With VCT Americas being the home of the 2025 world champions, NRG, a lot of eyes will be on this league to once again perform to the level that they have shown throughout every year of franchising.

Despite being home to the Champions of the world and being a very dangerous league last year with G2 Esports dominating locally but not much internationally, many teams have made changes and some teams have even had a complete re-vamp of their rosters!

In this article, we will be highlighting 5 players coming into 2026 that will be worth looking out for whether you are competing in this years Valorant Fantasy League, hosted by TMV, or if you are looking for players to take inspiration from for your ranked games. This is the article to look for America.

5. NRG Keiko

Kicking off with the newest import for VCT Americas this season, Georgio ‘Keiko’ Sanassy joins NRG from Team Liquid after his breakout performance as the best controller player of 2025, stats wise. After the announcement that NRG s0m would be stepping back from professional play after their historical Champions win, fans were left wondering who they could pick up for 2026, with s0m being one of the most reliable controller players since the start of franchising.

They decided to import in Keiko as his contract came to an end with Team Liquid, marking a new step in his career. Whilst they didn’t have an incredible off-season, losing in the Grand Final of Red Bull Homeground to G2 Esports, if Keiko can regain his form of 2025, he will be a scary player to face off against in the Americas league.

4. SEN Reduxx

Reduxx has been a Tier 2 talent in NA Challengers for the past 2 years, signing with Sentinels at the end of 2024 as their subsititute player despite being 17 years old at the time, ineligible to play any games due to age restrictions in VCT. Despite that, he co-founded with the CEO of Sentinels, Rob Moore, Cubert Academy where he played with players like FNATIC Crashies, NRG Skuba, TenZ and his teammate Kyu who has also been promoted to the main roster.

During the off-season, Reduxx took upon the flex role, filling smokes for most maps but on some maps like Sunset, he picked up the Chamber and dropped a consistent 25+ kills, confirming to SEN fans that investing in him 2 years ago wasn’t a mistake.

If SEN can keep him on Chamber or double duelist, he will catch a lot of fans eyes with his flashy play and crazy aim.

3. MIBR zekken

This won’t come as a surprise to fans of VCT, as zekken has been one of the best players in VCT for years now, and was a top 3 Duelist of 2024 & 2025 on Sentinels. However, with his shock move to MIBR, he has recently confirmed that he will be playing a flex role and no longer the duelist with aspas being the main duelist for the Brazilian org.

If zekken can continue his incredible form on different roles, without having to be the hard entry Duelist, it will allow him to rely on his mechanics more heavily with this upcoming meta being more aim based rather than util heavy.

zekken will be a top tier player for as long as he plays, but if MIBR can live up to their expectations, he will be the player most fans will be shocked by how good he is on every different role he can play.

2. LEV sato

sato is a player that joined LEVIATAN last year from M80 at the end of Stage 1, just before the EWC qualifications took place. He replaced Demon1 and his teammate at the time, okeanos replaced Rossy on the LEV roster with hype circulating around their performances in the tier 2 scene.

He definitely lived up to those expectations in the short time that he had with the team speaking a language that wasn’t his native Brazilian. This year however, he has had the pleasure of a team being built around him and kiNgg with a Brazilian speaking side on LEV going back to their LATAM roots.

Supposedly he will be playing the Duelist role that got him signed in the first place, however for the start of Kick-off they will be without one of their new signings neon, from their academy side, since he is only 17 years old until the 28th January.

1. LEV Neon

Speaking of Neon, he is the final and most hyped player of the off-season in our opinion. He comes from the LEV academy side who performed incredibly last year with him in the roster, only losing 3 games in total.

He comes in as a former duelist, flexing onto the sentinel role whilst also playing double Duelist on some maps with sato. From off-season results, it seems that neon is just farming his opponents out-aiming them on a consistent level.

He joins the team on the 28th of January, hopefully Leviatan can make it far enough that he can join the side and carry them through the lower bracket and make it to Masters Santiago.