VALORANT Challengers starting dates revealed

Riot Games unveiled the starting dates for the Challengers stage of the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021 today.

The announcement came during the Episode Two “Hangout Stream” on the official VALORANT Twitch channel, which showed almost all of the starting dates for each competitive region.

In order of starting date, Latin America Challengers begins on Jan. 26, Brazil and Korea kick off on Jan. 30, North America goes from Feb. 3 to 7, Europe begins on Feb. 4, Southeast Asia starts on Feb. 5, and the CIS begins on Feb. 11. The dates for Japan and the Middle East/North Africa region are still pending.

For those unfamiliar with the format of the Challengers Stage and the Champions Tour, each region will feature a handful of Challengers events that form the path to a Masters event. There will be three Masters events over the course of the year and those will determine who gets the regional spots at the ultimate Champions event.

These future Masters and Champions events will mark the first instance of international competition in the fledgling VALORANT esports ecosystem. But that all begins with the regional Challengers events that start as early as two weeks from now. All of the first Challengers events will feature an open qualifier system as well.

Updated Jan. 15 12:53pm CT: Riot announced today that the EU region will begin on Feb. 4 instead of Feb. 11.