Jacob Gray
Contributing Writer
Loud won the 2026 Valorant Champions world championship Tour (VCT) Sunday Oct. 18, defeating Team Vitality 3-1 in a best-of-five series in Shanghai, China. The victory made Loud the first team to win two Valorant Champions titles.
For context, Valorant is a free-to-play, five-versus-five first-person tactical shooter game created by Riot Games in 2020. Where two teams face off in alternating roles between Attackers and Defenders swapping at half. The first team to win 13 rounds or by two rounds if it goes overtime wins the match.
In the map one of the grand finals, Loud would win in comeback. In the first half they were losing 3-9 to Team Vitality but managed to comeback in the second half 13-11.
On map two Loud would find themselves down at half again with 4-8. This time, they would not be able to pull off the comeback with Team Vitality winning map two 13-8.
Later on map three, Loud would create a statement win over Team Vitality winning 13-5. They would end the first half hot with a five-round wining streak and continue that momentum into the second half where Loud won six more rounds in a row, shutting out Team Vitality in the second half.
On the last map Loud and Team Vitality would enter the half tied up 6-6, but then Loud would pull away in the second half winning map four 13-10 and the championship in a series of 3-1.
As a result, Loud earned the trophy and won the championship for $1,000,000. It also makes it the first time a team has won the championship twice as Loud also won back in 2022 at Champions İstanbul.
Some notable players were Erde and Tkzin from Loud. Tkzin would have the best single performance of the series in map three, where he had a kill/death ratio of 26/10 and player rating of 1.99. While erde would be the best on map one and four where he went 19/16 and 21/17 with player rating of 1.31 and 1.20 respectively.
Erde’s great and consistent performance across the series would lead him to be named MVP of the event.
Going into the event, Loud was also a slight underdog, with the consensus between myself and many others in the favoring teams like NRG, 100 Thieves, and Paper Rex as the favorites to win. I never really believed 100 Thieves to go all the way. I thought they weren’t the best despite what their stats pointed toward.
This was due to NRG being the defending champs last year, 100 Thieves entering the tournament on a hot streak, and Paper Rex being known as a good team that always has a shot.
Despite that, Loud also started to heat up at the right time and would beat two of the favorites in their first two games of the tournament. As they would beat Paper Rex in round one 2-0 in a best of three matches and beat NRG 2-1 in round two, sending two of the favorites to the lower bracket.
In a pick em’ bracket that was in the game, I predicted Loud winning the whole as a joke. Saying to my friend “Loud going all the way, trust.” I originally thought Loud was going to lose their first game, but to my surprise and many others Loud would really go all the way.
Some other notable matches were G2 Esports upsetting the number one favorite 100 Thieves in the first round, Paper Rex being the first team fully eliminated after losing to Loud and then in the lower bracket losing to T1. With one other surprising thing being Team Vitality making it all the to the grand finals, as they were seen as a good team on paper but would never do much with it until now.
Some other players who also played well in the tournament were Loud’s lukxo who was the highest rated in the whole tournament with a 1.22, and Cryocells from the team 100 Thieves who was the third highest rated player with a 1.17.
As this marks the end of this year’s VCT, there will now be an offseason of about three months. There are still plenty of smaller or popular tournaments always going on, but the most popular VCT will start again around early to mid-January in 2027 with the Kickoff event.
If you would like to know more about what VCT is and the events throughout the year that are a part of it, here is some background information.
VCT is Riot Games year-long international tournament, it has four regions’ Americas, EMEA, APAC, and China. There is a total of six events in the tour including kickoff, masters one which was in Santiago this year, stage one, masters two which was in London, stage two, and ending with Champions which was in Shanghai this year.
Champions and masters are both elimination style tournaments where eight teams enter, and one wins. While the kickoff and the stages decide who plays in each tournament based off their performances. Think of as kickoff and the stages are the regular seasons of sports and masters and champions are the playoffs.
More details about the tournament and all of the events that took place can be found on the Valorant Champions Tour website.
The views expressed in the Opinion section do not reflect the views of the Stroud Courier, its editorial board or East Stroudsburg University, but are solely the views of the author.