Valorant Challengers League 2023 South Asia Preview

The eagerly awaited Valorant Challengers League (VCL) 2023 South Asia is set to start tomorrow featuring a $140,000 USD prize pool.

After a lengthy period of quiet over the future of the VCL 2023 South Asia has finally released details about the league’s schedule and competing teams. NODWIN Gaming is one of Asia’s top esports organizations that formed a strategic alliance with Riot Games to host the league exclusively.

This domestic league will run on an annual basis for a duration of seven months starting from January to July but the inaugural edition will be an exception with the tournament scheduled to start in March 2023. 

The South Asian competition is split into the regular season and the playoffs, just like challenger leagues in other regions. The regular season will begin on March 18 with ten participating teams engaging in a round-robin format. After four weeks of best-of-three league matches, the top six teams will progress to the playoffs.

The winning team from each group will directly move to the semifinals, while the other four teams will start their playoff run in the first round. All games, with the exception of the championship match, will be played in the best-of-three series throughout playoffs, which will use a double-elimination bracket to decide two contenders for the grand finals.

The tournament will wrap up with a super-charged best-of-five grand final, in which the top team will be named the inaugural Challengers League champions of South Asia. The champion will not only receive a huge chunk of prize money, but they will also be qualified to play at the next Valorant Ascension for APAC, which will bring together the champions of Challenger Leagues from the APAC region to fight for a spot in the APAC Pacific League 2024.

All participating teams at VCL Challenger Leagues South Asia 

Ten Valorant teams from South Asia will compete in the VCL in 2023, including seven teams that received direct invitations and three that qualified in the open qualification. The confirmed teams for the main tournament feature a large number of Indian players on their rosters. The full list of teams registered to participate in the competition is as follows:

Group A

1. Velocity Gaming (Direct Invite)
2. Gods Reign (Direct Invite)
3. GodLike Esports (Direct Invite)
4. True Rippers Esports (Direct Invite)
5. MLT Esports (Open Qualifier 1)

Group B

1. Orangutan (Direct Invite)
2. Medal Esports (Open Qualifier 2)
3. Lethal Esports (Direct Invite)
4. Aster Army (Open Qualifier 3)
5. Reckoning Esports (Direct Invite)

Header: Riot Games