Global Esports have never played at Champions, and their first group has two former winners in it
Shanghai’s Group B put the Indian organisation in with LOUD, EDward Gaming and Team Vitality. Their opening match is on 26 September.
Sep 10, 2026
Global Esports have been in Valorant’s Pacific league since 2023 and have never played at the world championship. That ends on 26 September, when the Indian organisation opens its first Champions, in Shanghai, against Team Vitality. The groups were drawn straight after the Americas final in Sao Paulo, and Group B gave Global Esports LOUD and EDward Gaming as well. Two of the three sides they have to get past have won this tournament.
Two of the group have won this before
EDward Gaming are the heaviest name in it. They won Champions in Seoul in 2024, beating Team Heretics 3-2 for China’s first international Valorant trophy. LOUD won Champions in 2022, the first Brazilian side to do it. Vitality have not won one, which in this group counts as the encouraging part.
The draw worked off four pots based on how teams qualified, with no two sides from the same region allowed into the same group. Global Esports went in as the Pacific’s first seed, alongside 100 Thieves, Karmine Corp and JD Gaming. Being top-seeded and being comfortable are different things: the seeding protected them from JD Gaming and 100 Thieves, then handed them a former champion from China anyway.
Vitality first, on 26 September
Global Esports open against Team Vitality on 26 September at 2.30pm IST, with LOUD facing EDward Gaming in the group’s other opening match. The format is the familiar one: four groups of four, winners’ and elimination matches, a decider, two teams out of each group. Lose the opener and the road gets short.
Champions runs from 24 September to 18 October. The group stage and early playoffs are at the Jing’an Sports Center, the closing weekend moves to the Mercedes-Benz Arena, and there is $2.25 million across the sixteen teams.
Three years of finishing outside
The record is worth laying out, because it explains why this qualification landed the way it did in India. Global Esports finished eighth in the Pacific league in 2023. In 2024 they were seventh-ninth at the Kickoff and ninth in Stage 2. In 2025 they were ninth-tenth in Stage 1 and eleventh-twelfth in Stage 2. Nothing in that run suggested a team about to win anything.
This year turned: third in the Stage 1 playoffs, a Masters London appearance that ended in the Swiss stage, a group-stage exit at the Esports World Cup, and then the Stage 2 playoffs, which they won on 6 September for $100,000 and the Shanghai slot. VLR.gg now has them first in its Asia-Pacific rankings.
The roster that did it is xavi8k, PatMen, UdoTan, Kr1stal and Autumn, under head coach Daniel Zhou. It is an Indian organisation with players from several countries, which is how the Pacific league works, and it has not stopped anyone in India claiming the result. A first group-stage win at Champions would be the bigger one.