Valorant’s new act starts on October 14, 2026 in Europe (Americas: October 13) and runs until January 6, 2027. Here you get the countdown, the act and battle pass end date and every date until January – each marked official, expected or leak.
Last updated: October 10, 2026
Valorant's new act – Act 6 of Season 2026 – starts in Europe on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, and in the Americas a day earlier on October 13 because of the time difference. It runs until January 6, 2027, which is also the end of Season 2026 (V26). Act 5 and its battle pass end when Act 6 goes live. Riot does not announce an exact start time in advance.
When does the new Valorant act start, when does the current act end – and what else happens before January? This page is your schedule. At the top, a countdown works with today's date on your device. Below it you will find every important Valorant date from October 2026 to January 2027: the start of the new act, the Champions finals in Shanghai, the Game Changers Championship, Red Bull Home Ground and the end of the season. Every date has a status. Official means announced by Riot or stored in the game data. Expected means derived from Riot's usual rhythm but not confirmed. Leak means it comes from dataminers or leakers and Riot has not confirmed it. That way you can see at a glance what you can rely on. The act start and end dates come from the game data, which you can check through the public Valorant API, and they match the Valorant wiki at wiki.playvalorant.com.
The countdown shows the days left until October 14, 2026, when Act 6 starts in Europe. Once the act is live, it switches automatically and tells you how many days remain until the act ends on January 6, 2027 – with a progress bar for the whole act. It deliberately shows no clock time, because Riot does not publish a fixed start time.
until Act 6 starts
Starts in Europe on Wednesday, Oct 14, 2026 · Americas: Oct 13, 2026. Until then, Act 5 and its battle pass keep running.
Coming up
The countdown uses your device's date. Riot switches to the new act with the patch – in Europe usually early in the morning, but there is no fixed time. The calendar buttons save an all-day event as an .ics file.
The game data lists the release date of the new act, Season 2026 Act VI, as October 14, 2026 at 00:00 UTC, with the act ending on January 6, 2027. That is a technical timestamp, though. In the game, the act only changes once Riot rolls out the new patch in your region. The start of Act 5 showed how this works: Patch 13.04 arrived in the Americas on Tuesday, August 18, 2026, and in Europe on Wednesday, August 19 – exactly the date the game data gives for the act start.
Observers expect the same pattern for the new act: the Americas get Act 6 on Tuesday, October 13, and Europe in the early hours of Wednesday, October 14. As of October 10, Riot had not confirmed this in a patch announcement. So the dates from the API are official, while the regional split is a well-founded expectation.
| Region | Start | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Americas (NA, LATAM, Brazil) | Tuesday, Oct 13, 2026, during the day local time | expected |
| Europe (EMEA) | Wednesday, Oct 14, 2026, early morning | official date · expected time |
| Timestamp in the game data | Oct 14, 2026, 00:00 UTC (= 02:00 CEST) | official (technical value) |
Which patch brings the act is also still open. The live version is Patch 13.06, released on September 22, 2026. Since every act so far has started with a patch, 13.07 as the Act 6 patch is very likely – but it has not been announced. In the 13.06 patch notes, Riot already mentioned Patch 13.08 (with Map Rating and changes to the Mode Select screen), so 13.08 will only come after the act starts.
The table collects everything coming up until the end of the season. Times are shown in CEST until October 24 and in CET from October 25, with UTC in brackets. Dates without a time simply have none yet – Riot does not publish them in advance.
| Date | Event | Time | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sat Oct 10 / Sun Oct 11 | Champions 2026: upper semifinals (NRG vs LOUD, G2 vs Vitality) and lower round 2 | 11:00 and 14:00 CEST (09:00 and 12:00 UTC) | official |
| Tue Oct 13 | Act 6 starts in the Americas | during the day local time | expected |
| Wed Oct 14 | Act 6 starts in Europe, new battle pass; Act 5 and the Act 5 battle pass end | early morning, no fixed time | official (date) |
| Oct 13/14 | Act 6 patch, likely Patch 13.07 | with the act start | expected |
| Fri Oct 16 | Champions: upper final and lower round 3 at the Mercedes-Benz Arena, Shanghai | 08:00 and 11:00 CEST (06:00 and 09:00 UTC) | official |
| Sat Oct 17 | Champions: lower final | 09:00 CEST (07:00 UTC) | official |
| Sat Oct 17 | Agent 31 reveal during the finals weekend | – | leak |
| Sun Oct 18 | Champions 2026: grand final | 08:00 CEST (06:00 UTC) | official |
| Mon Oct 19 | Champions event pass ends in the game | 23:00 CEST (21:00 UTC) | official (game data) |
| until Tue Oct 20 | Champions 2026 bundle: end of the period in which part of the proceeds goes to the teams – Riot has not given an official end of sale | – | official revenue window · expected store end |
| Thu Oct 22 – Sun Nov 1 | Game Changers Championship 2026, São Paulo | – | official |
| Sun Oct 25 | Clocks go back in Europe: summer time ends, CET from now on | 03:00 → 02:00 | official |
| from November | Open Qualifiers for VCT 2027 | – | official (month) |
| Thu Dec 10 – Sun Dec 13 | Red Bull Home Ground 2026, Los Angeles | – | official |
| December | Possible Night Market until the end of the season (our assumption, based on the last two years) | – | expected |
| Wed Jan 6, 2027 | Act 6 and Season 2026 end, Season 2027 begins | with the patch | official (date) |
| January 2027 | VCT 2027 Kickoff | – | expected (dates open) |
A Halloween date is missing on purpose: Riot has not announced such an event for October 2026, and none shows up in the game data. As soon as anything changes – an announced Night Market or the patch notes for the act start, for example – we update the table.
Since 2025, Valorant has been split into yearly seasons with six acts each; episodes no longer exist. A new act is therefore not a full reset, but it always brings the same set of fixed changes. These are the mechanics Riot describes itself:
Every act comes with a new battle pass, and the old one ends. The Act 5 premium pass cost 1,000 VP. What the Act 6 pass contains is not known yet.
According to Riot Support, Acts 2 and 3 as well as Acts 5 and 6 need just one placement match to get your rank back. Five placements only happen at season start (Act 1) and mid-season (Act 4).
Your Act Rank measures your performance across the whole act and is based on your highest ranked win. For the badge and ranked rewards, you need at least nine competitive wins in the act.
Since Patch 13.06, the game counts how often you have reached each rank. Each rank can raise its counter once every three acts – in the blocks Acts I–III and Acts IV–VI.
No, not a big one. Riot distinguishes two cases: twice a year, at season start and mid-season, everyone plays five placement matches. In all other acts – including Act 6 – a single match is enough. According to the Valorant wiki, it gives you back roughly the rank you ended the previous act with, and it can shift slightly depending on your result. Placement matches also do not count toward your new Act Rank.
For Rank Legacy this means: Act 6 belongs to the IV–VI block. If you already reached a rank in Act 4 or 5, its counter will not go up again in Act 6. According to Riot, demoting into a rank does not raise the counter either. How the ladder is structured is explained in our guide to all Valorant ranks.
When does a Valorant act end? For the whole season, the answer is fixed in the game data. Every act in Season 2026 starts and ends on a Wednesday – the day the starting patch reaches Europe. In the Americas, the switch has always happened a day earlier, on Tuesday.
| Act | Start (Europe) | End | Length | Starting patch (Americas) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Act I | Jan 7, 2026 | Mar 18, 2026 | 70 days | 12.00 (Jan 6) |
| Act II | Mar 18, 2026 | Apr 29, 2026 | 42 days | 12.05 (Mar 17) |
| Act III | Apr 29, 2026 | Jun 24, 2026 | 56 days | 12.08 (Apr 28) |
| Act IV | Jun 24, 2026 | Aug 19, 2026 | 56 days | 13.00 (Jun 23) |
| Act V | Aug 19, 2026 | Oct 14, 2026 | 56 days | 13.04 (Aug 18) |
| Act VI | Oct 14, 2026 | Jan 6, 2027 | 84 days | likely 13.07 |
At 84 days, Act 6 is by far the longest act of the year – four weeks longer than Act 5. That is because of the turn of the year: the season only ends in early January, and Season 2027 starts after that. Be careful with older articles: some sites published estimated dates in early 2026 that turned out wrong, such as an Act 6 start in November. The dates in the game are what counts.
The battle pass is tied to the act. The Act 5 battle pass therefore ends when Act 6 starts: in Europe early on October 14, 2026, and in the Americas on October 13. Tiers you have not unlocked by then cannot be earned later, and there is no VP refund for unfinished tiers. The exact time left is shown by the timer in the in-game battle pass tab – rely on it during the final hours.
The new "Season 2026 // Act VI" battle pass starts with the act. It was not in the game data as of late September, so its contents and skins are still unknown. Good news if you only play now and then: with 84 days, you get noticeably more time for the Act 6 pass than for the last passes, which ran for 56 days.
The Champions event pass runs separately from the battle pass. According to the game data, it ends on October 19, 2026 at 21:00 UTC (23:00 CEST) – the day after the grand final. Whether the premium pass is worth it for you, and how many tiers you need per day, is best worked out with your own numbers.
Price, rewards and Radianite of the pass are covered on our Valorant battle pass page, and the battle pass calculator shows how much XP you need per day before the act ends.
Riot does not publish a fixed patch calendar. According to the Valorant wiki, a new patch typically arrives every two weeks, usually on a Tuesday. Riot rolls it out in three waves over 12 to 15 hours: first the Americas, then Asia-Pacific, and Europe (EMEA) last. That is why updates often reach Europe overnight into Wednesday or on Wednesday morning. Holidays can shift the rhythm, leaving three or four weeks between patches. Recent example: 13.04 on August 18, 13.05 on September 1, and 13.06 three weeks later on September 22.
For the coming weeks: the Act 6 patch (likely 13.07) arrives with the act start on October 13/14. After that comes 13.08, for which Riot has announced Map Rating and changes to Mode Select; in the usual two-week rhythm that would be late October – but it has no official date. For Patch 14.00, Riot has mentioned "Competitive Flex" and updates for the Radiant experience.
What the current patch changes and when today's update lands is covered in our Valorant patch notes summary.
Riot does not give an exact time in advance, so we do not promise one either. The timestamp in the game data (00:00 UTC, which is 02:00 CEST) is only a technical value. In practice, the act changes with the patch deployment for your region. For Europe, experience says it usually happens early in the morning, roughly between 4 and 7 a.m. CEST. Dot Esports gives an expected window of 2 to 5 a.m. UTC for EMEA (4 to 7 a.m. CEST) and stresses that it is not confirmed. With Patch 11.08, which added Veto, the EU update was scheduled for 5 a.m. CEST according to Gfinity. In the Americas, Dot Esports expects the switch on October 13 during the day.
During the deployment, servers are often unavailable for a short time. If you cannot log in that morning, check the Valorant server status. And because European clocks go back on October 25, everything until October 24 is listed here in CEST and everything after in CET.
There is nothing official: Riot has neither announced nor teased Agent 31 so far. The game data of the current build (Patch 13.06) contains exactly 29 playable agents and no hidden entry. The most recent agent is Miks, playable since March 18, 2026.
Everything else is a leak. On October 2, the leak account VALORANTLeaksEN reported that the new agent will be revealed on October 17 during the Champions finals weekend, apparently as part of a showmatch. It is based on an excerpt of a run-of-show schedule. Riot has not confirmed it, and an earlier report named October 18. Dataminer rumors point to a duelist – also unconfirmed.
Last year shows why the timing is plausible: in 2025, Veto was revealed at the Champions grand final in Paris and became playable two days later, on October 7, 2025. For 2026 this is pure speculation. There is no release date or release patch for Agent 31, not even in the game data.
We collect every hint, leak and scenario on our page about Agent 31 in Valorant.
The last Night Market ran from September 22 to October 6, 2026; Riot announced it on X. No new date has been announced. A look at recent years helps: in 2025 and 2026, there was exactly one Night Market in every act. Since the Act 5 one is over, the next one would be expected in Act 6.
In each of the last two years there was a December Night Market that ran until the end of the season: from December 16, 2024 to January 7, 2025, and from December 11, 2025 to January 6, 2026. That is why we expect a December date again in 2026, running until about January 6, 2027. This is explicitly an assumption – Riot usually announces the Night Market only shortly before it starts. The "V25 Encore" event pass also ran until the end of the season in December 2025; whether there will be a similar year-end pass in 2026 is open.
How the Night Market works, which discounts are possible and what time it usually opens is covered on our page about the next Night Market date.
Champions 2026 runs from September 24 to October 18 in Shanghai, with a prize pool of $2,250,000, of which $1,000,000 goes to the winner. The finals weekend takes place at the Mercedes-Benz Arena. Who plays there will only be decided after the matches on October 10 and 11.
| Day | Match | Time (CEST / UTC) |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, Oct 16 | Upper final | 08:00 / 06:00 |
| Friday, Oct 16 | Lower round 3 | 11:00 / 09:00 |
| Saturday, Oct 17 | Lower final | 09:00 / 07:00 |
| Sunday, Oct 18 | Grand final | 08:00 / 06:00 |
The Champions 2026 bundle costs 6,640 VP, and the Champions 2026 Phantom costs 2,675 VP on its own. From September 22 to October 20, part of the proceeds goes to the teams. Riot has not given an official end of sale. The bundle is therefore expected to be available until around October 20; the in-game store shows the exact end date. More on our Champions 2026 bundle page.
The Game Changers Championship 2026 takes place at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo. Early stages and playoffs run from October 22 to 28, the finals weekend from October 30 to November 1. Ten teams take part, including G2 Gozen, Shopify Rebellion Gold and Team Liquid Brazil.
Red Bull's off-season tournament moves to Los Angeles in 2026. The group stage is played on December 10 and 11, the bracket starts on December 12, and the grand final is on December 13. The venues are the Shrine Auditorium and WePlay Studios. Confirmed teams include G2, Sentinels, NRG, Fnatic, T1 and ZETA.
According to Riot, open qualifiers for VCT 2027 begin in November 2026. Kickoff in the Americas, EMEA and Pacific will each feature twelve teams: eight partner teams and four from the Open Qualifiers. Kickoff is reported to be scheduled for January 2027; Riot still plans to publish the exact days and the full-year calendar.
Follow results and the bracket on our Champions 2026 live page, and get the bigger picture in our Valorant esports guide.
Premier, the in-game team mode, also follows the acts. The last stage, V26A5, ended with its playoffs on September 20, 2026. As of October 10, Riot had not published a schedule for the new V26A6 stage – no start date, no weekly maps and no playoff date. For V26A5, Riot listed details such as the number of weeks and the playoff cutoff in the patch notes for the act start. We will add the dates as soon as they are official. Divisions, points and match times are covered in our Valorant Premier guide.
Season 2026 ends with Act 6 on January 6, 2027. Season 2027 begins after that – and since it is a season start, everyone plays five placement matches again. Based on the pattern so far, the first patch of the new season will likely be numbered 14.00: Season 2026 started with Patch 12.00 on January 6, 2026. Riot has already announced "Competitive Flex" and updates for the Radiant experience for 14.00. There is no specific date for 14.00 yet.
Act 6 starts in Europe on October 14, 2026, in the Americas on October 13, and runs for 84 days until January 6, 2027. The Act 5 battle pass ends with it – finish open tiers by Tuesday evening at the latest. In the new act, one placement match is enough to get your rank back, and the Act Rank badge needs nine wins.
The act dates, the Champions finals from October 16 to 18, the Game Changers Championship and Red Bull Home Ground are official. The exact start time, the patch number 13.07 and a December Night Market are expectations, and the Agent 31 reveal on October 17 is a leak. The countdown above always shows how long is left – and we keep the table up to date as soon as Riot announces new dates.
Season 2026 Act 6 starts in Europe on Wednesday, October 14, 2026, and in the Americas a day earlier on October 13 because of the time difference. The date is in the official game data. The act goes live with the patch, which in Europe usually happens early in the morning.
Act 5 and its battle pass end in Europe on October 14, 2026, when Act 6 starts, and in the Americas on October 13. Tiers you have not unlocked by then cannot be earned later. Act 6 then runs until January 6, 2027, which is also the end of Season 2026.
Riot does not announce a fixed time in advance. The act changes with the patch deployment for your region; in Europe that is usually early in the morning, roughly 4 to 7 a.m. CEST (2 to 5 a.m. UTC). The battle pass timer in the game shows the exact time left.
The next patch arrives with the act start on October 13 in the Americas and October 14 in Europe; it is likely Patch 13.07, but that has not been announced. After that, patches usually come every two weeks on Tuesdays, reaching Europe overnight into Wednesday. Riot does not publish a fixed patch calendar.
Riot has not officially announced Agent 31, and the game data currently contains 29 playable agents. According to a leak, the new agent will be revealed on October 17, 2026 during the Champions finals weekend; Riot has not confirmed this. There is no release date.
No. According to Riot, Act 6 only needs one placement match, which gives you back roughly your previous rank. Five placement matches only happen at season start and mid-season. Your Act Rank starts fresh, and the badge requires nine wins.
The next date has not been announced; the last Night Market ran from September 22 to October 6, 2026. In each of the last two years there was a December Night Market running until the end of the season, so December 2026 is a reasonable assumption. It is not confirmed.
According to the game data, Season 2026 ends on January 6, 2027, and Season 2027 begins after that. At the season start, everyone plays five placement matches again. Riot has already announced Competitive Flex for Patch 14.00, but there is no date for it yet.
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