Riot Games has announced a suite of changes to the Valorant ecosystem coming in 2027. The franchise league-structured esport will move to a tournament-based system, opening the game’s ecosystem for the first time in years.
According to the announcement, teams will first compete in open qualifier events to advance to regional tournaments that replace the current league play structure. The strongest performers in these regional tournaments will then advance to international competitions such as Masters and Champions, existing largely as they do today.
This allows teams without a Riot partnership to unlock significant financial opportunities within the ecosystem, including (per the release):
● Cash incentives tied to qualification at each stage of competition
● Access to prize pools across regional and global events (totaling over $6M annually)
● Financial support for travel and participation in global events
● Faster, more consistent payout cycles to support team operations throughout the season
While Valorant will become a more open esport overall, Riot will continue to partner with select teams across the ecosystem in a new two-year partnership cycle. Teams will be able to apply for partnership to access base pay, performance bonuses and revenue from select digital goods (i.e. in-game skins). Partner teams will also be seeded into later rounds of open qualifier tournaments.
Finally, Riot announced that the Valorant Champions Tour will host more live tournaments across the world than ever before. Over 20 tournaments will take place in-person across more than 16 cities.
Additional details will be revealed later this year ahead of the Champions tournament.
After the collapse of the Overwatch League, the esports industry as a whole has been forced to re-evaluate the economic viabilty of the franchise model. Valorant exists in an esports genre that has a long history of open bracket tournaments. The new partnership model also more closely resembles systems used by Rainbow Six Siege and Rocket League, the former of which has been praised in the past by some teams for its direct contribution to organization revenue.