Looking ahead to VALORANT EU Stage 2 Challengers 1

As the open qualifiers have concluded, let’s look ahead to VALORANT EU Stage 2 Challengers 1, where teams battle for spots in the Challengers Finals.

The Stage 2 finals will be the first offline VALORANT event, held in Iceland. Riot Games has made some changes to the format, with the biggest one being that teams now qualify for an EMEA Challengers playoffs. Next to that, EU now only has two Main Events (Challengers) where the top two teams will qualify for the newly formed EMEA finals, for four EU slots in total. 

A lot of familiar faces

Unlike NA’s counterpart, the current EU Masters champions Acend managed to qualify for the Main Event playoffs, not losing a single map. They look like a solid pick to qualify for Reykjavik outright. Acend’s opponent in the quarterfinals is Ninjas in Pyjamas. The Ninjas are looking for revenge after their last encounter with cNed’s team when they met in Group A’s decider match of the last Masters.

Guild Esports and Alliance are two more teams that met in the previous Masters tournament. Back in March it was Guild that edged out a 2-1 victory, only to lose in the semifinals against Heretics. Things look a bit different this time around. New in Stage 2 are the play-in matches between the teams that qualified for the Main Event. At stake is a higher seed in the playoffs. Interestingly, Alliance beat Team Heretics in the play-in stage 2-1. In the meantime, Guild lost their play-in game against Opportunists.

Opportunists, better known as Dfuseteam, didn’t miss their appointment with another Main Event, playing Team Heretics. Winning their quarterfinal against one of the Masters 1 finalists would definitely put them in the spotlight for interested organizations. Unfortunately for the French side, Team Heretics should prove too difficult to overcome. With the new Masters format switching to a single elimination bracket, their first match could be their last.

We need to go all the way down to the last match in the bracket to find a new lineup. A whopping seven out of eight teams have Main Event experience, with only Team Vitality as the new kid on the block. Vitality had a rough road through the open qualifier, with the RO64, RO32 and RO16 games all going three maps long. They were the team to knock out G2 Esports though, so the upset potential is there. Facing FunPlus Phoenix however, their enthusiasm will need to outperform their lack of experience on the highest level of EU play.

Some teams fail again and again

Despite a lot of teams confirming their form by qualifying again, there are few notable teams missing (again) in the Main Event. G2 didn’t make it past the RO32, losing to newcomer Team Vitality 2-1. Team Liquid failed to qualify again, after losing to Guild Esports 2-0. The former number one in Europe is flailing, and is seemingly spiraling out of control. Third notable absentee is Fnatic who fell 2-0 to Alliance, with the first map in this series, Haven,  to go to six overtimes.


While most of the absent teams were just one BO3 away from qualifying for the Main Event, there are certain patterns that are formed, and lineup changes could be around the corner soon. The good news is that all of these teams will have one more chance to qualify for the offline LAN finals during the second Challengers series.

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