VALORANT tournament rules

Format and lobby

• Teams of 5 players. Substitutes and coaches are allowed as shown on the tournament page.
• Lobbies use Tournament mode with Overtime: Win by Two.
• Servers are chosen by the organisers for the lowest fair ping for both teams.
• Newly released agents are not allowed until two weeks after they reach the live Competitive queue.

Map selection

The map pool is the current Competitive pool of seven maps. The better-seeded team (or the coin-toss winner) chooses to be Team A or Team B. Bans cannot be skipped, and no map is played twice in a match.

• Best of one: A bans, B bans, A bans, B bans, A bans, B bans. The last map is played and Team A picks the side.
• Best of three: A bans, B bans, A picks map 1 (B picks side), B picks map 2 (A picks side), A bans, B bans. The last map is map 3 and Team A picks the side.
• Best of five: A bans, B bans, then maps are picked in turn, with the other team choosing the side each time. The last remaining map is the decider.

Timeouts and pauses

• Each team has two 60-second tactical timeouts per map in regulation, and one more in overtime. Unused timeouts do not carry over to overtime.
• Timeouts must be called in the first 20 seconds of a buy phase. Later calls are moved to the next round.
• During any timeout or pause, players may not move or use abilities.
• Technical pauses are for real problems only, such as a disconnect, a frozen game or a failed peripheral. Tell the organisers the reason. Audio adjustments are not a valid reason.
• Each team has one emergency pause per map, up to 10 minutes in total across the match.

Disconnections and restarts

• If a player disconnects, the game is paused at the end of the round, or straight away if an organiser can do so, and the player reconnects.
• If a player disconnects before any damage is dealt in the first round, the map can be restarted.
• If a round cannot be completed fairly because of a server problem or a known bug, the organisers decide whether to replay from the last completed round or continue.

Prohibited

• Exploiting bugs, including agent and map exploits listed by Riot for the current patch.
• Cheats, macros, modified clients and unauthorised software.
• Playing on another person’s account, ghosting (getting information from the broadcast) and coaching during live rounds, except during timeouts.

Official sources

• VALORANT Champions Tour Official Competition Ruleset (Riot Games, VCT EMEA 2024)