The VALORANT pro scene is kicking back up all over the world for its second official season. VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) 2022 will again start off with the first iteration of Challengers, including the main event and the open qualifiers beginning next week. For the NA squads that topped the VCT 2021, however, they'll be heading into the competition with a small bonus. Four teams will skip the two qualifier rounds and advance directly to the Challengers Stage 1 main event, which takes place in February.

Qualified Teams for VCT Challengers Stage 1

The four NA teams that received direct invites to the VCT Challengers One main stage include: Sentinels (SEN), Team Envy, Cloud9 (C9) Blue, and 100 Thieves (100T). The first three on the list served as the region's representatives during the year-end VALORANT Champions Berlin tournament. Meanwhile, 100T had a strong presence throughout the different stages of VCT 2021, especially during Masters Berlin, earning themselves the fourth direct qualification for the upcoming competition.

Reaching all three Masters events in 2021, Sentinels outclassed the competition at NA Masters One and Masters Two Reykjavik to book their spot at Champions Berlin. This makes SEN a formidable foe that simply cannot be avoided at this year's Challengers Stage 1. Envy also had a great year, advancing all the way to the grand finals at Masters Three Berlin. Though they conceded the final series to EMEA's Gambit, Envy had accumulated enough points to qualify for Champions. Now, they will head straight to the Challengers Stage 1 main event.

Finally, Cloud9 went on the classic C9-brand “gauntlet” or lower bracket run, fighting tooth and nail through the NA Last Chance Qualifiers to secure a spot at Champions. They were also the only NA team to make it out of groups at the international event. While their campaign ultimately ended in disappointment, their LCQ run is still paying dividends to send C9 to the Challengers One main stage in 2022.

VCT Challengers Stage 1 Open Qualifiers and Main Event Format

While the four teams have already qualified, the rest of the region will get to compete in two open qualifier brackets. Each Challengers qualifier will feature a whopping 128 teams, encouraging more high-rated players to join in so that the competitive VALORANT scene can thrive and expand. Only the top four teams from each qualifier will secure a spot in the main event, bringing the total to 12 teams.

Challengers Stage 1 will host both single-elimination and double-elimination formats, with all matchups played as best-of-three series. In each qualifier, teams will play in a single-elimination bracket to start out. When only 32 teams are left, the tournament will switch to a double-elimination bracket.

For the first open qualifier, the teams that rank fifth until 16th (in other words, they have to reach the round of 16) will garner a small advantage heading into the second open qualifier. For the second iteration, these squads will become the No. 1 to 12 seeds in the brackets. This would supposedly help them avoid competing against other strong teams early on in the rounds, but of course, anything can happen at this stage of the competition.

Once the eight qualifying teams have been decided, they and the four invited teams will compete in a round-robin stage for the Challengers Stage 1 main event. This in turn determines their seeding in a double-elimination playoffs bracket, where the top teams would then book their ticket to represent NA at Masters Stage 1.

The first open qualifier kicks off on January 27 (Thursday) and will run until January 30, 2022 (Sunday).