VCT Pacific Kickoff

The third league to begin its 2026 season, Pacific will see the start of its competitive year when VCT Pacific Kickoff 2026 gets up and running on Thursday, January 22nd. The triple-elimination competition will crown the first Pacific champions of 2026, as well as earn Masters Santiago qualification for three sides.

VCT Pacific Kickoff Format

Following a wider change to VCT 2026 formats, Pacific’s Kickoff will now be played out through a triple-elimination for the very first time. The winning team in each of the three brackets will earn a spot at Masters Santiago — the first global event of the year — and the bracket finals will be played back-to-back across the final three days of competition.

Games will be held from Thursday to Sunday each week, with the majority of matchups decided through best-of-three series. The upper, middle, and lower finals, however, will be played as best-of-fives.

VCT Pacific Kickoff Teams

VCT Pacific — played from the S

angam Colosseum in Seoul, South Korea — features organisations from across the Asia-Pacific region. Of the 12 teams included, 10 are semi-permanent partnered teams whose spot in the league is guaranteed, while two are Ascension orgs who had to fight for their chance in tier one.

Partnered teams:

• DetonatioN FocusMe
• DRX
• FULL SENSE
• Gen.G
• Global Esports
• Paper Rex
• Rex Regum Qeon
• T1
• Team Secret
• ZETA DIVISION

Ascension teams:

• VARREL
• Nongshim RedForce

Pacific Kickoff Prize Pool

As was the case in Kickoff events last year, and barring any announcements to the contrary, VCT Pacific Kickoff will feature no monetary prize pool.

Assuming developer Riot Games is to follow a similar distribution to 2025, only Stage 2 regional events will have money up for grabs, while Kickoff and Stage 1 only offer Championship Points and global qualification, as well as the glory associated with winning the event, which goes without saying.

Championship Points are tallied throughout the year based on regional and international performance. Historically, two of each region’s four Champs representatives are awarded based on Championship Points.

The winning team will be granted 4 Championship Points, the runners-up 3, third place 2, fourth place 1, and the rest of the teams will get none.

VCT Pacific Kickoff Teams to Watch

Unsurprising for the team that was one of the strongest worldwide — and made minimal changes in the off season — Paper Rex will enter Kickoff as the nailed-on favourites to win the tournament.

They finally clinched a global title last year and followed it up by winning Stage 2 with relative ease, though their fourth-place finish at Champs was enough to trigger a switch; rookie of the year PatMen making way for invy.

Elsewhere, T1 are a side to watch having picked up former Gen.G IGL Munchkin for what’s though to be his last season competing before he heads to military service. The South Korean player led Gen.G to a Masters Shanghai trophy in 2024 but failed to replicate that success last season. T1 themselves won Masters Bangkok early in the year, but faltered as the season progressed.

Now, the combination will see one of Korea’s most celebrated players joining the country’s most famous org, hoping to lead them to glory in his final playing days.

Gen.G themselves are largely unchanged following Munchkin’s departure, with his spot taken by the returning Lakia, who will take on the IGL role for the team. Lakia himself spent almost 1.5 years out following an injury-induced break at the end of the 2024 season, as Pacific Kickoff will mark his return to action for almost 500 days.

Global Esports are a dark horse. They’ve spent years as bottom-half strugglers and have had little to celebrate since joining the league during the VCT’s inception in 2023. Now though, with a new-look roster featuring the bafflingly discarded PatMen, led by outspoken coach FrosT, GE finally have a project worth following.

Like always, DRX cannot be ruled out. Like the other large Korean orgs, DRX also keep most of their roster together, aside from rookie Hermes’ introduction to replace the retiring Flashback. The rest of the roster looked incredible late last year, peaking with a third-place finish at VALORANT Champions Paris.

RRQ, the surprise challengers last year, will also fancy their chances at booking a Santiago spot. However, their up and down form last year, particularly that of their sometimes-world-class duelist Jemkin, makes it difficult to predict how they’ll look going into Pacific Kickoff 2026.

Where to watch VCT Pacific Kickoff

VCT Pacific Kickoff 2026 can be watched through Riot Games’ official channels. The league has its own accounts on YouTube and Twitch where viewers can tune in live.