It's almost time for the VALORANT Champions Shanghai 2026

24 August 2026

We won’t need to tell the fans, but the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) 2026, one of international esports’ biggest competitions, is nearing its end. From September 24th to October 18th, sixteen (16) of the best teams in the world will be competing for a share of the $ 2.250.000 prize pool and of course, historic glory. With all of the VALORANT International Leagues coming to an end or already having come to an end by now, we are starting to get an idea of who will feature in Shanghai in a few weeks’ time.

VALORANT Champions Shanghai 2026

The annual VALORANT Champions event, also known as simply VCT Champions, is the crowning event of the VALORANT international esports calendar. The event will kick of as usual with four groups of four teams in the Group Stage. The two best teams of each group advance to the Playoffs, where they will compete in a Double-Elimination bracket. Both the Group Stage and the Playoffs are played in a Best-of-3 format, apart from the Finals. Both the Lower Bracket Final and the Grand Final will use a Best-of-5 format.

Qualified teams

As we wrote before, the VALORANT Champions Shanghai 2026 will consist of 16 teams, four from each International League. As we write this article, seven of the sixteen qualified teams are already known, in big part thanks to the International League China having finished already. On top of the four Chinese names, we also know one competitor from the Pacific region and two from the EMEA region.

$ 1 million for the champions

The VCT Champions event is not just about glory, far from it, actually. Organizer Riot Games has reserved no less than $ 2.250.000 as prize money for the 2026 edition, with a whopping $ 1 million eventually going the way of the winners. The runner-up gets $ 400.000, while the number three gets to go home with a more than decent $ 250.000. The lowest spots in the ranking, 13 to 16, each still get $ 20.000 from the prize pool.

New format on the horizon

The upcoming VALORANT Champions Shanghai 2026 event is also special for another reason. It will after all be the last Champions event under the current VCT format, which is set to undergo a profound change for the 2027 season. Earlier this year, Riot Games officially unveiled a massive, structural overhaul for the VALORANT Champions Tour, moving from a league-based structure to a more open, tournament-driven model.

While the changes are plenty, a major part of the overhaul focuses on the replacement of International Leagues and month-long regular seasons with brand-new VCT Cups. VCT Cups. These are short-form, high-stakes regional LAN tournaments held in multiple rotating cities globally. Rather than accumulating points over a long split, performance in these fast-paced Cups directly dictates who qualifies for Masters and Champions. In this new structure, even partnered teams will need to move through open qualifiers to reach the global stages.