The Valorant Champions Tour 2022 Stage 1 Challengers 1 is all set to begin in North America from February 11 with a total of twelve teams in contention for the only two spots at the Stage 1 Masters event, to be held later in April. The Masters event will be held on LAN at an undisclosed location (will be amended once declared) and will headline the first Major tournament of VCT 2022 pro circuit.
With that being said, VCT Stage 1 Challengers 1 in North America features a list of 12 teams who will battle out for the spots at the Stage 1 Masters. These 12 teams would be divided into two groups with six teams each. From every group top four teams would advance onto the playoffs while the bottom two would get eliminated from the contest.
The playoffs will feature a double elimination bracket except the losers and grand final, where the winners will be determined over a best of 5 result.
Cloud9, Sentinels, Team Envy and 100 Thieves scored direct invitations while the rest 8 made it to the main event from the Open Qualifiers. Rise Nation is one among the notable teams who were able to contain their consistency from the 2021 pro season and eventually battled out the Open Qualifier 2 to move ahead while a new face joins the competition, The Knights who never found success in the previous iteration of the event.
Led by Anthony “vanity” Malaspina, Cloud9 earned a direct invite to the event, thanks to their valiant effort showcased at the Valorant Champions 2021 where the Los Angeles based organization were denied a spot further by Team Liquid in the Quarterfinals. If you take a deeper look into the Stage 1 Challengers 1, some big names missed out their chance on the qualifiers including TSM FTX, Gen.G Esports and T1 where the latter seemed to have entered a fiasco with their coach David Dennis having tried to give his team some piece of information which violated rule 7.2.11 of Valorant’s Competitive Rulebook.
Below you can find the list of the twelve teams for the VCT 2022 Stage 1 Challengers 1:
Invitational teams:
- Sentinels
- Cloud9 Blue
- Team Envy
- 100 Thieves
Teams qualified through VCT NA Open Qualifiers 1:
- Version1
- XSET
- The Gaurd
- NRG
Teams qualified through VCT NA Open Qualifiers 2:
- Evil Geniuses
- Knights
- Luminosity Gaming
- Rise
