VALORANT Champions Shanghai Opens on the 24th: Pacific's 4 Teams Placed in Groups, First Matchups Set

The 2026 VALORANT Champions Shanghai opens on September 24. 16 teams will compete for a $1 million first prize, and the 4 Pacific teams were each placed in a different one of the 4 groups.

Translated from Korean with AI assistance. Read the original. Sources and original publication dates are retained.

The winning team takes 44% of the total prize pool. Of the $2.25 million total, the champion's share is $1 million, and dividing 100 by 225 gives 44.4%. The 2026 VALORANT Champions Shanghai is a tournament in which 16 teams play from September 24 to October 18. Because the 4 Pacific representatives were split across 4 different groups, no Pacific teams will face each other in the group stage.

Champions Shanghai schedule: opens September 24, final on October 18

Archive photo · A real photo of the dark interior of a large esports arena, taken from above the stands. A large LED screen on stage shows a man's face and an 'Rb' mark, an FPX logo is visible at center stage, and many spectators are holding up phones. / Photo = Wikimedia Commons (Emriquet), CC BY-SA 4.0

Riot Games' official announcement shows the tournament opens on September 24 and ends with the final on October 18. The group stage runs for 11 days, through October 4. 16 teams in all take part, 4 from each of 4 regions: the Americas, China, EMEA and Pacific. This tournament decides this season's VALORANT world champion.

The opening date was reported differently by different outlets. VLR.gg's September 6 group draw article lists the opening as the 23rd. Riot's official announcement issued afterward and the current official schedule both say the 24th.

Pacific's 4 teams: group placements and first-match dates

Pacific's No. 1 seed is Global Esports. Dot Esports reports that in the Stage 2 final on September 6, the team beat Nongshim RedForce 3-2 to win the franchise's first VCT Pacific title. Runner-up Nongshim received the No. 2 seed. Paper Rex and T1 earned their spots through championship points. Here, a seed is only a tournament entry seed; it does not indicate a world power ranking or the final Stage 2 standings.

Pacific teams' group placements and first matchups (as of 23:00 on 2026.09.23, Korea date)

Seed	Team	Group	Group opponents	First opponent	First match
1	Global Esports	B	LOUD·EDward Gaming·Team Vitality	Team Vitality	September 26
2	Nongshim RedForce	D	Karmine Corp·NRG·Xi Lai Gaming	NRG	September 25
3	Paper Rex	C	TYLOO·Team Liquid·G2 Esports	Team Liquid	September 24
4	T1	A	100 Thieves·JD Gaming·FUT Esports	100 Thieves	September 27

Pacific matches run on four consecutive days: Paper Rex on the 24th, then Nongshim on the 25th, Global Esports on the 26th and T1 on the 27th. We could not reconfirm the exact match start times from an official announcement that specifies the time zone, so they are not included in this article.

2 losses means elimination; top 2 in each group reach the playoffs

Every group stage match is a best-of-3 (first to 2 wins). A team is eliminated after taking 2 losses, so losing the first match still leaves one more chance. The top 2 of the 4 teams in each group advance, sending 8 teams in total to the playoffs. No match results are in yet.

Every Pacific team opens against a representative of another region. Nongshim's first opponent is the Americas' NRG, and T1 meets 100 Thieves first. Chinese teams such as Group A's JD Gaming and Group B's EDward Gaming play in their home country. A match between two Pacific teams could come at the earliest in the playoffs.

Champions Shanghai prize pool is $2.25 million, with $1 million for the champion

Insider Gaming and PEL Sports both reported a total prize pool of $2.25 million and a first prize of $1 million. The breakdown by placement has not been confirmed. We also could not find an official Riot source that divides the prize money by placement in this check. The prize money goes to the teams, so it is different from players' individual earnings.

We could not confirm an official announcement of each team's final player roster. As of the day before the opening, the margin each team has left is 1 loss.

Related official sites

VALORANT Esports official website and schedule — check match schedules and results
Champions Shanghai official tournament records — check participating teams and group records
VALORANT Esports official YouTube — VALORANT Esports official channel

Featured image · Archive photo · Not an on-site photo of the match covered in this article · Photo = Wikimedia Commons (David Jiang), CC BY-SA 4.0