Top North American VALORANT Teams Earn Direct Entry to Challengers One
The top four North American teams from the VALORANT Champions Tour in 2021 will have an advantage in the upcoming NA VCT Challengers One in 2022. These teams will skip the open qualifiers and proceed directly to the eight-week main event, which starts in February. This information was revealed on the qualifier sign-up page of the Nerd Street Gamers website.
The remaining teams in North America will have to compete in two open qualifier brackets, each consisting of 128 teams. The top four teams from each qualifier will advance to the main event. The brackets will feature single-elimination and double-elimination matches. Initially, the bracket will follow single elimination format, but once only 32 teams remain, it will switch to double elimination. All matches in the tournament will be best-of-three. The teams placing fifth to 16th in the first open qualifier will be seeded No. 1 to 12 in the second qualifier.
Sentinels, Envy, Cloud9 Blue, and 100 Thieves were standout teams in 2021. Sentinels dominated by winning both NA Masters One and Masters Two Reykjavík and were the only NA team to participate in all three Masters events and Champions last year. Envy performed consistently well throughout the year and had a remarkable run at Masters Three Berlin, where they reached the grand finals without dropping a single map before falling to Gambit. 100 Thieves also had a solid year and performed strongly at Masters Berlin. Cloud9 Blue excelled during the NA LCQ and became the only team from the region to make it to the playoffs at Champions.
In addition to the four invited teams, eight teams from the open qualifiers will join them in the Challengers One main event. This event will consist of an eight-week round-robin stage, followed by a double-elimination playoffs bracket. The outcome of the playoffs will determine which teams will represent North America at the first Masters event of 2022.
The first open qualifier is scheduled to take place from Thursday, Jan. 27, to Sunday, Jan. 30.
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