The new Valorant Champions Tour season kicked off with matches in the Chinese region at the Kickoff tournament, but exciting games are returning to other competitive regions, including Europe — VCT 2025: EMEA Kickoff. In this article, we've gathered all the essential information, and even more, to make it convenient for you to follow the battles of the best European teams for slots at Masters Bangkok throughout the next month.
In this article:
General Information About the Tournament
VCT 2025: EMEA Kickoff is a regional tournament held in Berlin at the Riot Games Arena and will be the opening event of the competitive season in the European region. A similar tournament will be held in every region. It is a closed event where only teams partnered with Riot Games, the tournament organizers, participate.
Event Date and Format
VCT 2025: EMEA Kickoff will start on January 15, four days later than in the Chinese region. The tournament winner will be determined on February 9. The entire event will take place offline at the Riot Games Arena in Berlin, Germany. Last year also started with a Kickoff tournament, but this time its format has changed — all teams will begin their journey in the playoffs with a double-elimination bracket. Four of the twelve teams will have an advantage over others, starting from the second round due to their achievements in the previous season (qualification for Champions 2024). All matches, except the lower bracket final and grand final, will be played in a best-of-three format, while the final matches will be best-of-five.
Participating Teams
As mentioned earlier, 12 partner teams are taking part in the event. The list of participating teams for VCT 2025: EMEA Kickoff is as follows:
- BBL Esports
- Fnatic
- FUT Esports
- GIANTX
- Karmine Corp
- KOI
- Natus Vincere
- Team Heretics
- Team Liquid
- Team Vitality
- Gentle Mates (Ascension 2023)
- Apeks (Ascension 2024)
Team Seeding
The tournament is set to begin on January 15, and the organizers have already revealed the schedule and seeding for the upcoming event. Below, you can see how the playoff stage matchups were formed.
As previously mentioned, four teams — Team Vitality, Fnatic, Team Heretics, and FUT Esports — will skip the first playoff round and go straight to the quarterfinals due to their qualification for Champions 2024.
Favorites and Outsiders
After an intense transfer window, it is difficult to determine clear favorites and outsiders for the tournament, as most of the updated rosters have not yet played a single match. Their debut will take place at one of the most important tournaments of the year. In our opinion, the main favorites are Team Heretics and Team Vitality. Both teams showed decent results last season, and after it ended, Team Vitality strengthened their roster by signing Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev and former world champion Felipe "Less" Basso. Meanwhile, Team Heretics, who placed second at Champions 2024, retained their entire roster, which gives them an advantage over other teams this season.
It's hard to name clear outsiders, as teams that struggled in 2024 have changed their core players. However, we believe that one of these three teams — Gentle Mates, KOI, or GIANTX — will finish near the bottom, as they have some of the least experienced and weakest rosters compared to other teams.
We would also like to highlight a dark horse — Apeks. The team only recently entered VCT through Ascension but could surprise their opponents this year with their unconventional approach.
Tournament Prizes
Since these are regional qualifiers, Riot Games, as in previous years, has not allocated a prize pool. Instead, the teams will compete for two invitations to the upcoming Masters Bangkok and EMEA Points, which will be crucial for qualifying for the world championship in the future. The prizes will be distributed as follows:
- 1st place: Masters Bangkok invitation + 3 EMEA Points
- 2nd place: Masters Bangkok invitation + 2 EMEA Points
- 3rd place: 1 EMEA Point
- 4th place: 1 EMEA Point
- 5th-6th places: No prize
- 7th-8th places: No prize
- 9th-12th places: No prize
You can follow the tournament and all events at VCT 2025: EMEA Kickoff in our dedicated section, where we will promptly cover all the latest news and provide up-to-date statistics.
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