Competitive

VALORANT ranks in order, from Iron to Radiant

VALORANT has nine ranks. Eight of them are split into three divisions, and the ninth — Radiant — is a single tier reserved for the best players in each region. That makes 25 rungs in total.

The full ladder

Tier	Divisions
Iron	Iron 1 · Iron 2 · Iron 3
Bronze	Bronze 1 · Bronze 2 · Bronze 3
Silver	Silver 1 · Silver 2 · Silver 3
Gold	Gold 1 · Gold 2 · Gold 3
Platinum	Platinum 1 · Platinum 2 · Platinum 3
Diamond	Diamond 1 · Diamond 2 · Diamond 3
Ascendant	Ascendant 1 · Ascendant 2 · Ascendant 3
Immortal	Immortal 1 · Immortal 2 · Immortal 3
Radiant	—

Division 1 is the bottom of each tier and division 3 the top, so Silver 3 sits directly below Gold 1.

Before you can play ranked

Competitive is locked until your account reaches level 20. That takes most players somewhere around twenty to thirty unrated games.

Once it unlocks, you play five placement matches. They decide where you start, but they do not decide much — placements are deliberately cautious, and most players land in Iron, Bronze or Silver regardless of how well they did.

How Ranked Rating works

Every rank from Iron 1 to Ascendant 3 holds 0 to 100 Ranked Rating (RR).

Win a match and you gain RR. Lose and you lose RR.
Hit 100 RR and you promote to the next division.
Drop to 0 RR and lose again, and you demote.

Winning is what moves you. Individual performance shifts the number at the margins — it can turn a +18 into a +22, or soften a loss when you clearly carried — but no amount of fragging will climb the ladder on a losing record. The single biggest factor in your RR gain is whether the round counter ended in your favour.

Above Ascendant 3 the rules change. Immortal and Radiant use an uncapped RR total and a regional leaderboard: instead of promoting at 100, you accumulate RR and your position is measured against everyone else. Radiant is the top 500 players in your region — it is not a threshold you reach, it is a place you have to take from someone.

Where Ascendant came from

Ascendant did not exist at launch. It was added in Episode 5 to break up the traffic jam between Diamond and Immortal, which had become a single overloaded step. If you played before then and remember Diamond feeling harder than it does now, that is why: the ceiling above it moved.

What actually gets you out of each tier

Iron to Silver — stop dying for free. At this level most rounds are decided by players taking fights they had no reason to take. Hold an angle, use your utility before you enter, and let the enemy come to you.

Gold to Platinum — buy properly. This is the point where the economy starts deciding matches. If you are still buying a rifle on a thin round and going into the next one with a Classic, you are throwing rounds you already paid for. See what every weapon costs.

Diamond and above — pick a small pool and learn it. Two agents, learned properly, beat nine agents played casually. Everyone can shoot at this point; the difference is who knows exactly what their utility does on the map being played.

Immortal and Radiant — this stops being a solo game. The leaderboard rewards consistency over months, and consistency at that level comes from playing with people you know.

One honest warning

Your rank is a measure of match results over a season, not of how good you are on any given evening. Everyone has stretches where the number goes the wrong way for reasons that have nothing to do with their aim. Playing more games while tilted is the most reliable way to make it worse.