Regional champions have been crowned yet again, as the second split of the EMEA Challenger Leagues has come to a close. The top two teams of each region will now focus on Ascension to fight for a VCT spot.

Ascension is the opportunity for a Tier 2 team to reach the VCT. The champions of each of the nine regions are placed straight into the main event, while the nine second-best teams will have to slog through a Play-Ins stage before they fight in the main event for a VCT slot.

Challengers League Spain: Barça eSports and KPI Gaming

The first team to find their Ascension slot was Barça eSports Barça eSports Europe Rank #28 Vorwenn Tomas Baldrich Saiz Daniel Ruiz maniek Jakub Mańkowski Guardy Antonio Guardiola Jesse Adam Čtvrtníček . The Spanish roster had a lowly first stage, finishing down in sixth, but switched gears in the second half of the season. Barcelona finished at the top of the table in the regular season, second only to UCAM Esports Club UCAM Esports Club Europe Rank #15 Flickless Karel Maeckelbergh bucher Maximilian Bucher Quick Fabián Pereira YuNo Eloy García Burgueño , but ended up taking the cup in the playoffs with a 3-2 over UCAM.

Ironically, Barça only has two players in the top 15 of the Split 2 ratings leaderboard. That space was mostly taken up by KPI Gaming KPI Gaming Europe Rank #10 and UCAM, despite the former's third-place finish in the tournament.

Challengers League DACH: MOUZ and CGN Esports

While Spain fielded two new teams to Ascension, DACH's teams are no strangers to Ascension. CGN Esports CGN Esports Europe Rank #5 elllement Dragan Milanović DaviH David Cruz BennY Benjamin Domgörgen Vince Vincent Kranz and MOUZ MOUZ Europe Rank #6 Obnoks Nico Garczarczyk iluri Ilari Puranen Fizzy David Figueiredo starki Krzysztof Lewandrowski placed first and second for the region last year, and swapped places this year, with MOUZ taking the regional championship and relegating CGN to the Ascension Play-ins.

CGN and MOUZ hold one of the longest-standing rivalries in the VCT ecosystem, having battled fifteen times since early 2022. The former has only found five wins in that time, four of them in playoff bouts.

Challengers League Portugal: SAW and PedroPedroPedro

Back in the Iberian Peninsula, SAW SAW Inactive Fragger Henrique Correia brk Bruno Ferreira GrTw Tiago Costa Addicted Eduardo Torres Cunha20 David Cunha took the Portuguese crown for the fourth time in a row, this time over PPP PPP Europe Rank #29 silenttt Nuno Rodrigues Akira Rui Barbosa Phatt Alexandre Silva fainz Pedro Monteiro . PPP were born out of the ashes of ELEVATE ELEVATE Inactive RedKoh Danial Hakim pudj Flaring Henri Forichon Riza Sirajul Azrie Bin Sirajul Adly Nakya Alehandro Fabian Simanjorang , who dropped their roster after Stage 1. SAW then dominated the regular season with just one loss, but succumbed to the reigning champions in the playoffs.

With this win, SAW managed to become one of just three teams across Europe to reach a fourth consecutive VCL title, after Apeks Apeks Europe Rank #2 hype Tautvydas Paldavicius MOLSI Michał Łącki AvovA Auni Chahade and Team Falcons Team Falcons Inactive . Apeks and Falcons can still extend their streak in the coming splits, though, while SAW can't due to the merging of the Italian and Portuguese leagues into Spain. for the foreseeable future, as the league will merge with Italy and Spain

Challengers League France: Joblife and VALIANT

France was dominated by Joblife this year, who hold former FNATIC FNATIC Europe Rank #3 Sayonara Ștefan Mîtcu stand-in Boaster Jake Howlett kaajak Kajetan Haremski Chronicle Timofey Khromov Alfajer Emir Ali Beder sixth-man kamyk in their ranks. Despite a rough regular season where they finished fourth, one match shy of missing playoffs, Joblife Joblife Europe Rank #11 took a clean win over VALIANT VALIANT Europe Rank #17 in the grand final, having dropped just one map in the match prior to Zerance Zerance Europe Rank #25 Babax Baptiste Bertrand Jady Yaroslav Nikolaev UNFAKE Bartosz Bernacki lux9 Lucas Danna Veqaj Sylvain Pattyn .

Joblife's victory also gave coach LohaN a third VCL trophy, making him one of the most decorated coaches of Tier 2. He is second only to SAW's mowzassa and Apeks' DANNYTO , as both have four titles to their names.

Ascension 2023 trophy The climb to the top begins once more. (Photo by Hara Amorós/Riot Games)

Challengers League Türkiye: Pcific and Galakticos

PCIFIC Espor PCIFIC Espor Inactive ComeBack Berkcan Şentürk Rosé Eren Erzan Loita Utku Kart Lar0k Yusuf Kaan Kanber took the Turkish league by storm, ending the season in fourth but finishing the playoffs head and shoulders above the rest of the competition. HOWL Esports HOWL Esports Europe Rank #19 took second place, but Galakticos Galakticos Europe Rank #149 DESTRUCT1VEE Hakan Lekesizer Bard0lf Emir Çinkılıç sterben Emre Demirci MOJJ Buğra Kiraz qw1 Konuralp Şahin glovee Burak Yıldırım secured the Ascension Play-In slot as they accrued more points over the course of the season.

Turkey's champions are a success story for the VCT ecosystem, having joined the VCL midway through the season after climbing in from Premier. Pcific are the first team to come up from Premier and conquer a trophy in Tier 2. Now, they are just a few matches shy of reaching the pinnacle of Valorant.

Challengers League North: Apeks and SweetNsour

Much like SAW, Apeks completed their regional dominance and took home yet another trophy. They also did so in dominant fashion: Apeks dropped just one match in the regular season, and put together a flawless playoffs run to claim a fourth North title, taking a 3-0 final over SweetNsour SweetNsour Inactive Creamydreamy Ticey Theo Cranshaw Tempo HearthBeat Marco Soffia Famzzam .

Apeks' win has allowed them to match SAW's four consecutive VCL titles in a row. It also tied mowzassa and DANNYTO as the most decorated VCL coaches, but they each find themselves in highly different circumstances heading into the final months of the year. The Portuguese league is disappearing, while Apeks were and are a hot VCT contender from the North — heading into the final months of the year.

Challengers League Italy: DSYRE and NOVO Esports

DSYRE DSYRE Europe Rank #4 caydeN Yari Olmi Tag Alessandro Voci wackie Rikardo Birjukov waddle Wadir Taraki was equally consistent this year, scoring two first-place regular season finishes and two Italy titles. The team spent the better part of the year keeping NOVO at bay, who finished second in both splits of the year.

DSYRE leave Italy as its undisputed champions. They faltered in the 2023 opening split, dropping the final to GMT Esports GMT Esports Inactive N A I S Alessandro Montanari AFoxx Fábio Veigas , but have scored three season titles in a row since — a fourth one in the OFF//SEASON — and will represent Italy in Ascension for the second year in a row.

Challengers League MENA: Falcons and R8 Esports

Team Falcons Team Falcons Inactive maintained their streak of gold over in MENA. Against Levant/NA champions R8 Esports R8 Esports MENA Rank #2 SimonD4rk Alexandr Skovbel sickrey Nikolay Novozhilov moner Kirill Matsanov Winteryrook Evgeniy Lenko Bgg Vladislav Boev , Falcons took a drawn-out 3-2 victory to claim yet another MENA trophy. It was the Falcons' second win over R8 in the playoffs, having already bested them in the upper finals in 2-1 fashion, leaving the latter to fend for themselves in Ascension Play-Ins.

Their 2024 Split 2 trophy is the ninth the team has won in MENA since the team's creation. It is also their fourth in a row — partially due to the regional split between GCC/Iraq and Levant/NA — despite placing second in the first Split of 2021.

Challengers League East: GoNext Esports and Diamant Esports

Going into the grand final, GoNext Esports GoNext Esports Inactive and Diamant Esports Diamant Esports Europe Rank #12 already had their first and second slots, respectively, locked in going into the grand final. GoNext were still chasing victory, though, and secured it after a 3-1 over their foes in the grand final, taking back-to-back trophies in the East in the process.

Eastern Europe stands out from the crowd, as they are one of just two subregions to take two new representatives to Ascension alongside Spain. Acend and Enterprise fought for the VCT last year, but both fell out of the top three this year.

Ascension

Ascension kicks off tomorrow, July 28, with a format identical to last year's. The second-place teams of each league will fight amongst themselves in the play-ins, which are split into a group stage and playoff stage and will run until August 1.

The winner from the play-in stage will join the nine VCL champions in Ascension, which also has a group stage and playoffs. Ascension itself will be held between August 31 and September 15 and its winner will receive a one-year ticket to the VCT.

Unlike last year, though, only the lower bracket final and the grand final of Ascension will be played at the Riot Games Arena. In 2023, the entire playoffs were hosted in the Berlin-based studio.

The Ascension teams are:

The Play-Ins teams are: