With the group stage now in the rearview mirror, VALORANT Champions is down to its final eight teams, and the action will now move to the Volkswagen Arena, Istanbul.
TURKEY – The eight-day group stage came to a close on Thursday, with FunPlus Phoenix and Fnatic securing the final two berths in the quarter-finals by winning their respective groups. Over the next week, eight teams will battle in the Volkswagen Arena to decide who will take home the lion’s share of the US$300,000 prize pool and earn bragging rights as the VALORANT world champions for this year.
This year’s VALORANT Champions will feature a double-elimination bracket with best-of-five lower and grand finals, as opposed to the single-elimination format utilized last year.
The opening round is about to start, with Leviatán going up against Masters Reykjavik runner-ups LOUD after the former made a surprise run in Group A, taking down Team Liquid and Paper Rex en route to the quarter-finals.
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(Photo courtesy of Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)
Meanwhile, only one team from Asia will be competing in the playoffs, namely DRX. Kim “Zest” Gi-seok and co. will be starting their run with an opening matchup versus Masters Copenhagen winners FunPlus Phoenix. That will be a rematch of the Masters Copenhagen lower quarter-finals, in which the European side took revenge after their defeat in the group stage without Dmitry “SUYGETSU” Ilyushin.
The following day will serve us with two mouth-watering contests between EMEA and NA. Pujan “FNS” Mehta’s troops are locked in a collision course with Team Liquid, while Fnatic are set to face potential darkhorses XSET. And in case the two EMEA teams emerge victorious, they will be relishing the chance to finally be on the same server after ten months.
The initial matches of the VALORANT Champions playoffs will be (time in SGT / UTC+8):
| 9/9 – 10 PM | 🇨🇱 Leviatan | 🇧🇷 LOUD |
| 10/9 – 1 AM | 🇰🇷 DRX | 🇪🇺 FPX |
| 10/9 – 10 PM | 🇺🇸 OpTic | 🇪🇺 Team Liquid |
| 11/9 – 1 AM | 🇺🇸 XSET | 🇪🇺 Fnatic |
As the highest-ranked teams at the event, FunPlus Phoenix, OpTic, Team Liquid, and Fnatic are favorites to go deep into the bracket. However, as has been the case in every international VALORANT competition, nothing is set in stone. Moreover, Leviatán and XSET have already proved their potential by beating every top dog that came in their way in the group stage and thus cannot be counted out of the race.
The whole schedule for the VALORANT Champions playoffs is as follows:
- Friday Sep 9 – 22:00 GMT+8
- Saturday Sep 10 – 22:00 GMT+8
- Sunday Sep 11 – 22:00 GMT+8
- Monday Sep 12 – 22:00 GMT+8
- Tuesday Sep 13 – 22:00 GMT+8
- (Wednesday Sep 14 – Dark Day)
- (Thursday Sep 15 – Dark Day)
- Friday Sep 16 – 22:00 GMT+8 Lower Semifinal & Upper Final
- Saturday Sep 17 – 22:00 GMT+8 Lower Final
- Sunday Sep 18 – 22:00 GMT+8 Grand Final
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Cover photo courtesy of Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
