North American VALORANT will run through Pittsburgh next year with Riot announcing that Knights Arena will serve as the tournament organizer for the NA VCT Challengers and NA VCT Game Changers 2023 tournaments.
Bear Jemison, head of VCT Americas, said that “Knights have proven their ability to run successful tournaments that embody the goals of VALORANT, and they bring years of experience and passion to this new partnership.” The Pittsburgh Knights as an organization will “solely focus” on supporting NA VALORANT through its Knights Arena branch and will not be fielding a team in 2023.
Knights Arena has put on numerous successful VALORANT tournaments over the past couple of years, including the Sakura Cup, the VALORANT Gauntlet Series, and Valorampage.
With the shift to the partnership era of VALORANT esports for 2023, the Challengers scene takes on a new focus as the definitive tier-two system across the entire global ecosystem. While the top-tier partnered teams battle it out in the international leagues, regional competition will flourish in 24 different regions, including what many expect to be an exciting and deep NA scene.
For those VALORANT fans impatiently awaiting the start of VCT 2023 via the Kickoff tournament in February, they can sate themselves much earlier with the NA VCT Challenger League qualifiers beginning on Dec. 5. Information regarding the qualifier will be released soon, according to the NA esports team at Riot.
In 2021 and 2022, Riot partnered with organizer Nerd Street Gamers to organize the NA VCT Challengers events and qualifiers.
