Today, a video appeared on the official Twitter page of the VCT tournament series from Riot Games, which announces the next Masters event. In it, Leo Faria, the head of the VCT series, says that the next Masters in 2024 will be Masters Shanghai, which will take place in the eponymous city in China.

What is VCT Masters?

The competitive series on the professional stage in Valorant is called Valorant Champions Tour. It includes regional tournaments VCT Champions Tour EMEA/Pacific/Americas, this year the game officially launched in China, so most likely in the upcoming seasons, another region will be added to the regional leagues. Masters events are the second most important tournament of the series after the World Championship, with prizes at tournaments such as the recent Masters Tokyo reaching $1,000,000. In 2021 and 2022, Masters was divided into 2 stages, Stage 1 and Stage 2, hence the prize pool was separate. In the current season, Riot Games added a new event VCT 2023: LOCK//IN São Paulo, or replaced one of the Masters stages. Most likely in future years the situation will remain the same, besides regional leagues there will be 2 big tournaments, like LOCK//IN and Masters, and the Valorant Champions World Championship.

Why Shanghai specifically?

As we wrote above, Valorant officially launched in China, which means that Riot Games will focus on the Chinese audience. This is quite logical, considering how many people in China are into video games. Interestingly, this is most likely the only major tournament that will take place in the Chinese region, as the developers try to spread the events around different parts of the world. As it is happening this year: LOCK//IN took place in Brazil, Masters in Japan, and Valorant Champions in America.