Rabia is an Editor for Esports Insider and a freelance on-screen VALORANT desk analyst and interviewer. When she's not working, you’ll find her rewatching Marvel movies and crushing on Elizabeth Olsen and Scarlett Johansson.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Riot Games VALORANT Champions Tour Pacific has long positioned itself as a stage designed to unite talent from South Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and more under one competitive banner. Hosted primarily in South Korea and featuring a mix of partnered and Tier 2 organizations , the league has produced international contenders while building passionate fanbases across the region.
But as the league has grown, multiple factors have forced teams, fans, and, ultimately, Riot Games to ask, especially in 2026, whether VCT Pacific is truly representing the region, or whether it is becoming an extension of the Korean VALORANT ecosystem.
Ever since the introduction of the International Leagues, VCT Pacific has been a complicated league to manage.
Unlike the Americas or EMEA, the Pacific is not a single competitive ecosystem. Instead, it brings together multiple regions, each with vastly different esports infrastructures, player bases, languages, and levels of investment.
While that diversity is also what makes VCT Pacific so interesting, it has created multiple challenges for the ecosystem. One of the biggest is the difficulty of making the league truly inclusive for all the regions involved.
Even Jake Sin, Head of VCT Pacific, has publicly acknowledged the issue, saying that “we’ve admittedly created an unintentional imbalance over the last few years.”
He explained that prioritizing operational stability contributed to this imbalance and that his goal moving forward is to address the issue during the upcoming partnership cycle.
“Reading all the reflections from players on their last four years in Pacific as they end their runs in 2026 really hits different. I hope they all see this as the beginning of a new era, more than an end of one. I’m committed to creating an even more amazing ecosystem to be a part of in the coming years. You can look forward to it,” Sin tweeted .
“And for those worried, rest assured that I am committed to making it more inclusive than it ever was. We’ve admittedly created an unintentional imbalance over the last few years (in exchange for operational stability) that I will be on a mission to address.”
Reading all the reflections from players on their last four years in Pacific as they end their runs in 2026 really hits different. I hope they all see this as a beginning of a new era more than an end of one. I’m committed to creating an even more amazing ecosystem to be a part…
I believe Riot Games organizing 2026 Stage 1 Finals in Vietnam and 2025 Stage 1 Finals in Japan was part of an experiment designed to address this imbalance in the long run. While the publisher opting for Busan as the destination for the 2026 Stage 2 Finals was personally a disappointment to me, I hope the team takes VCT Pacific outside South Korea more often starting next year.
As of 2026, five of VCT Pacific’s 12 teams are Korean, accounting for…