VCT Pacific’s slots in Masters Santiago are all booked as Rex Regum Qeon fall twice to T1 and Paper Rex in Kickoff.
All of the Masters Santiago slots in the VCT Pacific have been claimed. South Korean squad T1 and Southeast Asian powerhouses Paper Rex punched their tickets to the first international VALORANT event of the year after Rex Regum Qeon fell twice.
T1 vs. RRQ
The middle round final of VCT Pacific Kickoff 2026 was a clash between T1 and Rex Regum Qeon. This decided the region's second Santiago representative, as Nongshim RedForce had already qualified beforehand. This was an incredibly one-sided affair for T1, who put their opponents down, 3-0.
They first met in Pearl. Despite this being RRQ's map pick, they were unable to find any meaningful advantage at all. The first half of this map was heavily T1-favored, 9-3. Unfortunately for the SEA team, the curse did not activate and T1 closed out the map, 13-7.
A stark contrast to map 1, T1 was able to use their map pick, Breeze, to the fullest. It was an even more dominant map, which ended 13-2.
RRQ was not about to go down easily, and they proved this in Abyss. T1 once again found a 9-3 half for themselves, but Rex Regum Qeon forced the overtime. After an insanely long back-and-forth, T1 still came out on top, 19-17. This win allows T1 to join their fellow South Koreans in Masters Santiago in a few weeks.
PRX vs. RRQ
Fresh off their loss against T1, RRQ had one more chance to claim a ticket to Chile. Only the Masters Toronto champions and Pacific titans Paper Rex stood in their way.
The series began on PRX's map pick, Haven. But, it was RRQ who had an 8-4 lead in the first half. The momentum completely swung in the second half where PRX did not allow them a single round win, closing out the map, 13-8.
The classic Paper Rex fumbles came back to bite them on Corrode, where RRQ found a map against their SEAblings. This map was 13-10, thanks to Maksim "Jemkin" Batorov running the map on his Chamber with an ACS of 293.
What came next was two back-to-back 13-10 wins by Paper Rex to confirm their Masters Santiago slot. The series closed with a mic drop-worthy performance from PRX' Jason "f0rsakeN" Susanto. He ended the map with 35 kills and 389 ACS.
f0rsakeN also had an impressive 101 kill count across the four maps played.
After this match, the three Pacific teams in Masters Santiago have been confirmed: Nongshim RedForce, T1, and Paper Rex. The first international VALORANT event of 2026 begins on Feb. 28 in Santiago, Chile.
