The 2021 Valorant Champions Tour: Stage 3 Masters, also known as VCT Masters Berlin 2021, was a global tournament organized by Riot Games for the first first-person shooter game Valorant as part of the Valorant Champions Tour 2021 competitive season. The tournament is the second global LAN tournament to be hosted by the game, and it served as one of the qualifying tournaments leading to its global crowning event of the season, the 2021 Valorant Champions. The tournament was held from September 10–19, 2021, in Berlin, Germany.[1]
Gambit Esports won the championship after defeating Team Envy, via 3–0 sweep in the best-of-5 grand final to become the champions of the tournament and automatically qualify for the world championships.[2]
The tournament served as one of the qualifying tournaments leading to the world championship with the winner earning an automatic qualification to the global event of the season.[3] With this, it was set to accommodate 16 teams who qualified via the regional Challengers leagues globally, and one of them is Bren Esports who originally qualified for the tournament as the Southeast Asian Challengers Champions. However, due to visa issues and the national restrictions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the team were forced to withdraw from the tournament and has left the tournament with 15 teams.[4][5]
The group stage was a GSL-style double elimination format, with only two teams per group qualified to the playoffs. All matches in the group stage were a best-of-three series.
As a result of Bren Esports' withdrawal from the tournament, the format for this group has been changed from GSL-style double-elimination format to a double round-robin format.[5]
The top two teams from each group qualified for the single-elimination crossover knockout stage. Teams are seeded in which the group winner will be paired against the second-seed of another group, which meant that teams from the same group can only meet until the Final.
Germany
