With Masters London Starting in less than 24 hours, there are a few names that deserve highlighting especially given the conditions of this tournament being the first time we are seeing a non-neon meta, with no teams playing the Neon nerf in their regional qualification games.
5. TH benjyfishy
It’s only right to start off a Masters London list with the British Spaniard of Team Heretics. benjyfishy has been the emotional upholster of Team Heretics who guarranteed themselves a spot in play-offs after an incredible 3-2 win over Team Vitality in the Stage 1 Play-offs.
benjyfishy stated in his post match interview win over Eternal Fire, how important this win was for him to be able to play in front of a home crowd in the UK. His team-mates also took that as a serious force of motivation and they took them over the line and then made it to the Grand Final where they took home their first VCT title in the organisations history.
4. DRG vo0kashu
DRG’s ‘V GOD’ has been lighting up the VCT Chinese circuit all season, earning himself a spot at Masters London after missing out on his spot at Champions Paris last year due to VISA issues. This time he manages to get himself a spot at Masters London and will manage to play the series out.
His first game will be against the EMEA 2nd seed Team Vitality, who seem to be good at brute forcing through Sentinel setups, which could lead to a very important battle between the two teams.
3. FUT s0pp
FUT had one of the roughest starts to a VCT season since franchising was about. They have consistently been one of the three teams to make it to an international alongside Team Liquid, FNATIC & Team Heretics. However, this year in VCT EMEA, there are new challengers for that top 3 title. BBL, Gentle Mates & Team Liquid made it to Masters Santiago.
Stage 1 saw Team Heretics, Team Vitality and FUT make it to Masters London.
Undoubtebly the main reason FUT made it to Masters London was the pick up of s0pp from Eternal Fire onto the Primary Duelist role for the Turkish side with xeus going onto the second-in Duelist allowing for his aim to do the talking.
With Neon going out of the meta, s0pp has similar stats on Jett compared to the Neon, so we can expect the same if not better performances from his at Masters London.
2. LEV Neon
LEVIATAN bombed out of Kick-off in VCT Americas and the reason for that was that Neon was not 18 years old yet. As soon as he was eligible to play in VCT, they put him in and he immediately started owning the games.
He joined the roster from their academy team where he was their Yoru/ flex player for the most of their success. He joined the main roster and immediatley went to the Yoru whilst it was in meta and dropped MVP performances against KRU and Sentinels.
He then remained in the roster for Stage 1 where they leaned into Spike on the agent Neon (to not get confused with the player), and they lent on the double duelist with Sato on the Phoenix and Neon on the Chamber, allowing him to put up more ridiculous numbers. He ended VCT Americas Stage 1 as the top performer, out-performing Champs 2025 MVP Brawk and previous top-performers such as aspas, zekken, mada & even his counterpart Sato.
1. NRG Keiko
Coming into 2026, keiko was one of the hottest prospects across VCT, making it to all three internationals in 2025 with Team Liquid. He also played a range of agents, showcasing his flexibility as a player. He played Raze, Omen, Killjoy, Cypher, Jett and Brimstone.
NRG picked him up in place of s0m, and after some growing pains, he has taken back his form from 2025. He started the year on the exact role that s0m was playing in 2025, picking up Omen, Viper, Killjoy and Brimstone. However, in Stage 1, bonkar decided to utilise his fragging ability and leant more towards keiko on the Duelist. Since the start of Stage 1, keiko has played Jett, Phoenix, Omen, Killjoy and Vyse. He has played 15 maps of Duelist since the start of Stage 1 and 17 maps across the other roles, clearly leaning into the double duelist, and sometimes Single duelist Jett on Breeze, with mada, the resident duelist of NRG, switching over to Harbour.
One of the main reasons, besides his ability, that keiko is the number 1 player to look out for, is because he is a London-born VALORANT player. Playing an international Masters tourmament in your home town brings a lot of push and motivation to win it all, think back to LOUD in Sao Paolo Lock-in, Evil Geniuses in LA Champs, Acend at Berlin Champs. Home grown turf always seems to give a huge buff to the players.
There are many players that werent mentioned in this article who have real upset potential with the Chinese rosters being underrated after their performance at Masters Santiago, and the Paper Rex guys always have the chance to run it through Masters without dropping a series.
You can catch all of the match results on our website and also by following us on social media!
X – @ValorantDigest
TikTok – @ValorantDigest
Valorant Digest 
Leave a comment