Team Secret, RRQ Philippines selected for newly formatted Valorant Champions Tour

MANILA, Philippines — Team Secret and RRQ Philippines will banner Filipino Valorant players as they compete in Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2023's Pacific League beginning with VCT 2023's opening tournament in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the first quarter of 2023.

Just before the conclusion of this year's Valorant Champions, Riot Games announced the new format it would be using for Valorant Esports moving forward. Beginning 2023, the Champions Tour will now be divided into three International Leagues: EMEA, the Americas and PACIFIC with a total of 30 teams (10 teams per League) being chosen by Riot Games.

"We invited teams by sharing a briefing deck and they all had the opportunity to create presentations, with the best ones invited for interviews. Following these we then made the decision on the ten teams that would join us for next year and beyond." said Riot Games in a statement announcing the member teams of the Pacific League.

Team Secret has been one of the most dominant teams in the country since the first year of the VCT in 2021. The formerly BREN Esports squad, never missed the Southeast Asian qualifiers in 2021 and reached the quarter finals of the first Valorant Champions.

RRQ Philippines, under sister organization RRQ of Indonesia, has a full Filipino squad for Valorant. The team managed to reach the group stages after surviving the play-ins of the Asia Pacific Regional stage and won the recently concluded Predator League 2022 for Valorant.

Both teams will have a tenure of two years in the International League. Their performance in the Pacific League could earn them their places in Valorant Masters and Valorant Champions, respectively.

Other teams may qualify for the International Leagues via the Challengers circuit and be promoted by coming out on top of the Ascension tournaments. With each promoted teams per year, the league's total number of teams will expand from a total of 30 teams to 42 teams by 2027.

VCT 2023 will kick off its new format with its largest tournament to date in Sao Paulo, Brazil in the first quarter of 2023. After the tournament, teams will compete in their respective leagues to qualify for Valorant Masters, which will take place in June 2023.