How Does Valorant Premier Work? Explained

If you've been around the Valorant community recently, then chances are you've heard whispers of Valorant Premier. Well, players dreaming of going professional with their Valorant careers will probably be most excited for this new super competitive game mode Riot Games has been working on.

Valorant Premier is a new competitive game mode that allows pretty much anyone to participate in a super competitive series of prescheduled matches. The best thing about it is that literally anyone can participate in it, which means you might even come across some familiar faces from your own town. However, not everyone will be able to proceed to the end of season tournament 

We'll be going more in depth on Valorant Premier, including what you need to do to participate in it as well as the reason for its existence.

What is Valorant Premier

Before anything, what even is Valorant Premier? Well, you might have heard Riot Games say in the past that they wanted to make the game even more accessible for players worldwide. Well, it seems Valorant Premier is their way of making this wish a reality as it's the most accessible competitive game mode yet.

It's basically a series of prescheduled matches that players are able to play from the comfort of their own homes. By winning more and more, everyone can qualify to participate in the end of season tournament that takes place, expectedly, at the end of every season. One thing to keep in mind is that this mode heavily emphasizes teamwork, because of which it's crucial that you sign up as a full squad otherwise you won't be able to play.

At its highest, Riot wants this game mode to be like a bridge connecting casual players players with the more competitive players. This is exactly why they've also added certain competitive only features to it, such as a pick/ban map phase as well as a full tournament structure, with every win counting.

Valorant Premier Structure

A Premier season is made up of three phases. Those phases are enrollment, for players to set up their teams, weekly matches, where teams will play prescheduled matches against other teams just like theirs in order to win and earn points, and finally, a playoff tournament, where teams who have earned enough points will be entered into a bracket to claim a title as a division champion.

As soon as your team gets enrolled in the enrollment phase, it will be assigned a region. That region will determine when your matches will be. Fortunately, during the weekly matches phase, players who lose will also get some points. This means that even if you don't win every single match, you can still potentially qualify to participate in the playoff tournament at the end of the season. Every win gives you 100 points while every loss gives you only 25 points.

Only teams with at least 375 points will be able to participate in the playoff tournament, while the other teams will be disqualified and will have to take part in the next season. Teams that qualify will be placed in a single elimination main tournament bracket with other qualified teams from the same division. One main tournament bracket will have anywhere between five and eight teams in it. Teams that are eliminated in the first two rounds will be able to play in a consolation bracket as well, where they'll be fighting for the chance to get third place.

Tournament matches are also best of one, or Bo1, but they start with a map pick/ban system as we mentioned above. Each team will get to ban some of the maps from the active map rotation pool. One team will then get to pick a map, while the other team will get side selection. The same overtime priority system applies to tournament matches.

Who Can Participate in Valorant Premier

Now for the best part. Anyone can participate in Valorant Premier. Remember when we said Riot Games wanted to make the professional scene more accessible for regular players? Well, this is how they want to do this.

What's more, is that there isn't even a minimum rank requirement for players. As long as they have verified their account through an SMS message and they've played at least five competitive placement matches at any time in their account's life, then they'll be eligible to join a team and play Premier.

However, a team will need five to seven players and one team owner if they want to play. The owner gets to remove players, add players, and even change the zone. However, if the owner leaves, then ownership is passed over to the next remaining player that has been on the team the longest.