Acend: the first Valorant Champions world champs, throw down Gambit 3-2

Don't call it an upset - Acend is your first Valorant world champion taking home the Valorant Champions trophy over Gambit in a close series.

Gambit looked dominant early on in the series and even looked like they might put Acend away quickly after map one. But from there Acend battled back mightily despite losing Map 3 pretty handily. They took map 4 in overtime on Icebox and despite some great adaption from Gambit, were able to close out map 5 and the series.

Acend takes home $350,000 for first place, with Gambit taking home $150,000. All sixteen teams at the event will also take home their portion of the more than $7.5 million raised by sales of the Champions skin bundle.

With this win, it's become clear that while Acend has the title of World Champion, there is not yet a clearly dominant team. Gambit won the last Masters, dethroning Sentinels, and now Gambit have themselves been dethroned. It remains to be seen if Acend can carry their winning streak forward into the new year and build an era for themselves.

For Gambit, they believe they were their own worst enemy.

"Acend played well, but there wasn't anyone from their team that we can single out as being difficult. Our biggest opponents were ourselves," Gambit's Redgar said in the post-match press conference.

"We're excited for next year," Ayaz "nAts" Akhmetshin said. "This year for all of us was a huge experience to play against international teams, and next year we'll show something interesting."

The next season of Valorant esports already looks to be an exciting one, with several teams starting their rebuilds to challenge Acend's dominance. While we are heading into the offseason now, we only have a few months to wait until competition starts up again.

For all the latest on Valorant's pro scene, keep it locked here to Esports.gg.