Franchise leagues are coming — Valorant Champions Tour 2023 format announced

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Riot Games has announced the format and schedule of the Valorant Champions Tour 2023 stages, the third esports season of the game. The biggest innovations are a global tournament in Brazil and three regional leagues with partner teams. 

The Valorant championship season opens with VCT 2023: Kickoff Tournament, taking place from February 14 to March 5, 2023, in São Paulo, Brazil. This tournament will feature 30 teams representing three regional leagues by ten teams each. The winning team will earn its regional league an extra slot in the Masters Tournament.

From March 26 to May 28, there will be three regional leagues held concurrently in Berlin, Seoul and Los Angeles. As we mentioned above, they will feature ten partner teams each. It is unknown which teams these will be. Riot Games has not yet announced the list of participants, but negotiations with the candidates began back in the summer.

Also Read: The impact streamer teams can have in the Valorant partnership league

Riot Games will hold only one VCT Masters Series tournament in 2023, which will be held in June. The participants will compete for quotas for Valorant Champions 2023, which will be held in August-September. There might be two more Masters tournaments per year in the future, but this upcoming season just replaced one of them with a big event in Brazil. We should keep in mind that in 2024, Riot Games may change the format again — the company is still in search of the optimal balance between franchise and open league. 

We should also note that in 2023, Riot Games will make a clearer division of teams into the Tier 1 and Tier 2 stages. The former will play in regional leagues and the latter will play in two Challengers splits. The organizers have not yet announced details on these events, but a packed schedule of the tournament season can be seen in the calendar.

Valorant Champions 2023 will be preceded by the traditional Last Chance Qualifiers, where teams will play for last slots at the world championship. There will be an ascension tournament at roughly the same time as LCQ, where teams from the Challengers division will get a chance to advance to the regional leagues. Prior to that, they will play two splits of eight weeks each. The first one will begin in January and the second one is about to start in March.

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Valorant Champions 2022 is now taking place at the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul. The best teams in the world are playing for a share of $1 million prize pool. The finals will take place on September 18.