ValorantChampions ShanghaiNine free rewards are available at Champions Shanghai through Drops, Shotcall and Pick’Ems. Here is every requirement and deadline in one place.
Group stage picks lock 24 September. Playoffs picks open 4 October. Credit: Riot Games
Riot is handing out nine free cosmetics across Champions Shanghai, and they sit behind three completely different systems with three completely different levels of effort.
One of them asks you to watch 30 minutes of VALORANT. Another asks you to predict a 16-team tournament perfectly. Both count.
Here is every Champions Shanghai reward, what it actually takes, and which deadlines will catch you out.
Drops are the lowest-effort track by a distance. Two rewards, both earned by having the stream on.
That is it. Link your Twitch and Riot accounts, enable Drops in the Drops tab, and leave a participating channel running.
If you do nothing else on this list, do this one. Thirty minutes of a tournament you were probably going to watch anyway gets you a title.
Shotcall runs during matches and asks you to call outcomes live. Points accumulate across the whole event.
The first two are grindable. Watch enough matches, make enough calls, and 300 points arrives without needing to be right every time.
The player card is different. Top 3% on any map is a real threshold, but note the wording: any single map, not the event overall. You need one great session, not a great tournament. That is a far more achievable ask than it sounds, and it is the reward most people will overlook.
Pick’Ems powered by AWS is the one with hard cutoffs, and the rewards stack rather than replace each other.
Finish in the top 20% and you collect that buddy plus the top 50% buddy plus the participation title. Nothing gets replaced.
The floor is genuinely low. Submit a bracket and you get a title, whether your picks are sharp or catastrophic.
The “100%” title is the one nobody will get. Sixteen of the best teams in the world are playing 34 matches. A perfect bracket across that is not a prediction. It is a coincidence.
This is where people lose rewards.
| Round | Picks open | Picks lock |
|---|---|---|
| Group Stage | 10 September, 7:00 AM PT (web) / 8:00 AM PT (client) | 24 September, ~2:10 AM PT |
| Playoffs | 4 October, after the Draw Show | 7 October, ~2:10 AM PT |
Picks lock ten minutes after the first game of each stage begins. If you are in Europe, that lands mid-morning and you are fine. If you are in North America, your bracket needs finishing the night before, because you will not be awake for it.
The Playoffs round is the trap. The group stage finishes on 4 October, the Draw Show confirms the matchups the same day, and picks slam shut on 7 October. The entire window is one weekend.
Set a reminder now.
This is the actual news in Riot’s announcement, and it fixes a specific problem.
Champions runs on Shanghai time. For most of the world, matches happen while you are asleep or at work, and the old setup meant opening the client or a browser to manage picks. Riot Mobile now carries Pick’Ems natively, with reminders before picks close.
Given that both deadlines land at roughly 2:10 AM Pacific, a phone notification is not a convenience feature. For a large share of the audience it is the difference between submitting a bracket and forgetting entirely.
You can still use the VALORANT client or the web version at valorantesports.com/pickems. All three sync to the same Riot account.
Riot’s own framing is refreshingly unserious: stats, recent form, favourite players, team loyalty, vibes, aura. All valid.
If you want a slightly more useful approach, two things matter more than they look.
Group stage mistakes are cheaper than playoff mistakes. Get a group stage match wrong and you lose that match. Get a playoff match wrong and everything downstream breaks with it, because the team you advanced is no longer in the bracket to win anything else.
The Draw Show changes the exercise entirely. Playoffs picks open only after the draw, so you work with the confirmed bracket in front of you. That is a different task from the group stage, where you are guessing at seeding nobody has seen yet.
You can also invite friends and run a private group, which is where most of the actual entertainment lives.
Pick’Ems is open in most regions, with a specific set of exclusions: Cuba, North Korea, Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Myanmar, and anywhere VALORANT is published by a local publisher, which includes China.
That last one is worth pausing on. Champions is being held in Shanghai, and players in mainland China cannot enter the Pick’Ems built around it.
You need a valid Riot account, and Riot notes that reward eligibility can vary by region depending on local regulations.
Champions Shanghai runs from 24 September to 18 October, with a $2,250,000 prize pool and 16 teams split into four groups of four.
The Group Stage and early Playoffs take place at Jing’an Sports Center. Finals Weekend then moves to the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Pudong, with the Grand Final on 18 October.
Our full Champions Shanghai guide covers every team, the group draws and how to watch. If you are thinking about going rather than just watching, we broke down ticket prices and the entry rules separately.
Pick’Ems are live now in the VALORANT client, on Riot Mobile, and on the official VALORANT Esports site. Drops run through Twitch with your accounts linked, and Shotcall runs in the client during matches.
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