The first wave of qualifier teams have made it to the VALORANT Champions Tour Europe, Middle East and Africa Challengers 1 league. Berlin International Gaming, Guild Esports, FunPlus Phoenix and SuperMassive Blaze will join Fnatic, Acend, Team Liquid and Gambit Esports in the new VCT EMEA league.
Guild and BIG qualified through the European open qualifiers while SuperMassive battled through the Turkish bracket. FunPlus Phoenix qualified through the Commonwealth of Independent States open qualifiers despite competing in EU last season.
Meet the new VCT EMEA Challengers 1 teams
Guild and BIG both came through the open system and took down teams invited to the closed qualifier section to make the new EMEA league. Guild made it through the upper bracket, defeating TENSTAR and Team Vitality to qualify. BIG made their run through the lower bracket, defeating TENSTAR and Alliance before taking their qualifying match 3-0 over Vitality, who sent them in the lower section in the second round.
EMEA CHALLENGERS HERE WE COME! 🔥
Straight from the Open Qualifier, we did it #FÜRDACH! 💪 #GOBIG pic.twitter.com/eRAF1kO3xt
— BIG (@BIGCLANgg) January 16, 2022
Joining the European squads in their VCT EMEA Challengers 1 qualification is SuperMassive Blaze and FPX. SuperMassive also came from the open bracket and decimated their closed qualifier competition. Only one Turkish team could make it through to the new league and SBM qualified after only dropping one map in the grand final to Fire Flux Esports.
FPX took a much different path as they started their closed qualifier run with a loss to KPI Gaming in the first round. They then fought through the lower bracket to face Natus Vincere in the grand final, taking the series 3-2 to qualify.
The next slate of qualifiers for the three regions start Monday with open qualifiers again. Four teams from each region will make the next closed qualifiers from the open section and join the top four squads that did not qualify for VCT EMEA Challengers 1.
The closed qualifier for the three regions begin Thursday.
