Riot Cuts VCT Partner Slots to 32 as Cloud9 and DRX Lose Their Seats

Riot Games has begun telling organizations whether they will be partners in the VALORANT Champions Tour for 2027 and 2028, cutting each of the circuit’s four regions from 10 partner teams to eight and leaving established organizations including Cloud9 and KIWOOM DRX outside the guaranteed-revenue tier.

Riot has not published the list. Sheep Esports reported that teams began receiving the decisions on Oct. 19 and is keeping a running list based on sources and team announcements. As of Monday afternoon it named all eight partners in the Americas, EMEA and China and seven in Pacific.

In the Americas, that list comprises LOUD, Sentinels, KRÜ Esports, NRG, G2 Esports, LEVIATÁN, MIBR and 100 Thieves. In EMEA it comprises Team Heretics, BBL Esports, Team Vitality, Team Liquid, Fnatic, Gentle Mates, Karmine Corp and FUT Esports, and in Pacific it includes Paper Rex, T1, Gen.G, Team RRQ, FULL SENSE, Crazy Raccoon and ZETA Division. In China, EDward Gaming, Bilibili Gaming, JD Gaming, TYLOO, All Gamers, Trace Esports, Weibo Gaming and Xi Lai Gaming announced their selection, as reported by The Esports Advocate. Outside China, many of those names rest on Sheep’s sources rather than on announcements by the teams.

Several of the organizations left out said so themselves. In the Americas, Cloud9, ENVY, FlyQuest, LYON and M80 announced that they had not been selected, according to a tracker kept by The Esports Radar, as did Barça eSports and GIANTX in EMEA and KIWOOM DRX and Nongshim RedForce in Pacific. Sheep reported that FURIA and Shopify Rebellion were also left out in the Americas, as was NAVI in EMEA, and that FunPlus Phoenix, Nova Esports, Titan Esports Club and Wolves Esports lost their partner status in China. Movistar KOI, whose EMEA agreement Riot terminated in 2025, was among the applicants not selected, according to Sheep.

The cut was announced in advance, and the format around it is changing too.

Riot announced on April 8 that VCT would move to a tournament model in 2027 with a new two-year partnership cycle, as previously reported by The Esports Advocate. Under that model, partners receive a guaranteed annual base payment, a performance bonus, an in-game team capsule and direct seeding into the later rounds of open qualifiers. Riot said in June that partners also get “direct entry into Kickoff,” the season opener, where they fill eight of 12 seats in the Americas, EMEA and Pacific. China’s Kickoff field adds two visitor teams and two open qualifiers to its eight partners. After that, Riot’s Oct. 15 schedule announcement said, “advancement is about performance.” Partners and open teams reach the new Cups, Masters and Champions through the same open qualifiers, with partners entering in later rounds. Riot promises more than 50 tournaments across 15 cities, with Kickoff qualifiers starting in November.

The money explains why teams wanted the slots.

Riot shared more than $105 million with VCT partner teams in the 2025 season, according to its year-end figures reported by Inven Global, and $86 million of that came from sales of esports digital items. Pley.gg reported that Riot said on Oct. 15 that the Champions 2026 bundle had already contributed more than $50 million to participating teams, with Riot sharing 50% of net proceeds.

Riot has not disclosed the size of the 2027 base payment. THESPIKE reported in April that annual amounts for partners in North America, Latin America and Brazil would range from $600,000 to $5 million, depending on competitive results and skin sales. Riot has not confirmed those figures.

For the dropped organizations, the team capsule may be the larger loss. In its April post, Riot said the best non-partner teams could, “in extraordinary cases, even earn more than bottom of the pack partner teams” through qualification payments and prize money. In June it set those payments at $100,000 for qualifying for Kickoff or a Cup, $200,000 for Masters and $400,000 for Champions. But a team capsule depends on partner status, and digital goods made up more than four-fifths of what Riot paid teams last year. Riot has not said how much of that came from team capsules rather than event bundles such as the Champions collection.

The organizations left out are splitting on whether the open circuit is worth it.

Cloud9 said it “remains committed to VCT and the VALORANT ecosystem” and is holding open tryouts to build a roster for the open qualifiers. “We are not leaving,” the organization wrote. According to The Esports Radar’s tracker, Barça eSports and Nongshim RedForce said they would keep competing, and ENVY CEO Mike Rufail said the decision does not necessarily mean the organization is leaving competitive VALORANT. KIWOOM DRX wrote that its commitment to the scene would not change: “For whatever comes next, see you all in VCT 2027.”

Others are stepping back. Global Esports, the Indian organization that played VCT Pacific through the first partnership cycle, said it would shut down its competitive operations to focus on GE Studios, according to the tracker. FlyQuest, GIANTX and M80 have not said whether they will compete on the open circuit.

Riot has removed partners before. It terminated Movistar KOI’s VCT EMEA agreement in September 2025, effective after that season, and removed TALON from VCT Pacific two months later. This is the first time it has cut the number of partners across every region at once.

Still unknown are the size of the base payment, how much of the 2025 digital-goods revenue came from team capsules, which organization will take the last partner slot in Pacific, and how many dropped organizations will field a team in the November qualifiers.

The cut tests Riot’s April promise. If open teams can reach Masters and Champions and earn money comparable to partners, the 32 partnerships are a head start. If they can’t, Riot has shrunk the group of teams that share its skin revenue in a year when a single event bundle returned more than $50 million to teams.