VALORANT Champions 2022 to be held in Istanbul, Turkey in September
While there's lots of excitement about the VALORANT esports expansion in 2023, there's still a lot of 2022 left, including the rest of the 2022 VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT).
And now, we finally know which cities will play host to the top tier of VALORANT action, after developer Riot Games announced on Saturday (14 May) the locations for the next two major international competitions for the VCT.
The first is the VCT Stage 2 Masters tournament, which will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July.
The 2022 VCT will then conclude with VALORANT Champions in Istanbul, Turkey, in September.
The VCT Stage 2 Copenhagen Masters will be the first major VALORANT event to be held outside of Germany and Iceland, which hosted all of the events for the 2021 VCT.
It will feature 12 teams competing for glory and, of course, much needed VCT points, from 10 to 24 July.
September will then give us the biggest VALORANT event of the year, as the VCT finale plays out in Istanbul.
VALORANT Champions 2022 will see 16 teams battle it out from 2 to 18 September to become the new VALORANT world champions.
Ten of the 16 teams in Istanbul will come from the regular season while the remaining six will be added through the Last Chance Qualifiers in August.
European powerhouse Acend were crowned the first-ever VALORANT world champions when they won VALORANT Champions 2021 in Berlin last December.
“Our goal is to see our biggest international events played in front of a live audience and both of these cities provided clear pathways towards this goal, while also providing the best possible guarantee that all qualified teams will be able to safely attend and compete,” Riot stated in the announcement.
“We’re excited to share the initial details of these two events and will be providing more information in the coming weeks.”
A now-deleted tweet from the official Twitter account for VALORANT in the UK, Ireland, and Nordics also suggested that the tournament planned to host a live audience.
While the deletion of the announcement implies that plans are not yet in stone, if it does happen, it will be the first time a VALORANT tournament will be held in front of a crowd of fans.
As VALORANT was released during the latter half of 2020, the game’s esports scene had to endure restrictions, particularly in terms of a live audience.
Just last month, the VCT Masters Stage 1 wrapped up in Reykjavik, Iceland, where North America’s OpTic Gaming dominated Brazilian superteam LOUD to claim the Stage 1 Masters championship.
According to Esports Charts, the tournament recorded a peak viewership of over 1 million.
Feb has been trying to speedrun Super Mario 64 ever since he started playing video games at 11 years old. He has never succeeded, but has completed other video games in the time since. When not playing, he's usually playing music or building Gunpla.
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