Riot announces First Strike Valorant major

From the beginning, it was clear that Valorant was a game built with esports in mind. And with Riot Games seeing such huge success with League of Legends, expectations were always going to be high.

In order to foster a robust competitive ecosystem, the developers stated the importance of letting the scene grow naturally and having it properly reflect the voice of the community.

They did this by allowing third party organizers to run the first wave of tournaments, including the many Valorant Ignition Series events.

With the core pillars of competitive integrity, accessibility and authenticity in mind, Riot have now announced Valorant First Strike – The first major Valorant tournament, taking place across eight regions and using a merit-based qualification system.

This will also be the first tournament run by Riot Games themselves, so expect more hype, bigger production and a chunkier prize pool. Although it is impossible to replicate the atmosphere of a LAN event, First Strike will still give us a taste of what’s to come for Valorant esports.

If you want a shot at glory, you’d better start getting your team together. Regional qualifiers start towards the end of October. Full rules will be shared at a later date, but it seems like in general, you will need to be at least 16 years old and also to have reached Immortal 1 in ranked to compete.

Regional finals for North America, Europe, CIS, Turkey, Asia, Oceania, Brazil and the Middle East will be held from December 3 to December 6. Having listened to community feedback throughout the Ignition Series, Riot are working to further improve the viewing experience ahead of First Strike.

Recent downtime has meant a bunch of swaps and new signings, however professional orgs will now look to finalise their rosters as quickly as possible in order to maximise practice time.

It’s good to finally know what’s next for competitive Valorant and exciting to learn that accessibility is remaining a focus. The opportunity for lesser known, aspiring players to win their way to the top is absent in many existing esports, and with the game still so young, this open format seems like the right approach.