VALORANT EMEA 2025 Season – Everything you need to know

The VALORANT Esports EMEA 2025 season is just around the corner! With the changes to the VCT season and addition of new teams, here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming season.

Everything You Need to Know for the EMEA 2025 Season

Powers in-charge of VALORANT Esports are always taking on feedback from fans and players, so there’s a few new additions to the 2025 season across all regions. As with previous years, the EMEA season will be starting with the VCT EMEA Kickoff tournament. It’ll be starting up on Wednesday the 15th January.

This time round, there will be 12 teams in the region, the format returns to a more traditional look rather than the Round Robin style brackets that started off the 2024 season. Top seeds of the event, Futbalist, Vitality, Fnatic and Team Heretics will get first round byes for the Double Eliminatoin bracket.

The opening rounds will feature head to heads between Team Liquid and KOI, Karmine Corp and NaVi, BBL and GiantsX, and newly ascended Apeks will be facing off against rivals Gentle Mates for their opening round. The winners of these opening rounds will be facing against those top seeds, with Apeks’ first match being one to watch.

Up from the Ascension bracket after their win, the team made further headlines with the first player to move from Game Changers to the VCT ecosystem – Game Changers MVP Florescent will be making her debut in EMEA.

Playoffs for EMEA Stages 1 and 2 will now hold eight teams, allowing for more talent to have a shot for the tite. Running Wednesday through Friday, you can catch games live on the official VALORANT EMEA Twitch and YouTube channels. VODs will also be available on both platforms if you miss them happening live. A change for this year is that all playoff games will take place over the weekend, so you can tune in for the biggest moments. You’ll be seeing those decider games take place Friday through Sunday, with Grand Finals reserved for that Championship Sunday.

EMEA 2025 VALORANT Challengers

Challengers is back and better than ever, they’ve gone for a 3 stage format this time, kicking off in March. Changing formats to a 3 stage structure, the top 2 teams from each of the leagues will qualify for the 3 Challengers tournaments to crown a winner:

• Challengers EMEA 1: March 3 – 9
• Challengers EMEA 2: May 19 – 25
• Challengers EMEA 3: September 1 – 9

Only the best teams will get their shot at Ascension to then play for a shot at the next season and their first VCT KICK//OFF. Thanks to the league and challenger points system, consistently high peaks will be rewarded. Stages 1 and 2 will see 12 teams facing off in BO3 round robin groups to get into a double elimination bracket, with Stage 3 integrating the MENA region to have a full 14 team roster playing out Group stage and Double Eliminations playoffs on route to a Grand Final.

The format for Ascension hasn’t quite been revealed, however we know that Game Changers for the EMEA 2025 season will be looking to repeat its successes from 2024. The main change of note is the teams will be competing in a single group rather than the two groups from before. This should allow for a higher number of matches with the teams getting to play more of the other teams. As a result, Game Changers will over double in the number of games seen in the coming year. Ballooning from 20 matches to 45 for the Group Stages.

The VALORANT Premier game mode will continue to be part of the ecosystem for aspiring players to get back their names out there. More info will be coming out closer to the launch date of 2025’s season.