Valorant First Strike North American event to feature $100,000 prize pool

After the immense success of the Valorant Ignition Series, which was organised by third party organisations and teams, Riot Games announced its first official Valorant tournament - Valorant First Strike. Riot announced it would be organising several qualifier tournaments across all the major regions, which would still be in association with other organisations. The inaugural Valorant First Strike event will serve as the main event to the qualifiers and will be hosted solely by the developers with a hefty prize pool on the line.

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Earlier this week, the announcement for the Valorant First Strike North American qualifiers was made, which outlined the complete schedule, including the format of the competitions to be held in the month of October and November. North American qualifiers for Valorant First Strike will be produced by Riot Games in association with Nerd Street Gamers (NSG) and Engine Media (UMG).

The online qualifying tournaments will start on October 26 and will conclude on November 22. Two separate tournaments will be hosted, each having their respective qualifiers. 

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Valorant First Strike schedule, format

The open qualifiers for the first event - NSG Tournament - will begin on October 26. A total of 128 teams will compete in the qualifiers, of which only 16 will advance to the main event. Scheduled for November 4 to 8, the top teams from the main event will directly qualify for First Strike, while teams placing five to eight will advance to the main event of the second string tournament - UMG Tournament.

Sixteen teams will compete in UMG Tournament, of which the top four will advance to First Strike.

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Valorant First Strike will be held in the first week of December. The Valorant First Strike prize pool for the eight-team main event will be a whopping $100,000. Teams will also be competing for the bragging rights to be crowned the inaugural Valorant champions of North Americal. 

Schedule

Tournament	Schedule	Advancement to First Strike
NSG Open Qualifier	October 26 to 30	Top 16 advance to NSG Tournament
NSG Tournament	November 4 to 8	Top four advance to First Strike; 5th to 8th advance to UMG Tournament
UMG Open Qualifier	November 11 to 15	Top 12 advance to UMP Tournament
UMG Tournament	November 18 to 22	Top four advance to First Strike
Valorannt First Strike	December 3 to 6	Eight-team competition for $100,000

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(Image Credits: Valorant Twitter)