Riot Games reveal three new Ignition Series VALORANT tournaments

There has never been a better time than now to follow the VALORANT esports scene. Since Riot Games announced their Ignition Series partnership program, there has been a tournament for VALORANT teams to play in almost every day and in different parts of the world. Riot Games’ Global VALORANT Esports Strategy Lead, Kasra Jafroodi, expressed the company’s commitment to continuously grow the game’s competitive scene. The recent announcement echoes his statement, with six Ignition Series tournaments coming our way.

We already know three of them already as they were announced during the past couple of days, namely the VALORANT Vitality European Open, the ORDER Oceanic VALORANT Open, and the RAGE VALORANT JAPAN Tournament. The latter offers ten times the prize pool, over $46,000 USD, compared to the organization’s first event, the RAGE VALORANT JAPAN INVITATIONAL.

As for the VALORANT Vitality European Open, we already got to know the 8 progressed teams that will compete on July 10th, 2020 for a piece of that €15,000 prize pool. The ORDER Oceanic VALORANT Open offers up to 1,024 teams the chance to compete for a $10,000 USD prize pool.

The announcement includes three new tournaments for other regions. They are the WePlay! VALORANT Invitational, the PAX Arena VALORANT Invitational, and the Mandatory Cup. Riot Games are taking a new approach with these tournaments as well as the WePlay! VALORANT Invitational and the Mandatory Cup are both covering EMEA, and not Europe and MENA separately. While the PAX Arena VALORANT Invitational is coming to entertain North American VALORANT fans.

The WePlay! VALORANT Invitational matches the biggest prize pool we have seen to date in a VALORANT competition, the T1 x NSG Showdown, at $50,000. However, this time around it is for the EMEA region instead of North America. The event will feature six invited teams, and two qualifier spots for teams who want to prove themselves against top competitors. The six invited teams as per the organizer’s announcement are Ninjas in Pyjamas, G2 Esports, forZe eSports, Prodigy, PartyParrots, and fish123.

Once we have our eight teams confirmed, they will go through a Swiss Bracket group stage, with the top four ranked teams going forward to the single-elimination bracket. Every match in the WePlay! VALORANT Invitational will be a best-of-3.

The Open Qualifiers will take place on July 13th, 2020, and July 14th, 2020, with the event running every day up to June 19th, 2020.

The PAX Arena VALORANT Invitational - powered by Seagate is more of a showcase tournament. It will feature 16 professional VALORANT teams, in addition to 4 squads formed from content creators and influencers. Each of these 20 teams will try to prove themselves and compete against each other for the $25,000 USD prize pool up for grabs. The tournament will take place between July 22nd, 2020, and July 26th, 2020, live streamed on the PAXArena Twitch channel.

The Mandatory Cup offers 128 European teams with a Platinum 1 minimum rank to join the tournament. It features a €15,000 prize pool, and considering anyone can get in, we are bound to see fierce competition. The Mandatory Cup will kick off on July 31st, 2020 and run through till the August 2nd, 2020

There are no signs of slowing down from Riot Games in terms of supporting the VALORANT esports community. What do you think of the newly announced Ignition Series tournaments? What regions do you think will surprise us with their level of play? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below!