With VCT Returning in less than a week, and so many changes this year including roster moves, format changes and game updates to cover. This article is your blueprint for VCT Kick-Off EMEA.
Roster Moves
Starting off with the juicy part of the off-season. The roster moves. There have been an outstanding amount of roster moves this off-season with only 1 team making 0 changes and that being GIANTX’s roster.
FNATIC
Despite not winning any silverware last year, FNATIC were by far the most consistent team of 2025, making it to 3 Grand Finals across Masters Toronto, EWC and Champions Paris, unfortunately losing out every time.
They also had the rough news that Chronicle would not be re-signing with FNATIC and would be moving to a rival team in Team Vitality, joining up with his former teammate, Derke. To replace the 3x international winner, they brought in Veqaj from Gentle Mates who shone brightly last year in a failing Gentle Mates team.
Their roster now consists of Boaster, Crashies, Alfajer, Kaajak and Veqaj.
Team Liquid
Team Liquid were a team that at the start of the 2025 season, had no hopes for them to make any serious damage in VCT EMEA. However, the pieces were right for them and they managed to make it to every international event and fought against the formidable GIANTX in the Stage 2 final where they took home the VCT EMEA Stage 2 Trophy.
However, at the end of the season and the beginning of the off-season, changes were made and players were poached. Keiko was poached to NRG, paTiTek and Trexx were let go and they were left with just nAts and kamo from their 2025 roster.
They rounded out with a team of players that is built to win. They picked up EWC winning Duelist MiniBoo, VCT Pacific Challenger Controller Wayne and JobLife Purp0 to round out their roster and look towards trophies in 2026.
GIANTX
The only roster to keep their starting five players from 2025 are GIANTX. They made it to VCT Champions after a dream run in Stage 2 making it all the way to the grand final eventually losing to Team Liquid.
They almost immediately after the end of Champions Paris announced that hey would be re-signing their roster for at least another year and would be focusing on wins this year with a core roster that seems stable enough to crack into the top 8 of the world.
Team Heretics
After an incredible 2024, Team Heretics decided to stay together as a five of Wo0t, Benjyfishy, Boo, MiniBoo and ReiNs. Unfortunately, they just could not replicate their success in 2024 with a up and down 2025.
They did win the EWC in the middle of the season, however, they couldn’t bring that success to VCT and despite making it to Champions, they didn’t make it very far and went out early in the tournament.
A shock that came out at the end of the season was that MiniBoo had chosen himself to leave Team Heretics and look for other offers, leaving Team Heretics with a gap in their Duelist slot. They picked up Comeback from Gentle Mates to fill MiniBoo’s gap.
They played a few off-season matches at the TEN Global invitational, where they had a lot of poor results, which can be due to the small amount of time they had as a five.
Team Vitality
Team Vitality have put alot of resources into VALORANT yet again and have signed another ‘super team’ similar to last year. However, this year the difference is that they have signed no imports and have taken a risk with a player that turns 18 in early March.
They picked up FNATIC Chronicle, BBL Jamppii, BBL Profek and they promoted Sayonara from their academy roster to join Derke to complete their roster. This roster, on paper, has a ridiculous amount of firepower and should be competing for trophies and domestic domination.
However, until sayonara turns 18 on the 4th of March, they have brought back UNFAKE from their 2025 roster to sub in and take the initiator role for the squad during kick-off and part of Stage 1.
NAVI
NAVI were one of the first rosters to announce a change for the 2026 season and that being their long serving IGL, ANGE1, transitioning into their head coach from the IGL position on the team.
They also kept a hold of 3 of their starting 5 of last season. Those players being, Hiro, Ruxic and Shao. They then replaced Alexiik with Filu from KOI and the replacement for ANGE1 is socialblEE from BBL who starred when on the Chamber.
Karmine Corp
After hyping up their 2025 season, with the addition of Sadhaak from LOUD and star studded lineup, it just never worked out.
This year, they moved away from NA imports and looked towards APAC for their controller player picking up Dos9 from BOOM esports, who shined on that roster all season long.
They also picked up LeWn in the place of Marteen and they picked up Sheydos in the place of Sadhaak to round out their roster alongside Avez and SUYGETSU from their 2025 roster.
FUT Esports
FUT have chosen to stick to another Turkish focused roster building around their 2025 roster keeping a hold of xeus, MrFaLiN and yetujey. They let go of qraxs and cNed from 2025 and picked up baha and KROSTALY.
This roster seems promising to Turkish VALORANT fans since the idea around Turkish VALORANT players is that they have insane aim and as a team they should succeed if you look at players like Wo0t, Alfajer, ReiNs and Hiro. It has never panned out for FUT, however, they are hoping that 2026 is a different story.
Gentle Mates
Another roster that was formerly quite early into the off season, was Gentle Mates. They picked up four players for their 2026 season after only keeping a hold of Minny from 2025.
They picked up Starxo, Bipo and Marteen from EMEA and they imported Glyph from Winthrop University in NA Challengers.
From Off-season games, it seems that Bipo will take up the solo duelist role, with Marteen moving towards the controller/ duelist flex role that was made popular by Keiko in 2025. Starxo will return to VCT as the IGL so that Minny can focus on his shooting that had many teams trying to poach him from Gentle Mates for 2026.
BBL Esports
In one of the strangest moves in VCT history, BBL Esports made the spectacular decision to drop their entire 2025 roster and pick up their affiliate team, BBL PCIFIC, who actually won ascension and earned themselves a spot in VCT the hard way.
They picked up every player and left their 5 players without a home and the PCIFIC Esports roster completely empty, allowing for 5 slots to be open for any players to battle it out and earn their spot on the Berlin stage.
PCIFIC Esports
As this article is being completed, there is no official announcement for the PCIFIC roster, after their entire roster got poached by the BBL Esports parent Organisation from Ascension.
The rumours currently are that PCIFIC are picking up cNed, NINJA, qpert, seven and al0rante to form a roster consisting of former Champs winning players mixed with Tier 2 talent. This roster is made to cause a lot of upsets if they can get the best out of cNed.
ULF Esports
ULF Esports were the 2nd team to ascend due to Gentle Mates and Apeks not able to even get enough wins to fight for their chance for an extension in VCT.
ULF are keeping their core 5 from their Ascension run and will try and compete to extend their time in the league and not repeat what their predecessors did in the last 2 years of Franchising.
Their roster consists of nekky, audaz, s0pp, echo and Favian.
Format Changes
This years kick-off follows a different format from last year, where only 2 teams made it to Masters Bangkok. This year 3 teams from each region can qualify to Masters Santiago.
This means that the tournament will follow a triple knockout format with the top 4 performing sides have been given a bypass to the Upper Round 2. In EMEA, these teams that earned a free pass are FNATIC, Team Liquid, GIANTX and EWC Winners Team Heretics.
Another update to the format is that due to the first games just being randomly selected matchup’s, they will be starting to battle it out in a 1v1 skirmish to see who gets the A-side and can choose the first map ban for the series.
VCT EMEA Kick-Off begins on the 20th January with NAVI facing off against Karmine Corp followed by FUT Esports against Gentle Mates.
Valorant Digest 
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