Valorant Champions Tour 2024: Everything announced for new VCT season

Riot Games has unveiled its plans for the 2024 Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) season. Dexerto has you covered with everything announced by the developer.

With Valorant Champions 2023 heading toward its conclusion, Riot Games has announced a series of changes to the VCT circuit that it hopes “will elevate the sport for its fourth year of operation.”

2024 will see the introduction of a new international league and the expansion of the Challengers calendar to include year-round competition. New locations have also been picked for the VCT Masters events, highlighting Riot’s vision to make Valorant a global sport.

It can be tough to keep up with all the news, so we’ve gathered everything that has been announced to ensure you don’t miss a thing.

China gets its own VCT league

Perhaps the biggest announcement of the day is the addition of a fourth official VCT league for Chinese teams. The VCT China League will be part of the same tier as the Americas, EMEA, and Pacific leagues.

The announcement comes just a month after Riot announced that Shanghai will host the second international event of the 2024 Valorant Champions Tour. VCT Masters Shanghai will take place “in late spring”, according to Riot.

Madrid to host Valorant Masters

Riot announced that the Spanish capital of Madrid will host the first global event of 2024, VCT Masters Madrid. The event will take place in the spring and feature eight teams.

To get the 2024 season underway, Riot will be hosting a Kickoff tournament in each of the four international leagues. These two-week competitions will determine the eight teams flying to Madrid.

Championship Points added to VCT circuit

According to Riot, Championship Points will be the “unifying mechanism” across the international leagues and the global tournaments. Measuring each team’s performance, they will be the qualification mechanism for global events.

This means that Riot will scrap regional qualifiers for future world championships. In 2023, EMEA, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific hosted last-chance qualifiers for Valorant Champions 2023. (China also had its own qualifier, but it didn’t have a VCT league until now.)

Both the VCT international leagues and the Masters events will have Championship Points on the line.

Challengers is overhauled

Riot announced a series of changes to its tier-two ecosystem for 2024. The Challengers calendar will operate year-round, providing an incentive for organizations to field competitive teams.

Challengers Ascension, which will determine the teams moving up to the VCT leagues, will take place in September, after Champions, giving it more opportunity to shine.

Moreover, Riot has created a new player loan system and given VCT partner organizations the green light to build an affiliate relationship with Challenger League teams. This new structure, Riot believes, “will enable teams to exchange players more freely”.

2024 will be the first year in which the VCT leagues will include teams promoted from Challengers. The Guard will compete in the Americas League, Gentle Mates in the EMEA League, and Bleed Esports in the Pacific League.