VALORANT will officially join the Esports Nations Cup 2026 as one of 16 featured titles, and will give Riot’s tactical shooter a new international stage that’s built entirely around national players instead of the usual VCT orgs.
The event, organized by the Esports World Cup Foundation (EWCF), will debut in Riyadh later this year, bringing together the best players in the world as national teams.
The VALORANT ENC tournament will take place from Nov. 8 to 15, 2026. The format is such that 32 national teams will be split into four groups of eight and play a round-robin group stage, with all matches in this phase played as best-of-one (BO1) matches. The top four teams from each group will then advance to a 16-team single-elimination playoff bracket.
From there, every match in the playoffs will be a best-of-three (BO3), right up until the grand final, which will switch to a best-of-five (BO5) to decide the inaugural ENC VALORANT champions. Fans can tune in for non-stop national-team action for over a week.
How national teams will qualify
ENC 2026’s VALORANT team pool involves a mix of direct invites, regional qualifiers, and wildcard slots. 16 national teams will qualify directly through a new VALORANT National Team Rankings system, 14 more will make it via regional online qualifiers, and the final two spots will be wildcard entries.
The new ranking system pulls its data from regional and international VALORANT Champions Tour events, with points shared equally among club teammates who compete in those tournaments.
For ENC, a country’s national ranking will be calculated by adding up the points of the top five players on its submitted roster, with June 21, 2026, as the cutoff date. Teams that don’t qualify through rankings will still have a clear path via regional qualifiers.
Those online qualifiers will run from June 26 to 28 in a double-elimination format and will be hosted across seven regional divisions, including North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania, with two ENC slots available in each region.
VALORANT joins a 16-title lineup for the Esports Nations Cup 2026, and at the time of writing, some other confirmed titles include Apex Legends, Counter-Strike 2, Chess, Rainbow Six Siege X, PUBG: Battlegrounds, EA Sports FC, FATAL FURY: City of the Wolves, Honor of Kings, Dota 2, Trackmania, and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
