $400,000 runner-up guarantee already secured on Saturday is a floor rather than a ceiling, with the full $1 million top prize still in reach.

A rematch with the season on the line

LOUD, which won the very first VALORANT Champions in 2022, is chasing its first world title since that debut edition, while Vitality are looking to turn Chronicle's fourth straight international final into his first title.

The grand final is a best-of-five at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai's Pudong district on Sunday, October 18, closing out a tournament that began on September 24 and marks the last Champions held under VALORANT's current franchised league structure before the tour moves to an open format for 2027. Whichever side wins will have taken two of the three meetings between the teams across this Champions, a season series that has gone the distance in both of its completed matches.

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