The groups for the North American VALORANT Champions league have been drawn, according to a report by Dot Esports. The groups are distributed just like the Europe, Middle East and Africa VCT Challengers league, with six teams in two groups for the 12 teams that were invited and qualified through the open bracket.
Group A has 100 Thieves, Cloud9, XSET, The Guard, Luminosity Gaming and Evil Geniuses in it. Group B consists of Sentinels, Team Envy, Version1, NRG Esports, Knights and Rise Esports.
100 Thieves, Cloud9, Sentinels and Envy were all invited into the league while the rest of the teams had to qualify through the two open bracket qualifiers over the past two weeks. The league runs from Feb. 11 to March 27.
NA VCT groups have been drawn
The league will consist of a single round-robin in the NA VCT groups, with the top four teams from each group advancing to a playoff. The playoff will be a double-elimination bracket. All matches being best-of-three, except for the losers final and the grand final, which will be best-of-five. The top two teams from the playoff stage will qualify for VCT Stage 1 Masters.
The open bracket qualifier for the NA VCT Challengers league consisted of multiple signed teams battling each other for a chance at the limited spots available. Unlike the previous VCT system in North America, which featured multiple open bracket tournaments for teams to play in, teams that did not make the cut for 2022 will have to wait until May for VCT action.
This includes teams like TSM, T1 and FaZe Clan — few of the many that did not make the cut. The first round of open qualified teams were XSET, Version1, The Guard and NRG, while the second included Luminosity, Knights, Evil Geniuses and Rise.
