NAVI announce “Road to VALORANT” academy project

After a failed attempt to qualify for the VCT 2022 Champions Istanbul, Natus Vincere announced a restructuring of their VALORANT division, beginning with the departure of three players from their main roster: Denis "dinkzj" Tkachev, Mikhail "Duno" Fokin and Nikolai "zeddy" Lapko.

Top candidates discovered by the academy's new program will join Kirill "Cloud" Nehozhin and Artur "7ssk7" Kyourshin in the Ukrainian organization. NAVI is searching players between the ages of 16 and 19 who live in Europe and are not affiliated with any organization.

"Using the example of our CS:GO academy, we are confident we can equip players with qualities necessary for the club, so that they can make the main team in the future. The Academy will allow us to discover new talents in Eastern Europe and Ukraine. We at NAVI need to develop our own scene, which is what we are setting out to do in the near future." NAVI Head of Esports Amiran ‘ami’ Rekhviashvili said in his statament about Road to VALORANT project.

This new VALORANT endeavor in NAVI, created by ami in 2019, uses a similar approach in CS:GO. In CS:GO NAVI sold Ilya "m0NESY" Osipov from the academy team NAVI Junior to G2 Esports, while Valerii "b1t" Vakhovskyi made it onto the main roster .

The Ukrainian team joined VALORANT arena in 2021, but they haven't had the same level of success there as they have in other games. NAVI failed to go past the first round of the VCT 2022 EMEA Challengers, and finishing fifth-sixth in the VCT 2022 EMEA Last Chance Qualifier for VCT 2022 Champions Istanbul.

NAVI roster is now:

Dmitry "SmartSeven" Smartselov (Coach)