Following the announcements for EMEA and Pacific, Riot have announced the schedule and groups for the 2024 VCT Americas Kickoff tournament. Beginning on February 16, Kickoff will determine which teams will participate in Masters Madrid and offer points for Champions qualification.

Groups

The 11 team event will begin with a GSL format involving three groups, two groups of four teams and one with only three. Having won Champions 2023, Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Unranked Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le icy Jacob Lange yay Jaccob Whiteaker are automatically placed in the latter group, receiving a first round bye. The remaining teams were split into pools and drawn into their respective group. All matches will be best-of-three.

The groups are as follows:

Group A:

NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Unranked FiNESSE Pujan Mehta s0m Sam Oh Verno Andrew Maust mada Adam Pampuch Ethan Ethan Arnold
FURIA FURIA Brazil Unranked heat Olavo Marcelo raafa Rafael Lima mwzera Leonardo Serrati havoc Ilan Eloy Khalil Khalil Schmidt
Cloud9 Cloud9 North America Unranked Xeppaa Erick Bach v1c Victor Truong mitch Mitch Semago neT Michael Bernet OXY Francis Hoang
MIBR MIBR Brazil Unranked artzin Arthur Araujo xenom Eduardo Soeiro cortezia Gabriel Cortez nzr Agustin Ibarra aspas Erick Santos

Group B:

LOUD LOUD Brazil Unranked dgzin Douglas Silva v1nny Vínicius Gonçalves pANcada Bryan Luna tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira
Sentinels Sentinels North America Unranked N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid
LEVIATÁN LEVIATÁN Latin America South Unranked Demon1 Max Mazanov tex Ian Botsch kiNgg Francisco Aravena C0M Corbin Lee nataNk Nathan Bocqueho
100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Unranked zander Alexander Dituri Cryocells Matthew Panganiban eeiu Daniel Vucenovic Boostio Kelden Pupello Asuna Peter Mazuryk

Group C:

KRÜ Esports KRÜ Esports Latin America South Unranked keznit Angelo Mori Mazino Roberto Rivas adverso Benjamín Poblete mta Nicolás González Shyy Fabian Usnayo Melser Marco Eliot Machuca Amaro
G2 Esports G2 Esports North America Unranked jawgemo Alexander Mor trent Trent Cairns valyn Jacob Batio JonahP Jonah Pulice leaf Nathan Orf
Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Unranked Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le icy Jacob Lange yay Jaccob Whiteaker

groups image The 11 teams were seeded into three groups. Evil Geniuses receive a bye. (Image: Riot Games)

Play-In

Each group's second place team will play in a single round-robin, with the winner earning a spot in Playoffs. All matches will be best-of-three.

Playoffs

The three best teams of each group and the winner of the Play-In stage will compete in a single elimination bracket. The Play-In team will be placed opposite of the team in their original group. Both finalists will qualify to Masters Madrid, with the winner receiving three Championship Points for Champions qualification and preferential seeding at Madrid. The semifinals will be best-of-three, while the grand final is a best-of-five match.

Schedule

The full Kickoff schedule is as follows:

schedule image The inaugural VCT event will take place over the course of three weeks. (Image: Riot Games)

Friday, February 16 (Groups)

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group A Match 1: NRG vs FURIA
5:00 PM PT | 2:00 AM CET | 10:00 AM KST - Group A Match 2: C9 vs MIBR

Saturday, February 17

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group B Match 1: LOUD vs Sentinels
5:00 PM PT | 2:00 AM CET | 10:00 AM KST - Group B Match 2: Leviatán vs 100 Thieves

Sunday, February 18

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group C Match 1: KRÜ Esports vs G2 Esports

Monday, February 19

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group A Elimination: TBD vs. TBD
5:00 PM PT | 2:00 AM CET | 10:00 AM KST - Group B Elimination: TBD vs. TBD

Friday, February 23

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group A Winner's: TBD vs. TBD
5:00 PM PT | 2:00 AM CET | 10:00 AM KST - Group B Winner's: TBD vs. TBD

Saturday, February 24

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group C Match 2: Evil Geniuses vs. Winner of C1

Sunday, February 25

12:00 PM PT | 9:00 PM CET | 5:00 AM KST - Group A Decider: TBD vs. TBD
3:00 PM PT | 12:00 AM CET | 8:00 AM KST - Group B Decider: TBD vs. TBD
6:00 PM PT | 3:00 AM CET | 11:00 AM KST - Group C Decider: TBD vs. TBD

Monday, February 26 - Round Robin Play-In

12:00 PM PT | 9:00 PM CET | 5:00 AM KST: Group A Runner Up vs. Group B Runner Up
3:00 PM PT | 12:00 AM CET | 8:00 AM KST: Group A Runner Up vs. Group C Runner Up
6:00 PM PT | 3:00 AM CET | 11:00 AM KST: Group B Runner Up vs. Group C Runner Up

Saturday, March 2 - Semifinals

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - Group Winner vs. Play-In Team
5:00 PM PT | 2:00 AM CET | 10:00 AM KST - Group Winner vs. Group Winner

Sunday, March 3 - Grand Final

2:00 PM PT | 11:00 PM CET | 7:00 AM KST - TBD vs TBD

playoffs/playins image The top teams from the group stage will play for a spot at Masters. (Image: Riot Games)

Tickets

The event will be held at Riot Games Arena LA. Tickets are available at TIXR.com.

Coverage

VLR.gg will be covering all of the VCT Leagues in our event hub. The official Twitch and YouTube channels are:

ENGLISH
Twitch
YouTube

PORTUGUESE
Twitch
YouTube

SPANISH
Twitch
YouTube

On the surface it mostly looks consistent across the regions (as in, there's 4 pools, with pool 2 only having two teams, and the rest 3, and then you have
Pool 1 - Pool 4
Pool 2 - Pool 3
as the opening matches in group A and B and group C contains the top seed plus one team each from pools 3 and 4.

However, some details are a bit odd, specifically Talon and KRÜ. With KRÜ it sort of makes sense at least, because although they won LCQ, they didn't win anything in the regular season, so having them in the 3rd pool is sort of understandable? Talon however did nothing in the regular season or in LCQ and still got seeded in the 3rd pool somehow. Also I just realised this seeding would also put SEN in pool 4 and 100T in pool 3, which doesn't make sense to me either. In both regular season and LCQ, SEN was above 100T (albeit not by much).

Now that I think about it, LOCK//IN probably played a role as well. Talon and 100T both had decent runs, while SEN went out in game 1, which would explain their weirdly high seedings.

So I do think this could very plausibly be the result of an objective seeding algorithm, but idk until they reveal how exactly they did the seeding, it'll always seem a bit fishy.

Americas Kickoff details unveiled