How the ENC Point System decides the 16 Invited Nations for VALORANT

The qualification process for the Esports Nations Cup 2026 is becoming clearer. The official ENC National Ranking rulebook provides all the necessary details regarding how squads will be selected to determine which 16 teams will receive a direct invitation to the main event for the VALORANT tournament.

As a reminder, the ENC is a nation-based competition set to take place in Saudi Arabia in November 2026, featuring 16 different titles and thousands of athletes from around a hundred countries.

For VALORANT, the tournament will run from November 8 to 15, with 32 nations competing. Half of them will qualify directly for the event based on the ranking established by the Esports Foundation, which organizes the competition, while the remaining teams will have to go through continental qualifiers.

The national ranking is not simply about fielding a star-studded lineup; it relies on an aggregate model. For VALORANT, each nation’s standing is determined by the combined points of its five highest-scoring players. However, there is a strategic limitation: to encourage a broader representation of talent, a maximum of three players from the same professional club can count toward a country's total point pool.

Points are harvested from official competitions spanning the current cycle, which runs from October 11, 2025, to June 21, 2026. These events are categorized into three distinct tiers:

To shed more light on this ranking grid, it is essential to understand that not every split from every region is included. If you look at the list below, you will notice that for Tier B, only the first split of the year is accounted for across all leagues. This means that we can already estimate the point totals for many players coming from those specific leagues. We will have a definitive picture of each nation's invitations as soon as these splits conclude in June, just after Masters London.

On Liquipedia, the reference wiki for esports, a “Projected Ranking” appears, calculated based on the five players from each nation with the best results. This calculation method is being used at the time of this article’s publication, as the national rosters have not yet been announced or confirmed.

In this context, and unsurprisingly, the nations that are overwhelmingly represented across the four VALORANT Champions Tour International Leagues sit at the top of this projected ranking. As such, the United States, South Korea, Canada, Turkey, and China logically make up the Top 5 and should, even after the official teams are announced, remain among the nations directly invited. Indonesia, Poland, the United Kingdom, Singapore, and the Philippines complete the Top 10.