VALORANT Champions Tour

VALORANT Champions Tour is a series of yearly global professional tournaments operated by Riot Games Inc. The series runs multiple events throughout each season, culminating in Valorant Champions, the top-level event of the tour. The VCT was announced in 2020, with its inaugural season taking place in 2021.
 
==History==
===Inaugural season===
In November 2020, Riot Games announced the first Valorant Champions Tour, a tournament series divided into three tiers: Challengers, Masters, and Champions. Challengers would act as the lowest tier, split into six regions. Teams that advance past Challengers would move on to Masters, where teams would not be divided by regions anymore, and the top 16 teams from Masters would move on to Champions, the final tournament of VCT. In February 2021, they announced the VCT Game Changers, a supplementary tournament initiative for women and marginalized genders.
Riot hired esports infrastructure company Nerd Street Gamers to be the operators and producers for all North American Challengers and Masters events. They also hired several third-party companies to broadcast their events, such as Liga de Videojuegos Profesional (LVP) for their Spanish-language broadcasts and LetsPlay.Live for their Oceania broadcasts. The 2021 Champions tournament took place on December 1–12 at the Verti Music Hall in Berlin, Germany, concluding with team Acend defeating Gambit Esports in the grand finals by a score of 3–2.
Over 10,000 teams competed in the VCT in 2021. Outside of Champions, VCT saw its highest viewership at the Reykjavik Masters tournament in May, with a peak viewership of 1,085,850. The Champions grand finals match in December reached a peak viewership of 1,089,068, making it the VCT's highest peak viewership.
===2022 season===
While the overall structure of Challengers, Masters, and Champions remained unchanged, it reduced the number of stages of Challengers and Masters events from three to two.
===2023 season===
Riot announced a new format to the VCT starting 2023. Riot has partnered with with 30 teams for the 2023 season.
===2024 season===
A new pro system has been introduced along with Championship Points to be used this season.
===Partnered Teams===
Riot has introduced the China League along with the partnership of 44 teams for the 2024 season.
===Winners===
The former VALORANT Champions are:
Season	Location 	Winner	Runner-up
2023 	Los Angeles	 	
2022 	Istanbul 	 	
2021 	Berlin 	 	
==Format==
===Previous Format===
Riot Games has announced a new format starting in 2023 which uses a new Challengers format which will be split into 3 regions - Americas, EMEA and Pacific instead of the 7 regions format (NA, EMEA, SEA, Korea, Japan, Brazil, and LATAM) used in VCT 2021 and VCT 2022. The new format has teams competing in their region's Challengers event to qualify for Challengers Ascension. Every region's Challengers event will have three winners which earns them a two-year promotion into their respective territories’ international league. The promoted teams will qualify for the global events, as well as getting benefits provided by Riot Games. Each year, through the Challengers promotion system, the three international leagues will expand by one team each year until they reach a cap of 14 teams per region in 2027 (42 teams in total).
===Current Format===
==Media==
== References ==