VALORANT Champions Paris Viewer's Guide: Schedule, teams, where to watch, and more

With the biggest VALORANT event of the year right around the corner, there’s a lot to lock in before the action kicks off—schedules, teams, venue details, and more. Here’s your all-in-one guide to VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Valorant Champions.

Schedule

Champions Paris runs from September 12 to October 5. The first eleven days will be the group stage. Four groups, with four teams each, will battle so only two teams from each group will reach the playoff stage. A total of eight teams will make it to the playoffs and the two last weeks of the tournament.

• Group stage: September 12 - 22
• Playoffs: September 25 - October 5

Match times

Each day of Champions Paris features two Best-of-3 (Bo3) matches, except for the Lower Final and Grand Final, which will be played as Best-of-5 (Bo5) showdowns.

Teams & Seeding

A total of 16 teams have qualified for Champions Paris. All four regions send 4 teams each to the event. The teams were each given a seed determined by regional placement. The winners of each region got the first seed, the second placed teams the second seed and the teams qualified by Championship Points got third and fourth seed. The seeding determines which teams will meet in the first rounds of the group stage.

Following is all the teams qualified from each region in their seed order:

Groups drawn

With the conclusion of VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Americas Stage 2, the Champions Paris group draw has been finalized. The only rule for the draw: no teams from the same region can be placed in the same group. This ensures that each group features one team from each region, setting the stage for international matchups right from the start. If you want to know more about the group draw, you can find all of the info about the it in our Champions Paris group draw article.

New map pool

The teams will be competing on the new map pool introduced in Patch 11.04, which includes: Haven, Ascent, Bind, Lotus, Corrode, Sunset, and the newly re-added Abyss.

With Icebox rotated out from act four and Abyss taking its place, squads have just about two weeks to adapt before Champs kicks off. Abyss hasn’t been in the competitive pool since March, making this a major shake-up heading into the biggest tournament of the year. Now the question is: who’s been grinding the new pool the hardest?

Venue Details

For the first time ever, the biggest VALORANT event of the year heads to the iconic city of Paris. Here’s what you need to know about where all the action will go down.

The event will kick off at Les Arènes de Grand Paris Sud – Evry-Courcouronnes where the group stage and the first week of playoffs will take place. At Les Arenes de L’Agora, you can come and go as you please as re-entry is allowed with a stamp. There will be light food and beverage available to buy and cosplay is welcomed as long as it doesn’t cover the face.

The event moves to the legendary Accor Arena for the final three days of Champs. With a capacity of over 20,000, this arena has hosted everything from the Olympic Games to Madonna concerts and now, it's VALORANT's turn. Contrary to the previous venue, Accor Arena will not permit re-entry but plenty of food and beverage will be available.

Prize pool

The biggest event of the year comes with a massive $2,250,000 USD prize pool. Only the top eight teams will claim a share. The Champions winner will take home a whopping $1,000,000, securing not just the trophy but serious bragging rights and a fat paycheck.

Pick'Ems

The VALORANT Pick’Em is back for Champions. As usual, you can score two buddies, a spray, and a title as rewards, but Riot Games is shaking things up with a brand-new feature: Factions.

Ten global creators are stepping up as Faction Leaders for the event. You as a viewer can join a Faction, and your picks will directly contribute to your favorite creator’s path to victory. The creator with the strongest community leaderboard when the event is over will take home THE BELT and become the very first Pick’Ems Faction Champion. Each Faction Leader has also chosen a special in-game item that will be rewarded to their Faction members if they win.

Faction Leaders:

• Tenz
• Tarik
• Sacy
• TcK
• Mixwell
• Laz
• beyAz
• Helydia
• WiPR
• ZeratoR

On-air talent

Riot has revealed all the on-air talent who will be both behind and in front of the camera at Champs. Most of the talent are familiar faces to the crowd. Here are the people who will be guiding the viewers through the big event:

Standout players and teams

As Champs kicks off, there are a handful of standout teams and players who are primed to make a mark in Paris.

Paper Rex are riding high after their VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Masters Toronto 2025 win and clinching a third regional title. The only team to win back to back international events were Fnatic in 2023—but no team has won both a Masters and Champions in the same year. PRX now wants to break that statistic as they look in top shape going into Champs.

Masters Toronto was the first international event in three years that EDward Gaming missed out on. Being the winners of VCT 2024 - Champions 2024, the Chinese team will be coming back to try to defend their title. Zheng "ZmjjKK" Yongkang is also a fan favourite returning to the stage, as one of the strongest duelists in the world. He will be a standout player to follow through the tournament.

Two individual stars to keep tabs on are Ilya "something" Petrov from PRX and Georgio "Keiko" Sanassy from Team Liquid. something led globally in Stage 2 with a massive 1.38 K/D, while Keiko followed closely behind at 1.33. Both of them play on strong teams that have a good chance of going far in the tournament.

Americas looking to make a stand

G2 Esports are another squad coming in hot. They just claimed their third regional title this season and enter Champs as Americas’ top seed. With a stacked roster and momentum on their side, G2 are looking to finally lift their first global trophy. They’ve been dominant in the region — now it’s time to see if they can take over the world stage.

NRG are making their return to international play after a year and a half absence. The squad broke their bad streak by taking down Sentinels, becoming the second seed from the Americas. How they will hold up on the stage in Paris remains to see.

Where to watch

The tournament will be broadcast in multiple languages with the full list of channels shared in the coming weeks.

• Twitch
• Youtube
• TikTok

For all things VALORANT-related, make sure to stay tuned to THESPIKE.GG as we continue to update you with the freshest game and esports news.

Featured Image Source: Riot Games.