Nerd Street Gamers has been announced as the official North American tournament operator and producer for the 2021 Valorant Champions Tour, which has just been given a January 27 start date.
The Challengers Tournament, the first stage in the Valorant Chapmions Tour, will see three weekends of NA talent compete to culminate in a Masters Stage, which is intraregional. All of the games will be fully remote for the Challengers Stage, although the Riot team has said that they would like to see in-person events return for 2021. Although they've lamented that in-person events may not be possible in 2021, they've promised an effort to return to them as soon as possible.
The schedule for the Challengers Weekends is below.
CHALLENGERS WEEKEND 1
CHALLENGERS WEEKEND 2
CHALLENGERS WEEKEND 3
MASTERS STAGE 1
The three tournaments will occur over the course of six weeks. The top four teams in each weekend will bypass the open qualifier for the next event. The top three teams who finish in the Challenger Final will move on to the Masters Stage.
There will be three Masters Tournaments throughout the year, featuring teams who are the best from their region. The top 16 teams in the world will then compete for the Valorant Champions Tour, which will take place over the course of two weeks, and will crown a global champion.
Who is competing in the Valorant Challengers Tournament in NA?
The qualifiers stage is open for any NA team to join and can be found on Nerd Street Gamers' website. A team captain is responsible for registering the entire team. All players on the team must be Imortal 1 or more in Episode 1 ACT 3 or Episode 2: ACT 1 and be able to prove it. The tournament will cap at 128 teams, and the top eight teams will be invited to the closed qualifiers on February 4-7.
The tournament can be viewed on Valorant NA's Twitch channel, or Nerd Street Gamers' Twitch channel.
