The Pacific league’s second stage of 2026 is down to four teams and three days of play at the Sajik Indoor Gymnasium in Busan, and the bracket that arrived at this point looks very little like the one most people sketched out in July. Both of the region’s biggest names are already gone. The two sides in the upper half are a play-in qualifier and a roster that spent much of the past three seasons being written off. Anyone putting together a card for the closing weekend of Valorant’s Pacific season is doing it with almost no settled form to lean on.
Nongshim and Global Esports fight for the short route
Nongshim RedForce came in through the play-ins and then did the thing nobody had priced in. They took out Paper Rex 2-0 in the opening round of the upper bracket, then beat Gen.G 2-1 in the upper semifinal to reach the Sept. 4 upper final. That is two of the region’s most established organisations removed by a team that had to qualify for the playoffs the hard way, with Rb, Dambi, Francis, Ivy and Xross doing the damage.
Global Esports got here on a steadier line. They finished second in the Alpha group, edged KIWOOM DRX 2-1 in the upper round of 16 and then swept VARREL 2-0. Autumn, UdoTan, Kr1stal, xavi8k and PatMen have not dropped a series in the playoffs yet, which is a rare sentence to write about this organisation.
The winner of that upper final walks straight into the grand final on Sept. 6. The loser drops into the lower final a day earlier and has to win twice more.
T1 are the lower-bracket problem
T1 also came through the play-ins, and they have been the cleanest team in the bracket since. They dispatched KIWOOM DRX 2-0 in the first lower round and then removed Gen.G 2-0, which was the result that ended the year’s most expensive Pacific roster on a 5th-6th place finish. Next up on Sept. 4 is VARREL, who beat Paper Rex 2-1 to stay alive after being swept out of the upper bracket by Global Esports.
A stax-led T1 running through the lower bracket is a familiar pattern in this region, and it is the reason nobody should be treating the upper final as a coronation.
What is actually at stake
The stage carries a $250,000 prize pool, with $100,000 to the champion, $65,000 for second, $40,000 for third and $25,000 for fourth. More importantly, the event’s own prize table attaches Valorant Champions places to the top two finishers, and Champions 2026 runs in Shanghai from Sept. 24 to Oct. 18. VLR’s playoff coverage had Nongshim’s Shanghai berth already secured earlier in the run, which changes what the other three are playing for rather than removing the pressure.
Why the pricing is awkward
Head-to-head history here is thin and mostly out of date. Nongshim’s playoff wins came against opponents with far longer international résumés, Global Esports have overperformed their historical baseline all stage, and T1 have looked strongest of the four while sitting in the worst position. That combination usually produces wide margins at esports bookmakers during the first hours after each bracket update, before the lines settle around the market consensus. If you are opening a new account specifically for the Busan finish, it is worth reading the wagering conditions attached to welcome offers first, because best-of-three Valorant markets settle quickly and a rushed qualifying bet is easy to get wrong.
Three matches remain: the upper final and lower round three on Sept. 4, the lower final on Sept. 5, and the grand final on Sept. 6.
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