When does the current VALORANT act end?

When does the next act start?

ACT VI begins on October 14, 2026 and is scheduled to run until January 6, 2027, a span of 84 days. The new act starts the moment the old one ends: there is no gap between them, and no downtime window to wait out.

Riot dates future acts in the files well ahead of announcing them, which is why this date can appear here before it appears in a patch note. It is a scheduled date rather than a promise — the further out it sits, the more room there is for it to move.

What actually happens when an act ends

An act ending is not a wipe. Most of what you own carries straight over, and the things that do change are specific and predictable. Here is the whole list, in the order players usually notice them.

Your rank is soft-reset, not deleted

You keep your account's hidden matchmaking rating and are asked to play placement matches again at the start of the new act. Because the underlying rating survives, placements tend to land you near where you finished rather than dropping you to the bottom — the visible badge resets, the system's opinion of you does not.

Your act rank is frozen and archived

The act rank badge — the triangle grid showing your nine best wins of the act — locks at the end and stays on your profile permanently. It is the only durable record of how an act went for you, which is why it is worth playing a few ranked games near the end rather than after the reset.

The battle pass expires with the act

Any tier you have not claimed is gone when the act closes. There is no grace period and no way to buy the pass retroactively, so unclaimed tiers are the one genuinely irreversible loss on this list.

Night Market timing shifts with the cycle

The Night Market runs on its own schedule rather than opening at every act boundary, but the two move together closely enough that the end of an act is the usual moment people start checking for it.

Competitive queues briefly close

Ranked is unavailable for a short window at the changeover while the reset is applied. Unrated and the other modes stay open throughout, so only the ranked queue is affected and only for a matter of hours.

The full rank ladder and what a reset does to it is on our ranks page, and the Night Market trackerpage.

Acts, episodes and seasons — which is which

These three words get used interchangeably and they do not mean the same thing, which is most of why the question is confusing to search for. An act is the competitive cycle: it has its own battle pass, its own act rank, and it ends with a rank reset. Acts are what people actually mean when they ask when the season ends.

An episode is the container above it — historically a run of three acts sharing a theme, a cinematic and a set of agents. Riot has changed this structure more than once, and current spans are labelled by year rather than by the old episode numbering, which is why the parent name on some acts here reads differently to the ones from launch.

Season is the informal word for both, borrowed from every other live game. Riot's own files use act and episode, and this page uses them the same way — so when the timer above says an act ends, that is the ranked reset people are counting down to.

What to do before the act ends

Most of an act ending is automatic and needs nothing from you. These five are the exceptions — the things that are genuinely easier to do before the changeover than after it, in the order they matter.

1. 1

   Claim every battle pass tier you have earned

   This is the only irreversible item on the list. Tiers you have unlocked but not collected vanish with the act, and there is no way to recover them afterwards. It takes a minute in the pass menu and it is the one thing genuinely worth doing before the deadline.

2. 2

   Finish any ranked games you have in progress

   Rank resets at the changeover, so a game played the day before counts towards the act you are in and a game played the day after counts towards placements in the next one. Neither is wasted, but if you are one win from a promotion it is worth taking it now rather than replaying placements for it.

3. 3

   Top up your act rank if the badge matters to you

   The badge records your nine best wins of the act and freezes permanently when it ends. If you have fewer than nine wins, or several at a lower rank than you are currently playing at, late games can still improve what gets archived.

4. 4

   Check whether the Night Market is still open

   Night Market windows close on their own schedule rather than at the act boundary, but they often overlap the end of one. If yours is open and you intended to buy, the end of the act is a reasonable prompt to decide.

5. 5

   Spend or clear anything act-scoped

   Act-specific missions and their progress reset with the cycle. Radianite, Valorant Points and Kingdom Credits all carry over untouched, so there is no need to spend currency in a hurry — that part of the panic is misplaced.

How to check the act end date in-game

The client shows the same date this page does, because both read it from the same place. Open the battle pass from the main menu and the remaining time appears at the top of the pass screen — that timer is the act timer, not a pass-specific one, so it is the fastest in-game answer.

The career tab gives the other half. Your act rank badge sits there with the act's name beside it, which is the quickest way to confirm which act you are actually in when the numbering gets confusing across an episode boundary.

Both surfaces round to the day and neither shows you the acts that come after the current one. That is the difference here: because the season files carry future acts as soon as Riot dates them, the next act's start date can appear on this page weeks before the client will show it to you.

Are acts getting longer or shorter?

Comparing the first 13 acts against the most recent 13: the early ones averaged 63 days and the recent ones average 62.

So acts have tightened by about 1 days over the game's lifetime. The practical effect is that older guidance about how long you have to finish a battle pass is now optimistic by roughly that margin, which is worth knowing if you pace your pass progress against a remembered number.