First Valorant Masters event of 2022 to be held in Iceland

23 February 2022

On February 18th, video game developer Riot Games announced via their official Weibo account that the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) will also take place this year and that the first Masters event will be held in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. This means the Valorant Masters tournament will be returning to the Icelandic capital for the second year in a row, after a successful first edition took place there in 2021.

Iceland have been on the forefront of Valorant Champions Tour events since Riot Games started organizing them. As we wrote earlier, Reykjavik was chosen as host city for the first Masters event in 2021, which was held online as a result of COVID-19 restrictions. Building on that very positive and successful experience, Riot Games is now returning to the city for the second edition of the Valorant Champions Tour, which will take place offline for the first time. As a result, Reykjavik has become the first city to host an online VCT event and the first city to host an offline VCT event.

Why Iceland, you might ask and that would be a valid question, because at first sight, the island doesn’t seem like the ideal location for mass events. For Riot Games though, Reykjavik has proven to be an ideal location over the past years, mainly for two reasons. The first is that Iceland has suffered from relatively less restrictions related to the COVID19 pandemic when compared to many other countries. The second is that the time zone in Iceland (GMT) is perfect for viewers located on different continents around the world.

“Bringing Valorant events to live audiences in 2022 is a top priority for esports”, said Riot Games in their initial announcement on Weibo, “However, Iceland remains an ideal location to host international offline competitions until it is safe to host an event that will keep fans engaged. It is precisely because of our deep relationship and strong connection with Iceland that all qualifying teams are given the best guarantee of participation. In addition, Iceland’s time zone makes it easy to schedule matches for online viewers on different continents”.

The first event of the Valorant Champions Tour will take place from April 10th to April 24th.

Valorant for consoles

In addition to the announcement of the first Masters event of the season, rumors have been going around about a possible console version of Valorant. Riot Games confirmed a while ago that Valorant will eventually come to consoles, but further details have been lacking so far. Valorant fans and industry insiders believe there is a possibility that the developer will take the opportunity in Reykjavik to give an update on the topic. The fact that Riot Games recently listed a job opening for a “Senior Game Designer, Console – Valorant” (see Tweet) only spurred on the rumors of a console version of Valorant coming out soon-ish. We will have to see whether or not Riot Games will have updates for fans around the world during the Masters in Reykjavik in April.