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Valorant Americas: The VCT League Explained

1 min read

Valorant cover image

Twelve partnered teams, a season split into stages, and four routes to Champions. Here is how the Americas league is actually structured.

Valorant Americas is the VCT's franchised league for North and South America, run out of the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles and feeding directly into Champions at the end of each season.

Who plays in it

Twelve partnered teams hold permanent slots: G2 Esports, Leviatán, NRG, 100 Thieves, KRÜ Esports, MIBR, FURIA, LOUD, Sentinels, Cloud9, Evil Geniuses and ENVY, who came up through Challengers Ascension in place of 2Game Esports.

How the 2026 season is shaped

  • Kickoff opens the year and decides who travels to the first international event.
  • Stage 1 runs the twelve league teams.
  • Stage 2 widens to sixteen, with four Challengers sides entering through Play-Ins.

Getting to Champions

Americas sends four teams to Champions 2026 in Shanghai. Two come from the Stage 2 playoff — winner and runner-up — and two from the Championship Points table built up across the whole year. That is why an early stumble in Kickoff still costs a team in September.

Stage 2's finals weekend moves out of Los Angeles to the Suhai Music Hall in São Paulo, the last one of the season before Shanghai.