For a tournament that opened with Nongshim RedForce carrying a 14-match official winning streak and a Masters Santiago trophy, the first two weeks of VCT Pacific Stage 1 have delivered almost everything except the expected. The same five teams that were supposed to define the group stage are still in the conversation, but the hierarchy that looked settled in March has already been rewritten twice.
The format itself leaves little room for bad weekends. Twelve teams, two groups of six, single round-robin Bo3, and only the top four out of each group advance to playoffs in Ho Chi Minh City. Four wins can guarantee a bracket spot; three losses can kill a campaign before week four.
Paper Rex Nongshim Rematch Set the Tone
The Masters Santiago grand final was a 3-0 sweep in favor of Nongshim. Three weeks later, at SOOP Sangam Colosseum in Seoul, Paper Rex got the rematch they needed and took it 2-1.
What made the result significant was not only the scoreline but the way it unfolded. Nongshim took map one, Fracture, into overtime and closed it out 15-13, looking every bit the team that had won 14 straight official matches across Ascension Pacific, Pacific Kickoff, and Masters Santiago. Then the reverse sweep started. Split went to Paper Rex 13-10, and on Lotus, the decider, PRX ran away with it 13-6, with Jinggg taking series MVP honors as the structure he had been missing in Santiago finally clicked under pressure.
The streak that ended in that series is worth putting in context:
| Event | Result |
| VCT Ascension Pacific 2025 | Champions |
| VCT 2026 Pacific Kickoff | 1st place |
| VALORANT Masters Santiago | Champions (undefeated) |
| VCT Pacific Stage 1, Week 1 | Lost 1-2 to Paper Rex |
A 14-match unbeaten run across three tiers of competition does not collapse by accident. Paper Rex identified what the Santiago final had exposed, corrected it, and executed under pressure. The question now is whether Nongshim can reset before Alpha Group tightens further.
Gen.G Valorant Struggles Are No Longer a Narrative, They Are a Pattern
When Global Esports walked onto the stage on April 3 as heavy underdogs against Gen.G, the pre-match odds told the expected story. The final score told a different one: Global Esports 2, Gen.G 0, in the tournament opener. It was the kind of result that would be written off as a hot start for an ascending team if it had happened once. The problem for Gen.G is that it didn’t.
A week later, Gen.G found form against Paper Rex, taking the series 2-1 with wins on Haven (17-15 in overtime) and Lotus (13-3), while PRX took Fracture 13-3 in between. A good reading of that match would note that Gen.G’s defensive structure forced Haven into overtime and held up against sustained Jinggg pressure, with t3xture and Lakia anchoring the Gen.G wins on the book-end maps. That Jinggg still topped the server with 66 kills across the series despite the loss tells its own story about where the individual ceiling in this region currently sits, and about the gap between raw firepower and match-winning structure. The harder reading is that Gen.G are now 1-1 in Group Alpha after losing to the group’s lowest-seeded team on opening day.
Gen.G’s issues this cycle have been visible since Pacific Kickoff, where Global Esports also eliminated them in the lower bracket. The pattern repeats: the roster shows flashes of the top-tier team it was projected to be, then drops a series to opposition it should handle. With Alpha Group already being labeled the Group of Death, that margin is the difference between a playoff seed and a Stage 2 reset.
T1 Still Has Something to Say
Lost in the narrative around Nongshim and Paper Rex: T1 are quietly 2-0 in Group Omega. Week 1 produced a clean 2-0 over VARREL, the Japanese organisation making its Pacific debut after acquiring the 2025 Pacific Ascension-winning SLT Seongnam roster. Week 2 saw T1 dispatch DetonatioN FocusMe 2-0 on Pearl and Lotus, a series in which the pre-match market gave them a near-walkover read.
None of those opponents sits in the top tier of the league, which is the honest caveat. But T1’s last meaningful run was the Masters Santiago qualification via a second-place finish at Pacific Kickoff, where they took three points and a Masters slot. They are now carrying that momentum into a Stage 1 path that will test them against Paper Rex and Gen.G before Omega is decided. If T1 get through those two series, they do not just make playoffs, they arrive as one of the region’s Masters London contenders.
Championship Points Picture Heading Into Week 3
The points math is already shaping decisions. Heading into Week 2, Nongshim led the regional Championship Points table on 10 points, Paper Rex held 7, and T1 sat on 4. Only the top two teams in total accumulated Championship Points qualify for Champions at season’s end. Group stage wins are worth one point each, with up to six more available through playoff finish.
Some notes on what that means in practice:
- Nongshim have a cushion but cannot afford a second Stage 1 loss without playoff damage
- Paper Rex closed the gap with the Nongshim win but gave points back in the Gen.G loss, leaving them tied on the head-to-head trajectory
- T1 are accumulating wins in Omega without facing the group’s top seeds yet, meaning their real point test is still ahead
- Gen.G need a playoff run to recover Kickoff + Stage 1 combined points, and that path goes through either Paper Rex or Nongshim
What Week 3 Actually Tests
The fixtures coming up on April 17 through April 19 will clarify the group pictures. Paper Rex face Team Secret in what the region has branded a Pinoy Derby. Kiwoom DRX meet Global Esports, a match that will tell us whether GE’s opening-weekend win over Gen.G was a genuine level-up or a single good read of the meta. RRQ take on T1, the first real stress test of T1’s Omega run.
The broader question hanging over Stage 1 is about viewership and regional pull. The Gen.G vs Global Esports opener peaked at roughly 151,000 concurrent viewers, a figure that sits 37.5% below the 2025 Pacific opener and was narrowly outdrawn by EMEA’s Fnatic vs Eternal Fire. The Pacific is currently the most-watched regional league in VCT, having overtaken Americas in 2026 opening-week viewership with a 7.5% year-on-year increase in hours watched. That lead was built on Kickoff and Masters Santiago momentum, not on Stage 1 group stage numbers, and the latter are now softer than the region is used to.
On current form, the region still has its contenders. Nongshim have the ceiling even after the streak ended. Paper Rex have the trajectory. T1 have the quiet run. Gen.G have the roster to turn the narrative around, if they can avoid losing series they are favored to win. The Pacific picture going into Masters London will be defined by how each of those four answers their open question across the next four weeks.
