Champions 2026 finishes on patch 13.05: no Warden, seven maps, and a final on 18 October

VALORANT Champions 2026 is paused today. Riot’s schedule lists 12 to 15 October as dark days with no matches; the event resumes on Friday 16 October for a three-day finals weekend at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai’s Pudong district, and the grand final is on Sunday 18 October.

Every map of it is played on patch 13.05 — a version of the game the public left behind three weeks ago. The VCT account said so before the event began, which means the Warden, the new rifle in Riot’s largest patch of the year, will not be fired once at the world championship. Below: the finals schedule with local times, the format, the seven-map pool, what 13.05 does and does not contain, the viewing rewards, and what changes for the competitive scene the day after the final.

When is the VALORANT Champions 2026 grand final?

Sunday 18 October, in Shanghai. Riot’s schedule names the three days of the finals weekend: Friday 16 October is the last ordinary playoff day, Saturday 17 October is the lower bracket final, and Sunday 18 October is the grand final. Riot’s ticketing page groups the Friday and Saturday sessions as “Lower Semis & Upper Finals” and gives a single local timetable for all three days: doors at 12:00, show at 14:00. Tickets were real-name only — passport for international buyers, facial recognition at the door, at most four per account — and ran from ¥388 to ¥1,708 for the Friday and Saturday sessions and from ¥488 to ¥2,108 for the final.

How does the Champions 2026 format work?

Sixteen teams — four each from the Americas, China, EMEA and Pacific — started in four groups, each holding one representative from each region. Group matches were best-of-three, and two losses meant elimination, so eight of the sixteen reached the playoffs, which run as a double-elimination bracket from 7 to 18 October. Riot’s summary is blunt: “One loss puts you on the edge. Two losses send you home.”

Playoff series are best-of-three apart from the last two. STRAFE’s guide lists the lower bracket final and the grand final as best-of-five, with a prize pool of $2.25 million. The event began at the Jing’an Sports Center before, in Riot’s words, “moving across the city” to the Mercedes-Benz Arena for the last three days.

What patch is VALORANT Champions 2026 played on?

Patch 13.05, released on 1 September. The VALORANT Esports account settled it by 14 September, ten days before the first match, in a post Insider Gaming quoted in full: “FYI: VALORANT Champions Shanghai will be played on patch 13.05.” Patch 13.06 followed on 22 September, two days before the group stage, and none of it reaches the stage.

13.05 itself is light. It carries no agent balance changes, only fixes, and two of them matter in a professional match. Riot re-timed the smokes of Astra, Brimstone, Clove, Miks and Omen to fix an issue where they “could continue blocking flashes and other line-of-sight-dependent abilities while the smoke was dissipating”, and Cypher’s Cyber Cage no longer incorrectly blocks flashes and detection. The same patch added penalties for stream sniping and instalock tools, and opened Pick’Ems for this event.

Why there is no Warden at Champions

Because the Warden arrived in 13.06, and the event is on 13.05. Riot introduced it as joining “the Vandal and Phantom in the 2900 credits tier” — a scoped, long-range rifle — in a patch its own notes call the biggest of the year. 13.06 also replaced Average Combat Score with a 0–500 Performance Score, added Agent Mastery and merged the home and lobby screens; none of that is on the tournament build either.

The practical result is a split season. Anyone learning the Warden in ranked is learning a weapon the 2026 world championship never saw, and whatever the best teams make of it will first show up at an international event in 2027, on a later patch.

What the ranked game has that the stage does not

More than a rifle. 13.06 replaced Average Combat Score with Performance Score, a 0–500 number that “measures more than just damage and kills” and now decides MVP and scoreboard order in Competitive, Unrated, Swiftplay and Premier. It added Accolades, which track personal bests per Act and for a lifetime, and Rank Legacy, a count of how many times you have reached each rank. It launched Gauntlet: Glitched, a limited-time mode in which eight duos fight 2v2 while drafting and upgrading abilities from different agents, and retired Retake.

Riot also used the notes to report on cheating: its new boosting detection has been banning about 1,600 accounts a day — “over 90,000 accounts, since July 20”. And it named what comes next: Map Rating in 13.08, then Competitive Flex and updates for the Radiant experience in 14.00. None of it touches the championship build, which is the point of freezing one: the finalists play the same game they have played since the first group match on 24 September.

What is the Champions 2026 map pool?

Seven maps: Abyss, Ascent, Haven, Lotus, Split, Summit and Sunset — the competitive pool as of 13.04, which 13.05 did not change. Riot’s patch notes list only what moves in and out, so the full seven come from THESPIKE; the moves themselves come from Riot. Patch 13.00 put “SUMMIT and SUNSET IN” and took Fracture and Pearl out, and 13.04 brought Abyss in for Breeze.

Summit is the story of the pool: added in June, it is making its first appearance at a Champions. Breeze, Fracture and Pearl are the maps the professional scene will not play in Shanghai.

How to earn Champions 2026 drops

By watching an official Riot broadcast. Riot’s Watch and Earn post lists a title, “Prepared”, for at least 30 minutes of viewing during the groups and playoffs, and a spray, “Stamp of Approval”, for at least 30 minutes during the grand final — so the spray is still available on 18 October. Shotcall, a Twitch extension on desktop, gives a title at 50 points, a gun buddy at 300 points and a player card for finishing in the top 3% of any map. Playoff Pick’Ems locked on 7 October; their rewards are cumulative, from a “Calculated” title for taking part and a Stone of Heaven gun buddy for the top half, up to a “100%” title for a perfect bracket.

What about the Champions 2026 bundle?

It is the most-searched Champions phrase of the week, and the one with the least primary information. We did not find a Riot page we could read that gives its price or its last day in the store. THESPIKE reports that it sold for 426 RMB on China’s Douyin and made “roughly $20.7 million” there in three hours, and that half of net bundle proceeds go to partner teams; it does not say who measured the sales figure. We print it as THESPIKE’s report, not as a fact.

What changes after Champions: VCT 2027

The final in Shanghai closes the last season of the current system. From 2027, partner status stops guaranteeing a place at every event: partners still enter the Kickoff directly, but each Americas, EMEA and Pacific Kickoff has 12 teams, “8 partner teams and 4 teams from Open Qualifiers”, and those Open Qualifiers begin in November. China uses a visitor-team model with promotion and relegation instead. The top three from each Kickoff go to Masters, and after that places are earned: teams that finish outside the top positions at a Cup or Masters drop into Open Playoffs. For the qualifiers, Riot asks that in most regions “at least 3 of the 5 players on a roster will also need to be from that region”, and tells players to have valid passports and start visa planning early.

Open teams that qualify get fixed payments for the first time — $100,000 for a Kickoff or Cup, $200,000 for Masters and $400,000 for Champions — and a team that keeps three of its five players keeps its progress. The next Champions leaves Asia: Riot’s 2025 announcement of Shanghai named the Americas in 2027 as the final stop of its tour of regions.