VCT 2027 format guess and 2026 breakdown

What is new in 2026 ?

• A new format for kickoff triple elimination which put simply means a team now atleast gets minimum of 3 matches before getting eliminated from the competition instead of 2 like earlier .
• 4 VCL teams per region directly qualify to stage 2 playoffs which is the qualifying tournament for champions 2026 which means 4 top teams from current tier 2 system have a shot at making champions .
• Ascension is done away with from this year that means there would be no ascension tournament in 2026 which will put any teams to VCT in 2027 bcz VCT is being revamped that I will discuss ahead. What this doesn't imply which has been point of confusion to most - *The winners of this year's ascension will still play in VCT 2026 normally and teams like G2 and XLG will also compete normally on par with other VCT teams.*This also implies that theoritically there's a world where stage 2 playoffs next year can have as many as 6 Tier 2 teams- 2 like G2 and XLG who can reach playoff through VCT league stage and 4 who will join them from challengers

Clearing Biggest points of confusion and doubts which people have

1. This is not the format going ahead , this is just a temporary format for 2026 transition bcz contracts with teams mean Riot can't make wholesale changes to anything that harms current franchised teams financially or otherwise. For example that's one of the reason VCL teams only get to try for champs and not masters bcz otherwise current teams may miss out on their promised slots and finances that come throough them. That is also the reason why VCL teams are directly being sent to playoffs instead of stage 2 group stage because there's no space to increase matches to round robin for 4 more teams and they can't decrease the guaranteed number of matches for franchised teams for sponsorship reasons nor can they change the league format due to contract.
2. Next year we won't have just 10 franchised teams or 12 franchised teams that's not what the changes and talks imply . Ascension is not happening bcz there would be no watertight division from next year and there won't be any tiers locking teams out of masters and champions ( refer to Leo Faria's comment on Platchat where he talks about when they started Valorant lots of teams and players dreamt of reaching the absolute top and making it all the way and somewhere in the current format that dream has been lost and we want them to dream again that anyone could make it .

Possible 2027 format based on Leo Faria's talks in past few months, community and org owners feedback(This isnt official but I am quite confident the official announcement would have more or less the same structure maybe numbers and formats would be bit different

• There would be Partner/Invited teams but instead of current 10 its very likely to be 8 even as low as 6 is possible( I lean towards 8 bcz they are only inviting 4 VCL teams to playoff this year and I believe that is sign of things to come )
• These Invited teams would get direct qualification( and monetary stipend obv) to their region's top tournaments which qualify teams to Masters and Champions say current kickoff, stage 1 and Stage 2 even though names of tournaments may change . This means you won't have the downside of Sentinels gettting eliminated by BBG in open qualifiers round of 64 when most of their fans werent even watching instead you would see them qualified automatically
• The remaining 4/6 slots would be open to all the teams who will play in qualifier tournaments of their own regions to make it to the top regional tourament to play with already invited/partenered teams to qualify for global events . That means the system will be one integrated whole and there would be no Tier 1 and Tier 2 that terminology is redundant again.
  -There would be no round robin league type matches in one location like current(officially confimed by Faria ) instead all tournaments would be bracket ones like double/triple elimination as it was before franchising . The number of matches and tournament will auto increase due to hybrid system but you wont see much increase in number of overall matches for particular team it will just be many more teams playing fix number of matches and us getting to watch it all again on official VCT broadcast like past.

Any discussion or doubts are welcomed

Why would any org want to invest in any team in 2026. Its a loss for them even if ur the best team in ur region u still have to play playoffs with tier 1 teams and win. No skin sales and barely any time to show ur org.

"bcz otherwise current teams may miss out on their promised slots and finances that come throough them."

How ? This not making sense to me, I see no reason why the winnner of ascension 2026 could have a problem playing as an ascention team in 2027. (And if they are partner just give the slot to the 2nd team as they did for Boom). They are absolutely no reason to not give a slot to a T2 team that go to champs.

"Next year we won't have just 10 franchised teams or 12 franchised teams that's not what the changes and talks imply."

I think how they frame it, imply that we will go to 12 partner team, but maybe it was just poorly framed by them

"There would be Partner/Invited teams but instead of current 10 its very likely to be 8 even as low as 6 is possible"

Faria said it was either that or giving a direct path for T2 team to international event, it seems they pick the 2nd option and not the first. So if you don't have any new information, it dont seems we dont lean into that. Also, it's possible to have 8 partner team in EMEA, AMER and CHINA, but it's impossible to remove any team in APAC, because every team are either an historical and important team (PRX, DRX, T1, GEN), or are just alone to represent one market (RRQ-ID, TS-PH, TLN-TH, GE-IN + at least 1 JP team), so at best you can boot one of JP team but you cant boot more (Only option is to split APAC, I do beleive thats the correct move, but they didnt announce anything about that.)

The remaining 4/6 slots would be open to all the teams who will play in qualifier tournaments of their own regions to make it to the top regional tourament

This is unrealistic, the schedule would be too heavy, and we will not have enough time for VISA. Just for the idea, try to make a schedule with :
T2 qualifier --> Kickoff --> Master 1 --> T2 qualifier --> Split 1 --> Master 2 --> T2 qualifier --> Split 2 --> Champs.
Keep in mind thats you need to have at least 3/4 weeks after a T2 qualifier to let BR team have an US visa, and 2/3 week before international event also for VISA (I making shorter assuming it's not in US, but 2 week is generous to consider an event end Sunday and start Friday, so 18 days before inter, 25 after T2 qual), 61 days for offseason (dec+nov), 129 visa break, it remains in the year 25 week to organize 9 tournaments.
They are a reason why T2 team are invited to split 2 playoffs, and not Split group stage.