All eyes are on North America heading into the third stage of VALORANT Champions Tour. Following the coronation of Sentinels and the sudden rise of Version1 at Master Two Reykjavik, NA has become a must-watch region as the inaugural year of VCT nears its dramatic end.
Prior VCT results mean very little to the vast field of NA teams, though, since every squad will have to run through the open qualifiers to reach Challengers One. The only exceptions are the Reykjavik representatives, Sentinels and V1, who will start the open qualifiers with a bye to the round of 32. Those two teams will each only need two wins to make it to the main event. The surviving eight teams from the open qualifiers will advance to Challengers One.
The open qualifiers begin on July 1 with round-of-128 matches. The first sets of matches will begin at 4pm CT, according to the qualifier sign-up page on Battlefy. The official seeding and bracket have not been announced yet, but it’s a given that teams that have earned VCT points already through the first two stages will have a high seed.
The format for Stage Three is similar to Stage Two’s. The eight teams that reach the Challengers One main event will duke it out in a double-elimination bracket with the top four moving on to the NA Challengers Playoffs. The bottom four from Challengers One will directly qualify for Challengers Two and will be joined by four more teams from another open qualifier. Challengers Two will produce four more teams for the playoffs. The top three finishing teams at the playoffs will advance to Masters Three Berlin.
The matches will be played on Patch 3.0, with Breeze now officially added to the map pool as part of a new pick-and-ban process. KAY/O won’t be available during Challengers One but will be playable starting with the Challengers Two open qualifiers.
Where to watch NA VCT Stage Three Challengers One open qualifiers
An official broadcast schedule and list of streams has not been made available yet. But similar to previous VCT open qualifiers, there will be a mix of streams on various channels.
Official streams with casters will be watchable for some of the more high-profile matches, likely on the VALORANT NA Esports Twitch channel as well as Nerd Street Gamers. Co-streamers such as Shroud and Myth will likely be hosting watch parties as well. Additionally, specific players or teams might stream their own viewpoints, obviously on heavy delay for the sake of competition.
We’ll update this section thoroughly when a schedule for official streams has been announced.
Make sure to follow us on YouTube for more esports news and analysis.
