We published a Top 5 Players to Look Out for At Masters London article, before the event started with reasons for players that were looking on fire coming into the tournament, and despite being many upsets, we were right on many sides for this list.

In this article, we will be breaking down the best players that made an instant impact for their teams and also throughout the 2 week tournament taking place at the Copperbox arena in London, UK.

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5. XLG happywei

Coming into the tournament, the entire Chinese region in VCT was seen as lower than the others due to their recent international performances with a comined 1 win between the three teams that went to Masters Santiago earlier this year.

However, it was clear from the beginning, that the region wasn’t the bottom feeders that they were at Santiago. XLG was the prime example of this, with one of their players, NoMan, being of British heritage. He was playing in front of a home crowd with his family in the seats behind him, encouraging his talent to shine on the Global Stage.

Despite that, the player that stood out for XLG and helped them go from a predicted 11th-12th finish to a 5th-6th place finish was happywei, the sentinel player for Xi Lai Gaming.

He was top frag for his team in 4 of the 6 games that they played in London, including dropping 50 kills to take down the Americas giants, G2 Esports. He outshone his team mates and overperformed his expectations by a mile, with his incredible aim and timings taken on the sentinel role.

4. VIT Derke

Coming into Masters London as the EMEA 2nd seed, Team Vitality looked strong but falling to Team Heretics in the Stage 1 final put some doubt in fans minds of whether or not they could live up to the name hype of players like Chronicle, Sayonara and Derke on their roster.

That doubt quickly cleared as Vitality cleaned through the swiss stage with a 2-0 win over Dragon Ranger Gaming and then a 2-1 win over their regional teammates FUT Esports.

They advanced into the Play-Offs with a matchup against Team Heretics where they comfortably beat them 2-0 with Derke dropping 44 kills on the Jett and Raze, doubling the second frag of his team. Advancing to face Paper Rex, who were looking primed, they took the loss 1-2, leading them to face FUT in the lower bracket, forcing them to eliminate one of their own to make the top 4. They eventually bowed out of the tournament in 4th place against the eventual winners of the tournament LEVIATAN.

Derke is on this list in 4th position over his team mates since he was actually the highest rated player of the entire play-offs boasting a 1.28 vlr rating, topping the ACS with 263.9 ACS and 2nd overall K:D with 1.32, all while being the entry for the team on every map.

3. FS primmie

Many people would argue that 3rd place was too low for this player, given his performances this tournament. However, here at Valorant Digest, we see a player dominating the server, but still going home winless on the international stage. That gives a huge impact to the ranking.

primmie was by far the most hyped player coming into Masters London, after dominating VCT Pacific until the finals, topping the charts in ACS, K:D and vlr rating for Stage 1.

He brought this form into Masters London at an even higher level with primmie dropping 30 kills in their first matchup against FUT where the team only managed to get 10 rounds total in a 0-2 loss. Then it went to the survival game, where FULL SENSE faced off against Global Esports, where Primmie dropped an incredible 73 kills on the Jett going +34 despite losing the series 1-2 and ending their journey at the starting block.

Despite dropping out 0-2, primmie claimed the top spot of the entire tournament, with a staggering stat line:

1.40 vlr rating

277 ACS

1.51 K:D

1.03 KPR

All whilst his team around him had 3 of their players in the bottom 6 of the tournament, with their controller player, Leviatan, being the worst rated player of Masters London.

2. PRX Invy

Since joining Paper Rex during this off-season, Invy has made instant impact onto this roster, qualifying for Masters Santiago as 3rd seed, winning Stage 1, earning the 1st seed into Masters London which also guaranteed their spot at EWC in Paris. They have also guaranteed their spot at Champions Shanghai with their 2nd place finish at Masters Santiago.

He has made 2 international Grand Finals in 2 tries with this roster. As some fans that don’t watch every game may think he is just along for the ride and enabling his star players something and Jinggg, it is quite the contrary. He is constantly topping the leaderboard and providing countless clutches for the team.

He ended Masters London as the 2nd best rated player the best rated player in the Grand Final, with a 1.28 rating, .12 higher than anyone else in the server.

Despite not getting a trophy under his belt yet, Invy has defintely announced himself to the VCT as one of the best initiator players if not the best of 2026.

1. LEV Neon

It would be wrong to not have Neon as the number 1 best player of Masters London. The MVP of the entire tournament. It took him only 20 VCT games to win an international title after joining the team halfway through VCT Americas Kick-Off after only just meeting the age requirement to play on the international stage alongside the greats.

He makes history as part of the youngest squad ever to win an international trophy with an average age of 20 year and 4 months, with Kinggg being the oldest on the squad at only 24 years old.

Neon was undoubtebly the best player in the tournament, with Spikezin handling the entry and Sato dealing with the cleanup, it was up to Neon to clutch up and multi frag to close out rounds and eventually close out the tournament.

He finished the tournament with 79 frags in the grand final, second to something on the side of Paper Rex, earning him the MVP bracelet awarded to him by Leo Faria, VALORANT Esports head at Riot Games.

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It would be so easy to put all of Paper Rex and LEVIATAN on this list, but we wanted to highlight some players that, despite not making it to the final, were so impactful and so many eyes were drawn to them whilst playing on the international stage.

Stage 2 begins with VCT China in 15 days, and the teams will now be preparing for Champions in Shanghai, whilst other teams will be flying out to Paris for EWC starting July 2nd.