Everything you need to know about VALORANT Champions

VALORANT Champions starts Wednesday and teams are bootcamping in Berlin to prepare for the biggest international tournament of the year.

Sixteen teams will compete to see who is the best VALORANT team in the world. Each region is sending their best teams to compete, and in just a couple weeks, fans will know who the best VALORANT team in the world is in 2021.

Format

The format of the VALORANT Champions tournament will look similar to how the VALORANT Stage 2 Masters tournament was formatted. The 16 teams were slotted into groups of four, and two teams from each group will advance to the playoff bracket.

There are two opening matches in each group, which will then slot teams into either a winner’s match, or an elimination match. The team who wins the winner’s match will go straight to the bracket. The team who wins the elimination match will move on to the decider match against the team that lost the winner’s match. The team that wins the decider match will move on to the playoff bracket.

Here is a quick look at which teams are in which groups. To learn more about each of the teams, check out our guide on the teams qualified for Champions.

Group A

• Acend
• Team Envy
• X10 CRIT
• Vivo Keyd

Group B

• Sentinels
• KRÜ Esports
• Team Liquid
• FURIA Esports

Group C

• Gambit Esports
• Team Vikings
• Team Secret
• Crazy Raccoon

Group D

• Vision Strikers
• Fnatic
• FULL SENSE
• Cloud9 Blue

After the group stage, eight teams will move into a single-elimination playoff bracket.

Each match up until the grand final is a best-of-three, meaning a team needs to win two out of the three maps in order to win the game. The grand final is a best-of-five with no advantage given (like a one-map advantage or a bracket reset) since the bracket is single-elimination.

One final note on format, the new agent Chamber will not be available for this event, but this is one of the first looks fans will get at the new map, Fracture.

Matches and teams to watch

Just about any of the matches are worth watching, but there are some key groups that will make for interesting matches throughout the group stage and then into the playoff bracket.

The first group to note is Group D. Group D has been regarded as the group of death since the groupings were first revealed. Any of the four teams could make it out of that group and are all similarly matched in skill. If you’re going to watch one game from that group, check out Fnatic vs. Cloud9 Blue, since Anthony “vanity” Malaspina and Jake “Boaster” Howlett will make for a very entertaining match.

Another good game to watch will be Acend vs. Vivo Keyd. The Brazilian team didn’t make it out of groups in the last Masters event, but the fans from Brazil are putting all of their faith in them and Team Vikings. Acend has a lot of work to do as well, since they’ll likely be facing Team Envy if they win their match against Vivo Keyd.

Of course, Sentinels are a team to watch, especially after their performance at Masters: Berlin, which saw them look less than invincible. The team played it off as a fluke, but are Sentinels starting to lose their dominance over the scene?

Sentinels start off against FURIA Esports, which should be a fairly easy match for the two-time Masters champions. But looming ahead is Team Liquid, who are predicted to beat KRÜ Esports and move on to the winner’s match as well. With the addition of Nabil “Nivera” Benrlitom, Team Liquid absolutely have the potential to come out of the gate swinging and carry that momentum through to the grand final.

How to watch VALORANT Champions

There are matches every day from Dec. 1 to 12 with the exception of Dec. 10. From Dec. 1 to 8, fans will be able to watch group stage matches and the quarterfinals stage of the bracket before a day-long break. On Dec. 11, semifinals matches will take place, with the grand final occurring on Dec. 12.

A schedule of all of the matches can be found on the VALORANT esports website, and the matches can be watched on the VALORANT esports YouTube and Twitch channels.

Lead image credit: Riot Games