Teams accepted into VALORANT’s partnership program will be revealed this next week according to the president of esports for Riot Games John Needham.
The Brazilian powerhouse team LOUD was crowned the second VALORANT Champions in Instanbul, Turkey, on Sept. 18, and an interview with Needham on stream followed the series finale. Needham revealed some exciting stuff about the upcoming year of competitive VALORANT, including an event in Japan as well as when teams will be announced into the partnership program.
For 2023 Riot is revamping the VALORANT Champions Tour by combining regions and separating the leagues. There will be three major regions with ten teams in each major region to make 30 total partnered teams. This narrows the number of organizations competing in VALORANT drastically, especially when the Latin and North American will be combining to form one region. Certain teams have already dropped the rosters they once had as the number of teams qualified for partnership began to dwindle.
However, there are still no teams confirmed to be partnered yet, but that will change sometime this upcoming week. It seems that Riot will try and inform the 30 teams and get them onboarded as soon as possible to avoid potential leaks. Once teams are revealed, the off-season for VALORANT officially begins, and teams will have until October to lock in their teams, according to a report by Geroge Geddes. From there, the teams will have time to prep and train until the international kickoff tournament begins in February and will be held in São Paulo, Brazil.
