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What is VALORANT? Your guide to the competitive FPS from Riot Games
New to VALORANT in 2026? Here's how agents, game modes, maps and the economy work, what changed this year and how to land your first wins.
First of all, VALORANT is a state of mind. A rush of adrenaline. A fight to the bitter end, and hopefully a sweet, sweet sense of victory.
It's also a free-to-play 5v5 tactical shooter that keeps evolving: new Agents, new maps and a brand-new rifle landed in 2026 alone, keeping the gameplay fresh and entertaining. And that’s what we’re all here for, right?
More literally, VALORANT is a free-to-play first-person tactical shooter (or 'FPS') developed by Riot Games in Los Angeles. Yeah, the same dev that also brought us League of Legends. Development started way back in 2014 and the game as we know it today was first teased under the codename 'Project A' in 2019.
The official release came on June 2, 2020 for PC. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S followed in 2024, building on the huge success of the PC version. In 2026, VALORANT is one of the biggest esports games right now, constantly ranked in the top 10 streaming charts on Twitch. Six years on, we're still obsessed.
Hard facts:
- Genre: Tactical 5v5 first-person shooter
- Developer: Riot Games
- Price: Free to play
- Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S
- Agents: 31 playable, Duelist Hush joins on October 27, 2026
- Reigning world champions: LOUD (VALORANT Champions 2026, Shanghai)
Get a taste of what VALORANT's all about at Red Bull Home Ground:
01
The thrill of tactical shooters
A sub-genre of first and third-person shoot-em-ups, tactical shooters like VALORANT are known for their focus on strategy and planning, plus realistic gameplay including firearms mechanics, player stamina and a general focus on real-world physics.
Where shooters like Call of Duty are focused more on cool explosions and unique kills, tactical shooters are focused on just that: tactics. In VALORANT, brain will get you farther than brawn.
VALORANT takes inspiration from games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, borrowing mechanics like spray patterns, the item menu and relative accuracy while on the move. Arma 3 is another inspiration and is so realistic that it's been used by actual IRL militaries for simulation training.
02
VALORANT's unique take on tactical gameplay
A character-based tactical FPS set in the near future, in VALORANT gunplay mastery meets unique agent abilities. You’ll play as one of an elite team of Agents – characters taking inspiration from our own real world. Naturally, each Agent has unique abilities, and an ultimate ability that you'll need to charge up through kills, collecting orbs or smashing objectives. In the main game, you’ll be either attacking or defending a given objective, giving you plenty of opportunity to rack up those kills.
Agents are divided into four roles: Duelists, Sentinels, Initiators and Controllers. Because each Agent has their own area of expertise, balancing a team with the right Agents for the job can mean the difference between success and failure. And no, five Duelists is not a winning comp.
03
Mastering the Agents of VALORANT
Hush is the newest addition to VALORANT’s Duelist roster
© Riot Games
Starting with access to all Agents would be too easy. Create an account and you'll get five starter Agents. The roster has grown to 3 playable Agents, with Duelist Hush as the newest addition. You unlock more with the in-game currency Kingdom Credits, which costs you 8,000 per Agent. You earn them by playing rounds and completing daily and weekly missions. Short on patience? You can also unlock an Agent for about 1,000 VALORANT Points. New Agents usually launch with a recruitment event, where you unlock them for free by playing, before you can buy them with Kingdom Credits.
Duelists
These 'self-sufficient fraggers' specialise in dashing into bomb sites, providing info for your team and helping you all advance without getting blasted to high heaven. They can cover vast distances quickly, with flash-band like abilities blinding enemies who may be keeping a lookout. Naturally, Duelists tend to lead the attack. Jett's Tailwind dash gives her some of the best mobility in the game. Phoenix is a friendly pick if you want to practise gunfights, because he can heal himself and flash his own way onto a site.
Initiators
The real brains of the operation, Initiators break through enemy positions, with abilities that consist of flashes, but can also show you exactly where the enemy is hiding. This vital info can make stealing an objective that much easier, and less bloody – on your side, at least. With a simple, accessible kit, KAY/O is a solid base-level Initiator. Gekko is another beginner-friendly option.
Sentinels
Your defensive line, as the name suggests, Sentinels dig in, cutting off map areas and setting up ‘objects’ to ensure the enemy isn't going to get around your flanks without taking some hefty damage. With accessible yet powerful kit including the Nanoswarm grenade, Killjoy has to be one of the most powerful sentinels in the game.
Controllers
Controllers control the crowd, using their abilities to create cover and clear out lurking enemies. Their abilities include smoke, molotovs, flashes and stuns, helping conceal your team’s movements while also blinding enemies for surprise attacks. Omen is arguably the most versatile – and strongest – controller in the game, although certain maps will require a difference approach.
Our advice: Don't try to learn everyone at once. Pick one Agent, play them for a while and the maps, timings and team roles will click much faster.
Displacement is a great tool for crowd-control
© Riot Games
Dig deeper into Agents and game modes
04
Conquering the VALORANT game modes
There are eight main un-ranked game modes in VALORANT:
VALORANT offers a mix of Spike modes and no-Spike modes. The playlist rotates, so check the client for what's live. Here are the main ones, plus the full breakdown of game modes.
Unrated
In the standard mode, the first team to win 13 rounds wins the match. To complicate matters, the attacking team has the Spike, a bomb-like device they have to deliver and activate to one of multiple locations. Protect an activated Spike for 45 seconds it blows up and you bag a point. The defenders have to stop this from happening.
Spike Rush
Same as above, but faster paced. This time it’s best of seven. Players begin with all abilities fully charged except their ultimate, which charges twice as fast as in standard games, making for a flat-out, chaotic experience.
Swiftplay
Ten players split into two teams, with attackers looking to plant the Spike, and defenders trying to blow them away before they get the chance. Best of nine. Where Unrated might take 40 minutes, this quicker mode should take about 15 minutes per game.
Premier
This 5v5 game mode is aimed at players who want to turn pro and was rolled out worldwide in 2024. Your team faces off against teams in the same division, with seasons lasting a few weeks at a time. The top teams will compete in the Division Championship, with the winners earning promotions from there.
Red Bull Home Ground finalists battle in Madrid
© Jacobo Medrano/Red Bull Content Pool
Deathmatch
You know the drill. Fourteen players enter a nine-minute free-for-all with the first person to reach 40 kills winning. You’ll spawn as a random Agent with full shields, but with all abilities disabled. It's also the perfect warm-up before a ranked game.
Team Deathmatch
As above, but you’re in two teams of five players. This time games last nine minutes and 30 seconds, and the goal is a modest 100 kills.
Escalation
Inspired by the 'gungame' in Counter-Strike and Call of Duty: Black Ops, your five-player team works through a random selection of 12 weapons. You’ll need to get a certain number of kills per weapon to advance to the next one. The first team to cycle through all 12 levels or to have the most points after 10 minutes wins.
Replication
Vote for a certain Agent but don’t complain when your entire team has to play as the winning Agent type. Best of nine, with players switching sides after round four.
Retake
A 3v3 mode that arrived with patch 13.00 in June 2026 and focuses on retaking a site from a planted Spike.
Limited-time modes
Riot keeps experimenting. In 2026, that included Knockout, a team-focused take on Team Deathmatch, and Skirmish. The newest is Gauntlet: Glitched, which launched with patch 13.06 on September 15. Eight duos battle through a tournament-style round-robin, building a hybrid ‘Robo-Agent’ from a pool of abilities.
05
Weapons and economy: what to buy and when
VALORANT is not just about aim. Every round starts with a buy phase, and what you can afford depends on your credits. You earn credits for kills, for planting or defusing the Spike and for winning (or losing) rounds.
Weapon classes: There are sidearms, SMGs, shotguns, rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns and a melee weapon that never leaves your side. You spawn with a sidearm every round. In 2026, Riot added a new pistol, the Bandit, and a brand-new rifle, the Warden, with patch 13.06. It joins the Vandal, and Phantom and comes with a built-in sight for a stronger aim-down-sights option.
Which gun first? Most players work towards the Vandal or the Phantom. The Vandal can kill with a single headshot at any range. The Phantom has gentler recoil, which makes it easier to control while you learn. The Operator is the high-risk, high-reward sniper rifle.
Think as a team: A full buy means a rifle, shield and abilities. An eco round means saving credits for the next round. A force buy means spending what you have on a risky round. The classic beginner mistake is buying a rifle while your team saves. When in doubt, match your team's economy.
06
Maps: know your battlefield
Summit introduces brand-new game mechanics
© Riot Games
VALORANT now has 13 standard maps, and the newest is Summit, which arrived on June 23, 2026 with patch 13.00. It has two sites and destructible walls that change sightlines mid-round. Most maps have two sites, while Haven and Lotus have three.
Only seven maps are in the competitive rotation at any time, and Riot swaps them every Act, roughly every one to two months. The rest stay available in Unrated, Swiftplay, Spike Rush and Escalation. Learn the callouts (the names for areas of the map), the choke points and the rotation routes, and you'll already be ahead of plenty of players in your lobby.
07
Competitive integrity: Ranked Mode and anti-cheat
Competitive is the ranked mode, where your results are recorded and help you climb the real-world ladder. It's a great way of giving anyone, anywhere in the world, a shot at the big leagues.
Gameplay-wise, think Unrated with a win-based ranking system that assigns you a rank after your placement matches. You'll need to reach account level 20 before you can play, and ties at 12-12 go to overtime, where you need a two-round lead to win. The ranks run from Iron to Radiant: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Ascendant, Immortal and Radiant, with Radiant reserved for the very best.
To prevent unfairness, the game uses Vanguard, an anti-cheat software, designed to stop players getting ahead in unfair ways, thereby upholding the highest levels of competitive integrity.
08
What's new in VALORANT in 2026?
Season 2026 kicked off on January 6 with patch 12.00, bringing the Bandit pistol, a reworked Breeze and a wave of Agent balance changes. In March, patch 12.05 added Miks, a Controller from Croatia, plus the temporary Knockout mode. Summit and the 3v3 Retake mode followed in June with patch 13.00.
The biggest update of the year dropped on September 15 with patch 13.06. It brought the Warden rifle, the Gauntlet: Glitched mode and Agent Mastery, a new progression system that rewards you for playing a specific Agent. A new home and lobby screen makes queueing smoother, and you can now use the Practice Range while you wait for a match.
The newest Agent expanding the roster is Hush. The telekinetic Duelist from Guangdong, China was revealed before the Champions grand final and entered the arena in late October, focusing on telekinesis and movement abilities.
09
Beyond the battlefield: the VALORANT community
VALORANT has sparked a vibrant online community, with players creating message boards, forums and content such as play-through videos and tips blogs.
Creators like Tarik, TenZ and Kyedae are among the best-known names on Twitch and YouTube. Watching high-ranked players and streamers is one of the fastest ways to learn positioning and decision-making. TenZ is also one of the best pros in the history of the game, making him the (yet uncrowned) King of VALORANT.
Watch TenZ's story in this bio video:
It’s also sparked some huge esports events, like Red Bull Home Ground and Riot Games’s own VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT).
The 2026 season featured international Masters events in Santiago and London, and ended with Champions in Shanghai. On October 18, LOUD beat Team Vitality 3-1 in the grand final, becoming the first organisation to win the world title twice. It was also the last Champions of the franchise era: from 2027, the VCT moves to an open qualifier format.
Red Bull Home Ground 2026 is the next big date on the calendar. The off-season tournament heads to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from December 10-13, with 10 teams, including reigning champions G2 Esports, NRG and Sentinels. You can watch it live on the Red Bull Twitch and Red Bull Esports YouTube channels.
10
Getting started with VALORANT
VALORANT runs on Windows, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. A word of warning, though: VALORANT will not run on Windows 11 if the system does not have a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 compliant cryptoprocessor and UEFI secure boot enabled, as mandated by Microsoft's minimum system requirements for the operating system.
Go to playvalorant.com to download the game and get started today.
11
Six tips for your first weeks with VALORANT:
- Keep your crosshair at head height. Aim where enemies will appear, not where they currently are. That cuts your reaction time and boosts your headshot chances.
- Stop before you shoot. Accuracy drops sharply while you move. Stop, aim, shoot. Pros call this counter-strafing.
- Warm up first. A few minutes in the Practice Range or a Deathmatch before ranked pays off. Start with a lower sensitivity, since most skilled players favour precision over speed, and adjust from there.
- Use abilities with purpose. They are tools for blocking vision, gathering info and creating safe openings, not just for scoring kills.
- Talk to your team. Call out enemy positions, damage dealt and used abilities. Short and clear beats long and late.
- Be patient. Don't chase every win at the start. Every round teaches you something about maps, timings and your own habits.
Want to compete in a team? You can do that with VALORANT
© Andrew Karam/Red Bull Content Pool
12
Conclusion: Dive into the world of VALORANT
VALORANT is an exciting world where the possibilities are endless. From how you upgrade your Agent to the type of game you want to play, to whether or not you want to try to compete at the international level, it’s really up to you. For a more cerebral approach to the FPS, VALORANT always has your back.
Want to see VALORANT at its finest? Tune in to Red Bull Home Ground.
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