VALORANT announces the return of Sunset to competitive map pool

Riot Games has announced the return of Sunset to the VALORANT competitive map rotation for Patch 10.08, on April 29th.

In a post on social media, VALORANT’s esports account shared that Sunset will replace Fracture, which was only added in January after a year-and-a-half hiatus.

VALORANT map rotations apply to the Competitive, Deathmatch and Premier game modes. During a map rotation cycle, seven maps are active, leaving the others disabled based on player sentiment, planned updates and strategic map pool variance.

The system was introduced in 2022’s Episode 05 with the release of VALORANT’s eighth map, Pearl.

Sunset has been out of the map rotation since the beginning of the year when, alongside Ascent, it made way for Fracture and Lotus. The map was first released in August 2023 and received several balance changes in Patch 9.08 in October last year.

With the Patch 10.08, the following seven maps will be in rotation:

While the map pool will change on April 29th, it’s important to note that Riot Games has announced that the map pool for VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) competitions will only be affected after Masters Toronto. The second international VCT tournament of this year’s season will run from June 7th-22nd.

The reason for this delayed map pool is likely due to VCT teams still competing in the Stage 1 events of their respective regions. The top three regional rosters qualify for Masters Toronto.

Before Sunset’s return with Patch 10.08, VALORANT will roll out another set of changes on April 9th. Patch 10.06 will see numerous balance updates for agents KAY/O, Yoru and Vyse. While KAY/O will receive improvements to his flashes and ally resurrection during his ult, the abilities of Yoru and Vyse will be nerfed.

Moreover, VALORANT confirmed the release of the VCT Ascension team bundles for April, which have since seemingly been leaked.