Image: Riot Games
Ascension Pacific Tokyo will give aspiring teams from the Pacific region a chance to fight for a spot in the VCT Pacific league next year.
VALORANT action will be returning to Japan this year as the 2024 VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Ascension tournament for the Pacific league is set to be hosted in Tokyo from 13 to 23 September. The last major VALORANT tournament hosted in Japan was the 2023 VCT Masters Tokyo in June last year.
This time around, Ascension Pacific Tokyo will gather 10 aspiring VALORANT teams from the Pacific region and pit them in a seven-day gauntlet of competition, where the winners will earn a coveted spot in the VCT Pacific league next year.
The tournament will start with a Group Stage where the 10 participating teams will be split into two groups of five teams each and will fight through a modified GSL bracket with best-of-three matches.
The Top 6 teams from the Group Stage will then advance to the single-elimination Playoffs, with the top team from each group also getting an automatic bye to the semifinals. The Playoffs will be held in front of a live audience and all matches in this stage will be a best-of-three except for the grand finals, which will be a full best-of-five series.
VALORANT developer Riot Games is set to announce the full schedule and venue information for Ascension Pacific Tokyo at a later date.
More Ascension tourneys as Riot improves Challengers League
Ascension Pacific Tokyo is part of an effort by Riot to improve the game's Challengers League. Last month, Riot announced that they will be hosting a new Challengers tournament for each region in Fall this year alongside the removal of automatic relegation for teams that earn a place in the main VCT leagues through the Ascension tournaments.
In the current VALORANT Challengers ecosystem, an Ascension tournament is hosted in each region for its Challengers teams. The Top 2 finishers from the Ascension tournaments are granted spots in their respective VCT leagues. However, those Ascension teams can only stay for a certain term before being automatically relegated back to Challengers.
But with the changes being introduced next year, Ascension teams will be able to extend their stays in the VCT based on their performances. Depending on their VCT results, Ascension winners will either extend their term in the leagues, fight for their right to stay, or be relegated.
Ascension teams that finish in the Top 4 of their respective leagues and qualify for VALORANT Champions will automatically extend their term for another year. If both Ascension teams in a region make it to Champions, then the team with the best performance there will extend their stay while the other will have the option to compete at Ascension for their spot.
Should an Ascension team finish in the bottom four of their league and fail to make it to Stage 2 Playoffs, they will be relegated back to Challengers. If both Ascension teams end up relegated, then two new teams will be brought up from Challengers.
Alongside the above changes, the standard term length for an Ascension team in the VCT has been changed to one year.