Despite reports of Los Angeles, Riot Games have announced that VALORANT’s year-end event, Champions, will take place in Berlin. A Masters event is already happening in the city, kicking off next week.
Despite earlier reports that VALORANT's year-end, World Championship LAN would be held in Los Angeles, Riot Games have announced that the Champions will take place in Berlin, Germany. This comes after Berlin is already hosting the next Masters event, beginning in less than a week.
In Riot's official announcement, they state several reasons for ultimately choosing Berlin. Namely, they say that hosting the event in Europe "presents us with the best pathway to produce a Champions where all qualified teams can attend." They also stated that, in looking for potential locations, "our goals focused on finding and securing locations that would allow the greatest likelihood for qualified teams to attend." With Masters events having been held in Reykjavik and Berlin, this also means that all international VALORANT LANs in 2021 have been held in Europe.
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Potential issues with VALORANT Champions in Berlin
This logic has one glaring weakness, though: not all teams can even attend Masters Berlin. Earlier today, it was announced that Southeast Asia's #1 seed, Bren Esports, will be unable to make it to the event. Now, this is in part due to the Philippines' poor management of COVID-19 and lack of recognition of esports. Teams will also have more time before Champions to figure these things out than they did for Masters. But it still sets a bad precedent. Even without attending Masters Berlin, Bren could still qualify for Champions. It would be tremendously disappointing to see the same issues plague them.
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