If your five-stack in Singapore has been grinding ranked with pro dreams, VCT Pacific 2027 opens a route that wasn’t there before. Riot Games is replacing Stage 1 and Stage 2 of its Asia-Pacific (APAC) league with regional Open Qualifiers and two Cups. Any Open team that qualifies for Kickoff or a Cup receives a fixed US$100,000 per event.
Some background helps here. VCT (VALORANT Champions Tour) is Riot’s top-flight circuit for VALORANT, and VCT Pacific is the APAC league that sends teams to the global Masters and Champions events. Partnered teams are organisations Riot selects for long-term places, and until now the league centred on them. According to Riot’s release, partner status in 2027 guarantees exactly one thing, a seat at Kickoff, and every later result has to be earned.
Three Cities, Three Global Tickets
Kickoff stays at the start of the year and moves to Bangkok, Thailand, where the top three teams qualify for Masters Seoul. Cup 1 in Manila, Philippines leads to Masters Valencia, and Cup 2 in Tokyo, Japan is the road to Champions Austin. Riot first named those host cities at Champions Shanghai this year. All three events run fully on LAN, so teams compete in person on site rather than online.
Riot calls these 12-team events the pinnacle of VCT Pacific. The more important change for most readers sits beneath them: a new layer of regional competition. Any team meeting Riot’s criteria can enter it, including Premier teams (squads from VALORANT‘s in-game team competition mode) and organisations without a partner deal.
Kickoff: Eight Seats Gone, Four Open
Kickoff is the only tournament where partnered teams get a guaranteed slot, so its 12 places split into 8 partner teams and 4 Open teams. Singapore’s own Paper Rex sits in that partner group, as covered when Riot named its eight partnered teams for 2027. The four open places go to teams that fight through Open Qualifiers and then playoffs in selected regions.
Those routes have official names: the VCT Pacific Kickoff Korea Qualifier, the VCT Pacific Kickoff Japan Qualifier, the VCT Pacific Kickoff SEA Qualifier and the VCT Pacific Kickoff LCQ. SEA stands for Southeast Asia, and LCQ means Last Chance Qualifier, a final bracket for teams that missed a direct route.
The Kickoff LCQ is a four-team bracket made up of two South Asian teams, one Oceania team and the runner-up of the SEA Kickoff Playoffs. That last rule matters for players here. A Southeast Asian team that loses the SEA final still gets a second shot at Bangkok.
Riot said its 2027 Kickoff Qualifiers would begin later this year. Any team aiming for Bangkok should keep an eye on Riot’s official channels for the regional sign-up details.
The Long Road to a Cup
Riot is clear on one point: regional Playoffs are the only way into a Cup. Most open teams start in the Open Qualifiers, and each region runs several of them. A team that crashes out can sign up for the next one and try again. Riot says it hopes smaller teams will treat these qualifiers as a practice ground for climbing the ranks, which is a generous framing of losing on a Saturday afternoon. It’s a fair one, though, because each loss leads to another attempt.
Above the Open Qualifiers sit the Play-ins, which decide which teams take the Top 4 seeds at regional Playoffs. Teams that reached Kickoff or Cup 1 get automatic Play-in spots. Any team that makes Masters Seoul or Masters Valencia skips straight into the Top 4 of its next Playoff. Riot gives an example: if two Thai teams reach Masters Seoul, the following Thai Play-ins would send only two teams to the Thailand Playoffs.
At each regional Playoff, 8 teams fight for Cup places. In Riot’s words, “Nothing is guaranteed.”
12 Cup Slots, Split Seven Ways
Riot calls APAC the VCT territory with the most regions to accommodate, and the Cup slots reflect that. Korea and Japan get 3 each, Southeast Asia gets 2, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam get 1 each, and the Pacific LCQ gets 1. Riot says the allocation is designed so Open teams can still qualify even if every partner team in their region also makes it.
For a Singapore team, the two Southeast Asia slots are the number to watch. Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam have their own slots, so the Southeast Asia bracket holds two places of its own. That makes it the clearest direct route to Manila or Tokyo on offer here.
South Asia and Oceania have no direct Cup slot. They go through the Pacific LCQ, which runs right after the Playoffs with eight teams: two from South Asia, one from Oceania, Vietnam’s second seed, and the second and third seeds from Thailand and Indonesia. Only the winner reaches the Cup. It’s the steepest climb in the system, and players in Chennai or Sydney know it.
Partners Can Fall Too
The headline twist is that partnered teams can drop down the ladder. A partner that fails to reach Masters Seoul from Kickoff, or Masters Valencia from the Manila Cup, falls into the Play-ins. If it finishes at the bottom there, it goes back through Open Qualifiers like everyone else.
For the first time, a ranked five-stack and a franchise could meet in the same qualifier.
The US$100,000 arrives only after a team qualifies for Kickoff or a Cup, on top of a shot at the prize pool. Riot frames that payment as support for strong performance whatever a team’s partnership status. It’s a meaningful cushion for a homegrown squad heading to a LAN.
📍 Kickoff: Bangkok, Thailand · 8 partner teams and 4 Open teams · top 3 qualify for Masters Seoul
📍 Cup 1: Manila, Philippines · qualifies teams for Masters Valencia
📍 Cup 2: Tokyo, Japan · qualifies teams for Champions Austin
💰 Open team payout: US$100,000 fixed per event for any Open team that qualifies for Kickoff or a Cup
🎮 Who can enter Open Qualifiers: All teams meeting Riot’s criteria, including Premier and non-partnered teams
If you’ve ever joked with your duo about going pro, 2027 is the year the joke gets a bracket. Read the full breakdown of the VCT 2027 global structure on VALORANT Esports, and watch that space for the regional Kickoff Open Qualifiers. Lock in your five, because Bangkok has four open seats!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of Riot Games.
Read us first on Google: add DANAMIC as a preferred source and our stories show up more in your Top Stories and AI results.
