Champions 2026 Live Hub

🏆 New: Predict the whole tournament with our Champions 2026 Bracket Predictor – groups, playoffs, champion and a shareable bracket image.

Results & groups (live)

Every Champions Shanghai result – groups use the GSL format and every group match is a best of 3. Times in Pacific Time (PT) and Central European Summer Time (CEST).

Sources: VLR.gg (results & schedule), official VCT start times (2 am and 5 am PT). Individual matches can start later because of delays.

Champions 2026 in numbers: top players, agents & maps

The key stats after 20 series and 47 maps (as of Oct 4, 2026, group stage complete). All values come from VLR.gg; rating is VLR.gg’s performance rating and ACS the average combat score per round. Only pros with at least 40 rounds played make the player ranking.

Best players by rating

Most-played agents

Pick rate = share of all team compositions that included the agent.

Maps: how often played and which side wins

Source: VLR.gg, event “Valorant Champions 2026” – player, agent and map stats as of Oct 4, 2026 (20 series, 47 maps). We update these tables after every match day. More numbers about the game are on Valorant in numbers.

🎯 Which crosshairs do the Champions pros use? Every code from all 16 teams is ready to copy in our pro crosshair database.

The three countdowns

The playoff and final countdowns run to midnight German time (CEST), the Pick’Ems countdown to the lock. According to Riot, playoff Pick’Ems lock on October 7 about ten minutes after the first playoff match (around 2:10 am PT).

Valorant matches today: the full schedule

Update log

All updates from the event land here, newest entries first.

What is Champions – and why is it the biggest event of the year?

Champions is the world championship of the VALORANT Champions Tour: once a year the best 16 teams from all four regions meet – in 2026 in Shanghai. For viewers it is the densest Valorant stretch of the year: Pick’Ems to predict, Twitch drops for watching, the exclusive Champions bundle in the shop and weeks of top-level matches. How the tournament format works is explained in our esports overview; the German streamers covering the event are on our streamer page.

Collectors, take note: the Champions bundle is the only collection of the year that is strictly time-limited and never returns to the shop. What is inside, what it costs and how the skins look in game – all with official images on the Champions 2026 bundle page – and the Valorant-Spind app shows you what your previous Champions skins are worth today with one click.

The 16 teams: who is coming to Shanghai?

The field is complete: all sixteen slots are locked in (as of September 7). The final tickets went to 100 Thieves (3:2 over LOUD in the Americas final) and Global Esports (3:2 over Nongshim RedForce in the Pacific final) on September 6. Teams qualified via two routes: winning or reaching the final of their league's Stage 2 playoff earns a direct trip to Shanghai, while the remaining slots go to the teams with the most Championship Points collected across Kickoff, Stage 1 and the season's Masters events.

One storyline stands above the rest: NRG could make history: no team has ever successfully defended a Champions title – most recently, defending champion EDward Gaming went out in the 2025 group stage. And with EDward Gaming, TYLOO, JD Gaming and XLG Esports, the host region China sends four teams into a home-crowd tournament.

Format explained: groups, GSL and playoffs

The 16 teams are drawn into four groups of four and play a GSL-style bracket. It sounds complicated but is quickly explained: each group starts with two opening matches, then the two winners meet in the winners match – win that and you are through. The two opening losers play an elimination match where the loser goes home. Finally, the decider match pits the winners-match loser against the elimination-match winner for the group's second playoff ticket. Every team gets at least two chances; a single loss never means instant elimination.

The top two teams from each group reach the playoffs of the final eight, and from there the double-elimination bracket runs all the way to the grand final on October 18; the lower final and the grand final are best-of-5, every other playoff match is best-of-3. If you want to brush up on the rules beforehand, our esports overview explains the whole VCT system from Kickoff to Championship Points.

Champions history: every winner since 2021

Champions Shanghai is the sixth edition of the tournament. A look at the past world champions shows how close it gets at the top – three of the five finals went the full five maps, the other two ended 3–1:

One streak stands out: no champion has ever defended the title. NRG are playing against a five-year pattern in 2026. The Paris 2025 final is still considered one of the most dramatic in history – NRG led 2–0 before Fnatic tied it at 2–2, and only the fifth map settled the championship.

Shanghai match times for European viewers

Shanghai runs on China Standard Time (UTC+8), six hours ahead of Central European Summer Time for the entire event. For European fans that is an unusual but rather pleasant setup: group stage matches start at 5:00 and 8:00 p.m. in Shanghai – that is 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. CEST (2:00 and 5:00 a.m. PT). Tune in around midday in Europe and you catch both matches of the day – no all-nighters required, unlike events hosted in the Americas.

Official group stage start times (2:00 and 5:00 a.m. PT). If the first match runs long, the second starts later – on opening day it began at 5:25 a.m. PT. We will add the playoff times as soon as Riot publishes them.

The tournament airs on the official VALORANT channels on Twitch and YouTube, joined by approved co-streams. The German-speaking streamers covering the event are collected on our streamer page.

Pick’Ems: tips for your predictions

From September 10 you can lock in your Pick’Ems in the client and on the web – predicting how the groups play out and who lifts the trophy. Taking part earns free rewards, so there is nothing to lose. A few lessons from past years help with the predictions:

Do not bet everything on one region. Across five editions of Champions, three different regions have taken the title – EMEA (Acend), Americas (LOUD as a Brazilian roster, Evil Geniuses, NRG) and China (EDward Gaming). Picks that lean entirely on one region rarely pay off.

Championship Points are a solid compass. Teams that qualified on points were consistent across the whole season – often worth more than a single hot run through the Stage 2 playoffs. At the same time, the GSL format punishes slow starts: lose your opening match and you are straight into elimination games.

Watch the map pools. Per the rulebook the event is played on patch 13.05b/c – patch 13.06 with the new Warden rifle, released two days before the tournament, is not used in Shanghai, and the map pool stays the same. Teams that play flexibly across many maps have the edge when surprises hit. All map details are in our map guide.

The complete walkthrough with every reward and deadline is in our Pick’Ems guide.

Drops & rewards for watching

As with every major VCT event, watching with a linked Riot account pays off: drops go out regularly during the live broadcasts – cosmetic rewards such as sprays, buddies or titles that are only available through watching. To be eligible, link your Riot account once with the platform you watch on. Important: the link always runs through the official Riot sign-in – never enter your password on third-party sites. Whether a stream hands out drops is shown on Twitch by the “Drops Enabled” label.

For Champions Shanghai, Riot has officially confirmed these rewards (source: valorantesports.com, “Champions Shanghai: Watch and Earn”):

And if tournament fever makes you want to check your own collection: the free Valorant-Spind app shows you – without any login – what your past Champions skins and the rest of your locker are worth today, and our skin calculator does it right in the browser.

The big storylines heading into the event

Every Champions has its narratives, and Shanghai 2026 brings several at once. The most obvious: can NRG become the first team ever to defend the title? Five editions, five different winners – history says no, but NRG – like G2 Esports – qualified early on Championship Points and carry the experience of the Paris triumph into the race.

Storyline number two is the home game for China: after EDward Gaming's 2024 title in Seoul, the region enters with four teams in front of a home crowd for the first time. TYLOO arrive as freshly crowned Stage 2 champions, and the Shanghai atmosphere should be a tangible factor for every Chinese roster. And third: EMEA is chasing its second star. Since Acend's win at the very first Champions in 2021, Europe has been waiting for a title – with Karmine Corp as Stage 2 winners and three more playoff-tested teams, the setup looks as good as it has in years.

On top of that comes the question that hovers over every edition: how much does patch 13.06 shake up the game right before the tournament? Patch 13.06 landed on September 22, just two days before the first match – with no agent balance changes. It plays no role in the tournament: per the rulebook Shanghai runs on patch 13.05b/c, so the new Warden rifle is not part of it. Our patch notes overview keeps you up to date.

Viewer checklist: ready in 5 minutes

So you miss nothing on September 24, here is the short preparation list – run through it once and you are set:

Link your Riot account. Connect your Riot account with the platform you plan to watch on – that is the only way to be drop-eligible. The link takes a minute and runs exclusively through the official Riot sign-in.

Lock in your Pick’Ems. From September 10 you can submit your predictions; picks lock before the tournament starts. Come late and you miss the free rewards – all details in the Pick’Ems guide.

Check the schedule. Note the European start times (late morning to early afternoon) and block out the knockout stage from October – the tension climbs match by match there.

Sort your bundle budget. If you want the Champions bundle, set aside the required VP in time – according to the official Valorant wiki the revenue window runs until October 20, after which it is expected to leave the shop. What it should cost is on the bundle page; the cheapest VP pack combination comes from the VP calculator.

Champions terms explained in one minute

Just getting into the esports side of Valorant? These five terms are enough to follow any broadcast: GSL is the group format with winners, elimination and decider matches, where every team gets at least two chances. Bo3 (best of 3) means the first team to win two maps takes the match. The decider is the last group match, deciding the second playoff ticket. Championship Points are the season-long standings through which consistent teams qualify directly. And drops are the cosmetic rewards handed out to watching accounts during the broadcast. More terms are explained in our Valorant glossary – from ace to wallbang.

The road to Shanghai: how the VCT season works

Champions is the finale of a system that spans the entire year. The VCT season opens with the Kickoff of the four international leagues (Americas, EMEA, Pacific, China), followed by Stage 1 and Stage 2 as league phases. Between the stages sit the international Masters events, where the best league teams face off. At each of these stations, teams collect Championship Points – and at season's end those points, alongside the Stage 2 playoffs, decide who makes the trip to the world championship.

The system rewards two qualities: consistency across the season (the points route) and form at the right moment (the playoff route). For viewers that means: tune in for Champions and you are watching the harvest of a whole year – each of the 16 teams earned its place over months. The full structure with all dates and leagues is explained in our esports overview; the tournament patches that shape the meta are tracked in our patch notes.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Why Champions is the most important tournament

There are many big events across the year, but Champions deliberately sits at the very end of the season – as the annual world final of the entire VCT. Whoever wins here carries the title of reigning world champion until the next Champions, and it is exactly that status that turns the tournament into the highlight for teams and fans alike. Unlike a single Masters, the best teams from all four regions meet here at the same time, so for the first time in the season every region can truly play against every other. For players a Champions title is career-defining; for a whole region it is a badge of prestige that people still talk about months later.

Around the event, the coveted Champions bundle traditionally appears as well, and part of its revenue flows back into the prize pool and to the participating teams – we explain exactly how that model works in our Champions bundle economy. The skins released alongside it are regularly among the most sought-after of the entire year, because they are a visible keepsake from the final. In this way Champions combines the sporting climax with a fixed place on every collector's calendar.

Understanding esports as a beginner

You do not need to play Valorant at a high level yourself to enjoy Champions – a rough grasp of the basics is more than enough. At its core, every match is a duel between attack and defense over planting or defusing the Spike, played out across many individual rounds. If you are completely new, the easiest way in is our beginner guide; the roles and abilities of the characters are explained step by step in the agents overview.

When you watch, it pays to keep an eye on three things: the choice of agents depending on the map, the typical playstyle on each of the maps, and the economic gamble over round money. Pro teams play at a level far above the highest ranks of the normal ladder, which is why even small mistakes here can decide entire rounds. Whenever a term drops during the cast, you can quickly look it up in our glossary – so plain watching turns, round by round, into a real understanding of what is actually happening on the server.