Bookmark the official valorantesports.com schedule page right now and set phone alerts for 13:00 CET–those are the exact times every matchday starts, from 8 August play-in round through 23 August grand final at the Accor Arena in Paris.
24 teams earned their slots: EMEA sends Fnatic, Team Vitality, Giants, Karmine Corp, and Apeks; Americas counters with Sentinels, 100 Thieves, LOUD, Leviatán, and Evil Geniuses; Pacific arrives with Gen.G, DRX, Paper Rex, ZETA, and Talon; China debuts on the biggest stage through Edward Gaming, Trace, Bilibili Gaming, Dragon Ranger, and Nova. Four last-chance play-in squads–determined by the Seoul Last Stand tournament on 2–5 July–round out the bracket.
Group stage runs 8–14 August in double-elimination Bo3s, quarterfinals shift to Bo5s on 16–17 August, semifinals sell out the 12 000-seat arena on 20–21 August, and the best-of-five grand final crowns the 2026 champion on Sunday 23 August at 17:00 local time with a guaranteed $2.4 million for the winner. Print the bracket PDF, sync the .ics file to your calendar, and mute Discord–no series gets replayed and every map counts for pick-ban seeding into Champions 2027.
Match Calendar & Broadcast Details
Set three alarms: the group stage starts 14:00 CEST 2 September at Verti Music Hall, Berlin, and every weekday through 11 September runs a double-elimination bracket with two best-of-three streams in parallel. Riot official /valorant channel on Twitch and YouTube streams the A-stream in 4K/60 fps with a command-center feed; the B-stream (same quality) lives only on YouTube and carries the second series. Korean and Japanese commentary is on separate sub-channels, while the Brazilian and LATAM casts simulcast on booyah! and Facebook Gaming. VCT Game Changers caster Sue "Smix" Smith and Mitch "MitchMan" McBride anchor the English desk; expect instant replay overlays and a 30-second spoiler-free rewind bar on the YouTube player.
Weekend knockout rounds shift to the Mercedes-Benz Arena 12-13 September at 16:00 local, and the grand final on 20 September kicks off 19:00 with a pre-show concert from DJ arny. Tickets drop 12 June at 10:00 CEST on the official Lippupiste store; €35 grants arena access, €65 adds a merch pack and fast-track entry. If you miss the live window, full-match VODs upload within 90 minutes to lolesports.com/valorant and stay spoiler-free behind a collapsible bracket graphic. Mobile-only? The VCT app pushes per-map notifications and lets you sync the calendar to Google or iCal in two taps–no account needed.
Group Stage Daily Start Times Converted to Your Time Zone
Set your alarm for 02:00 UTC on 2 September if you want the very first pistol round of Group A live; every match day after that rotates forward by exactly 90 minutes, so you only need one recurring calendar entry and a simple +1:30 rule to track every series.
West-coast viewers can subtract five hours and catch the opener at 21:00 PDT the night before, while east-coast fans add the same five hours and watch at 06:00 EDT; if you are in central Europe, add two hours to UTC for a civilised 04:00 CEST start, then move each following wave to 05:30, 07:00 and so on until the knockout cut-off at 11:30 CEST.
Oceania gets the worst draw: Sydney faces 12:00 AEST midday starts that slide into 13:30, 15:00, finishing homework-time at 16:30; Tokyo and Seoul sit one hour behind, so adjust your lunch break accordingly and mute Slack for the 45-minute map rotation window.
Riot broadcast page auto-detects your browser locale, but the countdown still shows Los Angeles studio clock; override it by adding "?tz=UTC+8" (or your offset) to the URL and the red timer locks to your local time, sparing you the mental maths during overtime rounds.
Mobile users should open the schedule once, tap the share icon, and choose "Add to Calendar"; Apple and Google both store the UTC stamp, so the entry shifts if you fly to another region and your phone updates its zone–no double notifications, no missed eco rounds.
If you plan to VOD the games spoiler-free, wait exactly four hours after the final scheduled match; that buffer covers technical pauses and lets you start from the beginning without thumbnails or Twitter ruining the 13-11 comeback you did not see coming.
Playoffs Bracket Release Date & Seeding Logic
Circle 3 November 18:00 GMT on your calendar–Riot will drop the single-elimination bracket live on the official watch-party stream, and the PDF snapshot hits social feeds ninety seconds later. Print it, screenshot it, but don’t refresh Reddit; the first mirror link usually melts under traffic.
Seeding ignores your group letter and locks onto three numbers: regular-season win rate, map differential, and average combat score per player. Finish first in Group A with a shaky +6 map diff and you still land below a 7-1 Group C squad that out-fragged you by 42 ACS per map. Tiebreaker order flips only if two clubs share all three metrics; then head-to-head speedrun time decides who grabs the higher seed and the side-pick privilege in the opener.
Third-place pool draws its fate from a weighted lottery–60 % seasonal win rate, 40 % random noise–so the 6-2 squad can, and last year did, draw the 5-3 underdog while a 7-1 juggernaut faces instant elimination against the second seed. Expect Reddit spreadsheets five minutes after reveal; they’re usually within one seed of accuracy because the formula leaked in September and the community solved the constants in eight hours.
If you’re crafting pick’ems, bookmark the live probability tracker hosted by the stats crew at https://salonsustainability.club/articles/glider-pilot-makes-history-in-central-australia.html; it updates after every side-pick coin flip and factors in scrim leak win rates better than any desktop app. Lock your bracket before 19:00 GMT–once the first best-of-three starts, the site freezes entries and you’ll be stuck watching everyone else climb the prediction leaderboard.
Where to Watch 4K Streams Without Cable Subscription
YouTube streams every Valorant Champions match in 2160p60 at no cost. Open the official Valorant Champions channel, set quality to 4K, and cast straight to a smart-TV; no login needed, no frame-rate lock on 60 Hz panels.
If you hate pre-roll ads, pay €5.99 for YouTube Premium one-month trial; cancel right after the Grand Final and you keep the 4K feed ad-free for the full tournament.
Twitch also pushes 4K on select partner channels. Type "4K" in the filter bar, pick the Portuguese or Korean watch-party with 35 000 kbps bitrate, and disable low-latency mode to stop the stream from downgrading during eco-rounds.
European viewers can open LOUD Twitch VOD within six hours of the live end; the 4K transcode stays up for 48 h before it gets replaced by 1080p highlights.
Riot Xbox app streams Champions in HDR10 on Series X. Download the free tournament hub, head to settings → video, lock resolution to 4K UHD, and the feed keeps 60 fps even during five-map thrillers.
On mobile, the Twitch app on iPad Pro 12.9″ (5th gen) lets you force 2160p if you’re on Wi-Fi 6; Android tablets still cap at 1440p unless you sideload the 14.3.0 beta.
Smart-TV owners should search "VCT" in the LG webOS store; the official Riot add-on delivers 4K with 5.1 surround and a live stats overlay you can toggle with the red button.
Bookmark riotgames-lh.akamaihd.net in your browser; the direct HLS link bypasses regional throttling and holds steady at 30 Mb/s, perfect for 4K on a laptop plugged via HDMI 2.1 to a 120 Hz monitor.
Qualified Teams & Roster Locks
Lock your fantasy roster before 23:59 PT on 2 August; after that, every substitution nullifies your pick’em points for that squad.
Twenty-four banners earned a slot: twelve from the four International Leagues via 2026 Championship Points, eight from the three Last Chance Qualifiers held in Shanghai, São Paulo and Istanbul, plus four direct invites handed to the defending Masters Tokyo winners and the three highest remaining teams on the global standings after LCQ.
Each organisation must submit five starters plus one optional substitute in the Riot portal; the sixth name can only enter if medical proof or a visa rejection is supplied before 7 August. No two players may share the same in-game role on paper–dual-duelist tricks are legal on server, but the roster sheet still needs one sentinel, one controller, one initiator and two flex slots listed.
- EMEA: Fnatic, Giants, Karmine Corp, Team Heretics, BBL, Fut
- Americas: Sentinels, 100 Thieves, Leviatán, KRÜ, Cloud9, Evil Geniuses
- Pacific: DRX, T1, Gen.G, ZETA, Paper Rex, Talon
- China: EDG, Trace, FunPlus Phoenix, Dragon Ranger
- LCQ winners: Gentle Mates (EMEA), MIBR (Americas), DetonatioN (Pacific)
- Direct invites: LOUD (Masters Tokyo champs), Navi, PRX, NRG
Check the tiebreaker microsite for the exact point totals; head-to-head map differential splits 17 identical 675-point scores and shuffled the seeding between KRÜ and T1.
Once the lock clicks, only emergency medical swaps are allowed; the new player inherits all statistics, so if you gambled on a 1.47 ACS star, verify his tonsils before you bet.
Print the PDF roster sheet from the official press room; it lists every player primary and secondary agents, shows VISA approval status in green, and carries the tournament director signature you’ll need for on-site media interviews.
How Each Region's Points System Crowned the Sixth Seed
Track every Champions Point live on the Official VLR Standings page; refresh after each regional finals to see the sixth seed flip in real time.
EMEA sixth slot landed on Team Vitality after they banked 425 points from two Stage-2 deep runs and 75 bonus points for eliminating the region leader in the lower-bracket final. The circuit rewards head-shot brackets–a 3-0 sweep in the last chance qualifier adds a flat 50, enough to leapfrog four teams that sat out the LCQ.
In the Americas, Leviatán squeaked past 100 Thieves by a single point. The tie-breaker? Total round differential across all regional matches. Leviatán finished +87; 100T stopped at +86. The lesson: surrender one less pistol round in March and you’re flying to Seoul, not watching from home.
Pacific used a weighted decay model. Points earned in Stage-1 lose 20 % of their value by Stage-3, so DetonatioN FocusMe gambled on roster consistency instead of mid-season swaps. Their 280-point kernel from Stage-1 shrank to 224, but fresh Stage-3 gains of 310 kept them sixth, 11 ahead of the chasing T1 stack.
China inaugural circuit handed 40 % of its points through provincial opens. Anyone outside the big three cities had to grind 128-team LANs for a sliver of the pie. Dragon Ranger Gaming bussed to four provinces, collected 180 mini-points, then clinched 250 in the national playoffs to grab the last ticket. No other region forces pros to earn plane miles before circuit points.
KR/JP system punishes roster moves: change two or more players and you forfeit 15 % of your existing total. ZETA DIVISION stuck together, kept their 380 points intact, and edged Crazy Raccoon by six after the penalty was applied to the latter rebuild.
Want to predict next year bubble spot? Export the points table to Sheets, add a column for remaining fixtures, and run a Monte Carlo with 10 000 iterations. The model flags any team within 40 points of sixth as 66 % likely to qualify if they reach the regional semifinals. Share your sheet link in Reddit r/ValorantCompetitive before final week and farm karma while helping fans hedge Pick’Ems.
Bookmark the VCT Rules Portal; Riot already posted the 2027 coefficients. EMEA lowers the LCQ bonus to 30 points, Americas scraps round differential for direct head-to-head, and Pacific doubles decay to 40 %. Plan your fantasy roster now and you’ll look like a prophet when next year sixth seed slips in by half a point again.
Last-Minute Stand-In Rules for VCT 2026 Rosters
Submit your Emergency Stand-In Form through the official Riot portal no later than 90 minutes before the first map pick; any later and you’ll forfeit the map bans and start on the unfavoured side. Attach a 30-second webcam clip of the replacement player holding their passport next to their face–no clip, no approval, zero exceptions.
If your substitute is already on another team six-man roster, you must obtain written consent from that organization general manager and copy [email protected]. The loan lasts for the single match day only; you can’t recycle the same stand-in until the next stage, and you’ll pay a 10 % prize-money deduction if the player competes in more than 40 % of your stage games. Keep a scanned medical certificate or police report ready; Riot audits two per group and will retroactively punish forged documents with an instant four-map suspension for the coach.
Only players who reached Immortal 3 on the current act live build qualify, and their account must have 50-plus ranked games on the region server. CAPTCHA checks run during agent select; if the stand-in handle doesn’t match the pre-approved Riot ID, the server blocks spawn-in and your team gets a technical loss. You’re allowed one emergency substitution per best-of-three and two per best-of-five, but the moment you trigger the second swap, you surrender one timeout and your opponent gains an extra pause.
| Deadline | Required Proof | Penalty for Miss |
|---|---|---|
| –90 min to pick | Passport clip + form | Map side choice lost |
| –60 min to pick | Medical or police report | 10 % prize deduction |
| –30 min to pick | Account verification | Technical loss |
Q&A:
Which teams got the direct invite to Champions 2026, and how did Riot decide who skipped the regional qualifiers?
The four squads that bypassed qualifiers are Sentinels, EDward Gaming, Fnatic, and DRX. Riot used a combined ranking that weighed Masters Tokyo, Masters Berlin, and the three 2025 global events; only teams that placed top-four in at least two of those five tournaments were eligible for the auto-spot.
When exactly does the knockout stage start in Los Angeles, and how many days off do players get between groups and playoffs?
Knockout best-of-threes kick off on 2 September at the Shrine Auditorium. Groups finish 27 August, so teams that advance have four full rest days; the two squads that come through the last-chance gauntlet on 30 August get only one off-day before playoffs.
My timezone is IST; what are the daily start times for the Swiss stage so I can plan watch-parties?
Swiss matches begin 15:30 IST every day from 14-22 August. The first two rounds run in five-stream parallel blocks; once the pool drops to eight teams, the last three rounds switch to three-stream sets that wrap by 23:00 IST.
Reviews
Oliver Hayes
"Full schedule" my left foot six fluff lines and a prayer to Liquipedia. Dates? Scattered like post-plant utility. Qualified teams? Half blank, half wishful thinking. If this is the dossier for 2026, I’ll bring tarot cards to the watch party.
crystal_breeze
I’d trade every skin I own for a single women slot. Twelve slots, zero girl teams. Riot keeps tweeting "grow the scene" while handing spots to male academy benches who bombed out last year. My five-stack grinded from diamond to radiant, streamed eight hours nightly, got sponsors, and still watched some 17-year-old with 4k followers waltz in because his org bought a partnered slot. Keep your pink mercy charity bundles; give us a path that doesn’t require sleeping with a general manager.
rose_mirage
Girls, if Riot mails us a tiny plastic crown for every bracket we botch, will my cat finally qualify as substitute mid-laner or do I have to keep bribing her with salmon to flash me onto site?
Ava
omg girls the schedule dropped and i literally forgot how to blink. i printed it, framed it, kissed it goodnight, then ate the paper for fiber. my brain is now 90% Brimstone coffee fumes and 10% "did that team just qualify or did i dream it?" i’ve set 47 alarms per match, renamed my cat "GroupStage", and i’m stress-knitting a scarf in VCT colors that already long enough to lasso the moon. if anyone needs me i’ll be in the fridge cooling my hype sweats.
Sophia Martinez
if breeze in Split carries whispers of neon knives, will your pulse still echo the same when 2026 flames bloom, or will you trade yesterday ace for tomorrow maybe-kiss under arena lights?