On the opening day of the final weekend of Champions Paris 2025, Riot Games revealed a brand-new game mode for VALORANT called SKIRMISH. Similar in spirit to Deathmatch, this mode lets either teams or solo players face off in a race to ten winning rounds, but only in customs. The idea is simple: no spike, no objectives other than pure combat. Players must simply eliminate their opponents, and the first side to secure ten rounds takes the victory. Unlike traditional DM, however, players do not respawn endlessly and instead have to wait until the end of each round before jumping back in.

Riot also introduced three exclusive maps designed specifically for this mode. They all share the same overall layout but differ in the placement of obstacles. Appropriately named A, B, and C, these will be the three randomized maps available when the mode launches.

All game modes of VALORANT

This new mode will become the twelfth to appear in VALORANT, counting both those that remain available and others that were only seen once. For long-time players, it may spark some nostalgia, especially memories of the Snowball Fight mode, which was playable only in December 2020 and has never returned since. Another example is Replication, where every player on the same team had to pick the exact same Agent, a mode that disappeared from the game after June 27, 2023.

Among the modes that are still active today, aside from the staple Unranked and Ranked queues, players can dive into a competitive experience through Premier or experiment with Agents in Bot Match. For faster and more lighthearted gameplay, VALORANT continues to offer Swiftplay, Spike Rush, and Escalation, along with warm-up options such as Deathmatch and Team DM.