Valorant Champions Tour 2025: Everything announced for new VCT season

Riot Games has revealed its plans for the 2025 Valorant Champions season. Here is everything coming to the VCT circuit next year.

The Valorant Champions 2024 is almost over and Riot Games has announced some massive changes to its esports circuit for 2025 that should improve the experience of players, viewers, and teams alike.

Unlike 2024, which saw the introduction of a new VCT International league, 2025 will see some tweaks to the esport’s calendar and systems, along with more cosmetic options for fans to purchase to support their favorite teams.

Riot released a video detailing the changes and hyping up its achievements over 2024, here is a breakdown of the most important changes coming next year.

VCT Calendar expansion

The 2025 VCT season will start earlier than previous years, starting in early January with the Kickoff tournaments and ending later with Valorant Champions in October.

Fans criticized the past few seasons for being only six months long, as they started in early February and ended in August.

The season will start a few weeks earlier, and international competition will be spread out more so that players have time to rest in between events.

More VCT Valorant skins

Riot revealed that the VCT team bundles will get a refresh in 2025. The first iteration of the cosmetic bundles launched in 2024 and gave fans a direct way to support their favorite team financially through in-game Valorant purchases.

The developer also teased a brand new esports capsule cosmetic bundle, called the Season Capsule, similar to its LOCK//IN bundle from the one-off 2023 tournament.

VCT partner teams can have Academy squads in Challengers

One of the bigger reveals from Riot has been that the 40 VCT partner teams will now be able to field Academy teams in VCT Challengers leagues. In 2024, Riot introduced an affiliate system in which VCT partner teams could team up with a squad in Challengers.

This allowed teams to create Two-Way Players on Challengers squads that could be called up to the VCT team at any time.

In 2025, VCT teams will now be able to just have a second squad complete in Challengers without needing to enter an affiliate agreement with another esports organization. These Academy teams, however, will not be able to compete in Ascension to promote to the VCT leagues.

VCT Masters and Valorant Champions 2025 locations

The Riot announcement also confirmed the host cities for the three major international VCT events, hours after they were leaked on social media.

The first VCT Masters will take place in Bangkok, Thailand right after the Kickoff tournaments. The second Masters tournament will be held in Toronto, Canada in July. Valorant Champions will return to Europe and take place in Paris, France.