Riot officially announced the Champions 2026 Collection in Valorant

Riot Games has released the official trailer for the Champions 2026 Collection – the annual skin set dedicated to the year's main Valorant Champions tournament. The release comes just ahead of the event in Shanghai, which kicks off on September 24.

As every year, the set includes two skins – this time for the Phantom and a melee weapon that transforms the knife into a fan. This also confirms insider rumors from a few weeks ago about what the melee weapon would be.

The main feature of the Champions 2026 Collection is that the skins change appearance depending on which side the player is on: attack or defense. On the defender side, the weapon gets the signature Champions cream-gold color with a pearl-white base, while the attacker version comes in a darker, more "predatory" palette with red accents. This is a direct nod to the championship's own trailer, where Sage and Viper faced off against each other.

Besides the color scheme, the melee weapon will also come in two forms – a knife or a fan.

Both the Phantom and the knife will also feature a unique finisher effect, present in every past collection. With the Champions 2026 skins, after the final kill, two figures appear – Sage with a dragon and Viper with a serpent – shooting at each other, with the VCT symbol between them.

A gun buddy has also been confirmed, in the same paired-set format. The light dragon comes bundled with the light version of the skin, and the black serpent with the dark one.

So far, Riot hasn't revealed the collection's price or the full list of items, so it's unclear whether accessories like a flex weapon, player card, or spray will be included. According to insiders, the Phantom skin will get four upgrade tiers with separate animations, sound design, and a finisher effect, while the knife will get three tiers.

Preliminary reports suggest the full bundle release in the Valorant store should be expected on September 22–23, right before Champions 2026 begins. Like all Champions collections, the set will only be available for purchase during the tournament, after which it will disappear from the store and won't appear in the Night Market. The price is still unknown, but last year's set cost 6,640 VP, so this year's skins are expected to cost roughly the same.