The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) Challengers 2024 season’s calendar has been revealed. The upcoming season will run throughout the year, and lead to the Ascension tournament. Starting next year, Valorant fans and aspiring esports enthusiasts will get a real chance to make it to VCT Challengers.
VCT Challengers 2024 calendar
As revealed, the season starts in January 2024, and the qualified teams will head for the Ascension tournament in September. Most leagues will conduct Open Qualifiers from January onwards while some will bring back teams from the 2023 season. Each stage of the regional qualifiers will lead to playoffs to select the qualified teams. Riot Games has said that specific information on each VCT Challengers league will be revealed via regional channels.
Riot Games is also set to kick off its first Promotion and Relegation event between Challengers and Premier teams at the end of Stage 1. Premier teams will fight through a bracket in this event, to get the chance to compete against Challenger teams and win a spot in Stage 2 of Challengers Season. Riot says that aspiring Premier teams should keep a close eye on their region-specific information which will be released in early November.
After the Ascension 2024 tournament in September, Riot will officially kick off the Challengers 2025 season in October. The company explains this early start to Challengers as a way to minimise gaps in the calendar and also give Ascension winners enough time to prepare for the start of International tournaments.
VCT Challengers 2024 new policies
Riot Games is introducing several new ways of collaboration for teams in their competition such as the Affiliate Partnership program, Two-Way Players, and Player Loans.
Affiliate Partnerships
Affiliate Partnerships will allow teams from the International Leagues to build partnerships with Challenger and Game Changers teams. This can pave the way for content and commercial collaboration between the teams. However, the partnership can only be established with a Challenger team that is in the same region. There is no such restriction for collaboration with Game Changers teams (VCT competitive side for women and other marginalized genders). Affiliate Partnerships will create the opportunity for Two-Way Players.
Two-Way Players
Riot has introduced Two-Way Players to avoid a situation that occurred in International Leagues last year when substitute players signed to International squads did not receive any play time and hence, gained no experience at the grand stage. To fix this, Two-Way Players steps in where a player who is not getting time on the main International roster can play in the starting squad of a Challengers and Game Changers team, as part of the Affiliate Partnership.
Player Loans
Riot Games is also officially introducing the concept of Player Loans to VCT. This will let International League teams loan out their players to other teams that are not in the International Leagues, such as the Challengers or Game Changers teams. These players cannot play for their parent team until the loan completely expires. These players will not be bound to Affiliate Partnerships, so they can be loaned out to any of the Challengers or Game Changers teams.
That’s everything new coming to VCT Challengers 2024. Stay tuned for more updates.
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