Riot's first official 'Valorant' tournament starts next month

Valorant is already an esports success story, and Riot Games is set to expand the pro scene further. It’s preparing to run its first Valorant tournament. So far in the competitive shooter’s short lifespan, third-party companies and esports organizations have been holding their own Valorant events with support from Riot.

Open qualifiers for Valorant First Strike: Europe take place from November 9th-22nd. The top eight teams will advance to the tournament proper, which runs from December 3rd-6th. Matches will take place in a best-of-three format save for the finals, which are best of five.

Riot says players aged 16 or over who’ve reached the Immortal 1 rank will likely be eligible to compete. It’ll explain all of the touranment’s rules in the next few weeks.

The publisher has been slowly building Valorant’s esports scene since it released the game earlier this year. Valorant is already one of the most viewed categories on Twitch, indicating there’s a significant audience out there willing to watch pro-level matches. Given that Riot’s also behind perhaps the biggest esport on the planet, League of Legends, there’s plenty of reasons to believe Riot can turn Valorant into a competitive gaming giant too.

Meanwhile, Riot has revealed some details about the game’s next season, Act III. It starts on October 13th and it will introduce a new map called Icebox.

There won’t be an addition to the lineup of agents at the outset though. Riot wants to ensure everything goes smoothly with the new map, including how other agents interact with it, before tossing another variable into the mix. As such, the next Valorant agent, who Riot teased in a couple of tweets, will arrive on October 27th.

The start of Act III will also ring in some changes for the competitive mode. You’ll be able to select which server you want to play on to reduce latency, while Riot says “Immortal+ rank outcomes are decided 100% by wins and losses.” As you might expect, there’ll be a fresh Battlepass for Act III with new cosmetics for you to earn.