A Guide to VCT Americas Kickoff 2026

VCT Americas Kickoff 2026 will take place from January 15th to February 15th, marking the region’s first esports event in the 2026 VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT).

In addition to featuring Kickoff’s new triple-elimination format, the tournament will offer its 12 teams the chance to qualify for Masters Santiago, the first global VCT event of the season.

VCT Americas is part of Riot Games’ semi-franchised tier-one VALORANT Champions Tour, which encompasses three additional regions: EMEA, Pacific and China.

Every VCT season comprises three regional competitions, Kickoff, Stage 1 and Stage 2, as well as three international events, two Masters and the season-ending VALORANT Champions tournament.

Next year, these three global competitions will take place in February (Masters Santiago), June (Masters London) and October (Champions Shanghai).

Just like all other regions, VCT Americas will have a triple-elimination format for its 2026 Kickoff event.

To accommodate the new format, VCT Kickoff will also feature three best-of-five (BO5) finals for the upper, middle and lower brackets, respectively. All other matches will be played as best-of-threes (BO3s).

The three emerging winners will then represent the region at Masters Santiago from February 28th until March 15th.

In addition, the top Kickoff teams will earn Americas Points, which may grant qualification to VALORANT Champions later on:

Americas Kickoff 2026 will run across five weeks, with each match day commencing at 10 PM BST. 

As regional representatives during Champions 2025, NRG, MIBR, Sentinels and G2 Esports have received a direct bye into Round 2 of the upper bracket.

The remaining teams have been placed into Round 1 match-ups based on a randomised draw:

The three finals will take place during Week 5 (February 13th-15th) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

To witness the action live in Los Angeles’ Riot Games Arena, fans can purchase tickets. The ticket sale will commence on December 19th at 8 PM BST.

Fans watching from home can tune in to the English (Twitch/YouTube), Portuguese (Twitch/YouTube) or Spanish (Twitch/YouTube) broadcasts. Moreover, co-streaming applications are available for streamers broadcasting from North America, Latin America, Brazil and the rest of the world.

Among the twelve teams competing in VCT Americas Kickoff, 10 are partner teams with permanent slots in the league until 2027. This also includes VALORANT Champions 2025 winner, NRG.

The final two teams are Ascension 2023 and 2025 champions, G2 Esports and ENVY. For the latter, this will be the first-ever season in VALORANT tier-one.

Here is the full list of VCT Americas 2026 teams: