What Is VCT? The Valorant Champions Tour Explained
VCT is the Valorant Champions Tour, Riot's official circuit. The four leagues, the Kickoff to Champions calendar, and how to bet the season in crypto.
VCT stands for the Valorant Champions Tour, the official competitive circuit Riot Games runs for Valorant. It is the path a professional team takes from its regional league to the world championship, and it is where almost every Valorant market you will ever bet comes from.
How the VCT is structured
Four leagues sit at the top. Americas, EMEA, Pacific, China. Twelve partnered teams in each, which means forty-eight rosters play the whole year instead of qualifying in and out of it, and by the time October arrives you have watched most of them for nine months. That is a sample size. Esports betting does not always hand you one.
The stages, in order
January starts it. Kickoff is a triple-elimination bracket inside each league, and it settles who flies out to the first international of the year. After that the calendar alternates. Masters, a regional Stage, Masters again, a second Stage. Champions closes the year. In 2026 the two Masters were played in Santiago and London, and Champions runs in Shanghai from 18 October.
What are Championship Points?
Teams collect Championship Points across the year for finishing high in their league and at Masters events. Those points decide the last few Champions slots. This is why a mid-table team fighting for a Stage 2 playoff spot in June is playing for something real, and why those matches are often better priced than the ones with a trophy on the line.
Why the format matters if you are betting it
Partnered leagues mean form is readable. A team that has played twenty maps against the same eleven opponents is a known quantity, and the market prices it accordingly. The uncertainty sits at the internationals, where an EMEA side meets a Chinese side for the first time all year and neither has scrimmed the other's map pool.
Convert any price before you take it. Take a side at 1.80 to win a map. One divided by 1.80 is 0.556, so the market is calling them a 55.6% shot. Their opponent at 2.10 comes out at 47.6%. Add the two and you get 103.2%, and those extra 3.2 points are what the bet costs you before anything else happens.
Where to bet the VCT
Valorant markets run on the Valorant board through the season, priced in Bitcoin, USDT and seven other coins. If you follow more than one title, Counter-Strike shares much of the same betting logic and our Worlds 2026 guide covers the October calendar clash, since Champions and the League of Legends world championship overlap. The rest of the book is on the sportsbook, and a first deposit unlocks the deposit bonus ladder.