Riot introduces Northern Showdown VALORANT competition to settle Scandinavian beef

Two countries with a rich history of VALORANT competition will be going head-to-head in a fun community challenge during the first week of August to determine who deserves the right to call themselves the VALORANT kings of the north.

The Northern Showdown is the ultimate gaming battle between Norway and Sweden, sponsored by Riot Games, 00NATION, Inferno Online, and the Xbox PC Game Pass. Players, streamers, and other community members will gather on either Team Norway or Team Sweden and play for glory.

Swedish streamer Peak announced the challenge via Reddit on July 28, inviting participants to the Northern Showdown Discord, where interested players can team up ahead of time.

Peak alluded to one of the inspirations for the challenge being the recent release of Norwegian agent Deadlock, who contrasts her Scandinavian counterpart Breach, from Sweden. Peak joked that “Norway has always been in Sweden’s shadow,” and continues to be with a later agent addition into VALORANT.

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The two countries have plenty of serious and not-so-serious points of contention between each other both within and outside of VALORANT, and their close geographical proximity makes it easy to get players together on one server for this fun challenge. Excitingly, there will also be an offline component to the challenge.

The first few official days of matches will be held on Aug. 3rd and 4th, with the final day, Aug. 5th, playing out on “LAN”. Team Norway will play from 00NATION’s headquarters in Oslo, while Team Sweden will head to the Red Bull Gaming Sphere in Stockholm.

Until then, players have already begun teaming up and practicing on the Discord server.

Just in case you aren’t living in Norway or Sweden, players not from either Scandinavian country are welcome to participate. However, the games will be hosted on those servers, and the events will be held in each nation’s capital. If you’re fine playing on high ping to a European server, those with Scandinavian heritage living around the world may be tempted to join in on the fun.