Super Subs and Cinderella Runs: The Biggest Upsets of VCT 2025

Competition at the highest level of the VALORANT Champions Tour has been electric throughout the 2025 VCT season, with tightly contested matches at every international event. Staying at the top of the competition has never been easy, and 2025 saw some iconic upsets against the best of the best.

In particular, XLG Esports, Fnatic, and Wolves Esports proved that they were able to deliver outstanding performances and claim victory even when the odds were stacked against them, becoming the underdogs in our picks for the biggest upsets of the VCT 2025 season.

Sentinels vs Xi Lai Gaming: the fate of their 2025 season on the line

2025 was a challenging year for Sentinels, coming off the back of losing two of the game’s most storied veterans in Tyson "TenZ" Ngo and Gustavo "Sacy" Rossi. Despite having to start anew with Sean "bang" Bezerra and Marshall "N4RRATE" Massey stepping in, expectations for the VCT 2024 - Masters Madrid champions were still sky high.

Sentinels went through periods of growth throughout the season and seemed to fully pick up their stride during VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Americas Stage 2. At VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Valorant Champions, an opening loss to VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - EMEA Stage 2 runner-ups GIANTX saw Sentinels immediately face elimination in Group B.

Their opponent was XLG, the winners of VCT 2024 - Ascension China. The Chinese squad made their first appearance on the international stage in VALORANT Champions Tour 2025 - Masters Toronto 2025, yet failed to win a game in the tournament. Because of this performance, XLG were seen as one of the weakest teams coming into Champions, even with a new player James "NoMan" Man replacing Zhang "Midi" Jiajun , XLG’s emergency stand-in at Toronto.

Abyss went the way of Sentinels, yet XLG made Lotus their stomping ground, leading 9-3 at the half. Despite pulling off a string of rounds to bring the game to 12-11, crucial mistakes from the Sentinels squad gave the map win to XLG. The fate of both teams’ season lay in Haven.

Heroics helped Sentinels hold on in the first half, yet ultimately collapsed to XLG in the final half which gave them the series win. Few could have predicted that Sentinels would utterly bomb out at Champions, especially to an inexperienced XLG. Such an upset marked a disappointing finish to Sentinels’ otherwise solid year, sparking a complete rebuild for 2026.

Fnatic vs Paper Rex: an unlikely hero steps up

The Upper Semifinal at Champions saw a rematch of the Masters Toronto Grand Final between Fnatic and Paper Rex. Not only are they two of the most well-known organisations in VALORANT history, but both teams delivered an absolutely cinematic match in the Grand Final, igniting excitement for their rematch on the biggest stage of the year.

Despite PRX’s victory, both teams were neck-and-neck during the final and have continued improving since then, tearing through their groups respectively. Yet a few hours prior to the start of the highly anticipated match, Fnatic announced that Alfajer was dealing with health issues and would not be able to compete. Domagoj "Doma" Fancev, who played for Fnatic’s first roster back in 2021, would be standing in for him.

Alfajer has consistently been at the top of the VALORANT world since his debut in 2022, yet his 2025 form has been exceptional: if Fnatic were able to reach a map 5 in the Grand Final against PRX, Alfajer was likely to break the international kill record. Losing such a key part of success for the team tipped the scales heavily in favour of PRX.

With Doma being called up the night before and arriving in Paris three hours before the match, the team reaching a map 3 by destroying PRX on Haven was impressive in and of itself. Yet, Alfajer’s absence was greatly apparent in the first half of Lotus with Fnatic going down 9-1. In a desperate spot, the unlikeliest of heroes stepped up for Fnatic: Doma.

The stand-in clutched a 1v2 to kick off one of the greatest comebacks at this tournament, as Fnatic used that momentum to win the next 11 rounds in a row and end the map at 13-9. Fnatic’s upset win against the winners of the previous tournament goes to show how significant their strong team structure and Jake "Boaster" Howlett’s calling are in dire situations like this.

Wolves vs GEN.G: the Cinderella run continues?

Another Upper Semifinal match this year delivered a massive upset, this time at Masters Toronto. While memorable for its Grand Final, a major talking point of the tournament was Wolves’ Cinderella run. A team of inexperienced players making their international debut, Wolves was also the last seed from China, still widely regarded as the weakest region, and was therefore not expected to have much impact on the international stage.

Wolves surprised everyone with a major upset win against a shaky Team Heretics, and carried that momentum through to their opponents in Bilibili Gaming and Rex Regum Qeon, locking in their position in the Upper Semifinal.

Here stood the team’s hardest challenge to date: Gen.G Esports. The Korean juggernauts blitzed through the early stages of the tournament, beating out the eventual finalists PRX and Fnatic, and looking like the clear tournament favourites up to this point. Wolves were on a bit of a miracle run at the time, but it seemed likely that that run would come to an end at the hands of GEN.G.

The first half of Split certainly fit that narrative, with Wolves unable to breach GEN.G’s defensive setups and ending the half 3-9 down. Yet the Chinese team clawed their way back and managed to gain an early lead in the series by turning the map around 13-11. Sunset featured the same strong GEN.G start on their map pick, but once again, Wolves pulled through, winning eight rounds in a row to win the map 13-9.

A widely unexpected result, Wolves’ upset against GEN.G was clearly spearheaded by their IGL Pong "SiuFatBB" Ka Hei, a player who shot to stardom throughout the tournament with his charisma and infectious energy on stage. His consistent motivating of his teammates and impressive calls were able to capitalise on GEN.G’s failing mental fortitude in the second halves of both maps. With this win, Wolves secured a top three finish at Toronto, placing higher than any Chinese team other than the 2024 World Champions EDward Gaming at an international event.

The teams on each side of these upsets will have learned valuable lessons and have since retooled their rosters coming into 2026. Rematches might be on the cards in Santiago, London, or Shanghai, and these upset results could very much be vastly different.

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