To play in VALORANT Premier, you need to remain eligible throughout the current Stage. (A Stage is one Premier tournament lifecycle, which roughly coincides with an Act in VALORANT.)
Time Commitment
🔫 Up to 2 matches per week, for 7 consecutive weeks (plus 1 more week if your team makes the Playoff Tournament). The specific dates and Premier queue windows are posted in the Premier section of the game client. It's one map per week.
Eligibility Rules
-
Make sure you've verified your Riot Account with SMS Verification.
- 🚫 You must keep your account verified throughout Premier to remain eligible to play.
- If you've already verified your account, in the Premier screen you'll see Create a Team instead of Verify. You can also check in your VALORANT Settings, under General > Account.
- You must have completed at least one ranked placement in your account's lifetime.
-
Your account must be in good standing. That means no current bans or restrictions of any kind. Sorry, that includes AFK restrictions, even if those AFKs were unintentional.
- 🚫 Receiving any kind of behavior penalty or restriction makes you ineligible for Premier for a period of time based on the severity of the misconduct and the length of the active penalty.
- If you're looking to join a Contender/Invite team, then you must have Contender Eligibility, which you get if in the current OR previous Stage you:
- Played a Weekly or Playoff match on a team in Contender or Invite.
- Reached Immortal 3 or higher peak rank in Competitive.
- Played in the playoff tournament in Elite 5
To continue playing in Premier:
- Stay account verified and remain on your best behavior. Getting bans or restrictions during Premier disqualifies you from the rest of that stage. This won't automatically remove you from the team, but you can no longer play that Stage. We are not lifting bans or restrictions just to allow players to play in Premier.
- Be aware that if you leave a team to join another team (you can only be on one team at a time), getting re-added to the team you left is not guaranteed because joining a team has this rule:
- 🚫After a team has played their first match of a Stage, a player cannot join that team if their MMR disparity would bump the team to a different Division (this is determined by the top 5 players on a team).
Creating a Team
Teams can be created at any time during the Stage and start playing in the next available set of matches.
To create a team, see ➡️ Creating and managing a team.
Joining a Team
Players can be on only one team roster at a time.
You can join a team fresh or switch from another team throughout a Stage. There's an important caveat though:
🚫 After a team has played their first match, a player cannot join that team if their MMR disparity would bump the team up or down a Division. (A team's Division is determined by the top 5 players on a team.) So be mindful of that if you want to leave a team to join another—you might not be able to.
Joining Mid-Stage
You can join a team part way through the Stage at any time. Once you have an eligible team assembled, you can start playing matches right away. If you join too late, however, there may not be enough match opportunities for you to earn a high enough Premier Score to qualify for playoffs.
Leaving a Team
You can leave a team at any time (except when your team is actively in queue). To leave, simply go to the Premier Hub, click on the context (…) menu next to your username, and select Leave Team.
If you leave your team, you do not forfeit any participation rewards you might have earned, but you do lose your Team Tag and Plating for your team if you unlocked them. If you earned the Champion's Aura and then leave the team, the Aura still stays with you. In order to receive a Premier Crest, you must have played at least two Weekly matches or one Playoff match with that team.