Paper Rex has been eliminated from Valorant Champions 2026 in Shanghai after losing a 9-3 half-time lead on Map 3 of Summit against T1.
The regional matchup saw both VCT Pacific rosters fight for their life in the Lower Bracket Round 1 contest, resulting in PRX being the first eliminated team in the playoffs.
Paper Rex collapse at Valorant Champions Shanghai
Going into the Lower Bracket Round 1 contest, Paper Rex remained the favorite for the matchup against a little-fancied T1 roster. The Pacific powerhouse had both the experience advantage and proof that they could make international Lower Bracket runs.
However, T1 set an instant marker on Map 1 of Lotus, as Kim ‘Meteor’ Tae-oh, Byeon ‘Munchkin’ Sang-beom, and Yu ‘BuZz’ Byeong-cheol all had outstanding performances, dropping 56 combined kills to blow Paper Rex out of the map in a 13-7 victory.
Moving on to Paper Rex’s pick of Ascent, the series still seemed recoverable as an 8-4 first half led to a 13-6 victory on the map behind an outstanding 366 ACS performance from Ilya ‘something’ Petrov, which complemented Adrian ‘invy’ Reyes’s 19/8/7 scoreline.
Going into Map 3 of Summit, the momentum seemed to be firmly in Paper Rex’s control as they easily blew T1 out of the water on the Attack side, killing every member of T1 in all but one of the nine rounds they won on the half.
Up 9-3, they were a pistol and a few rounds away from winning. They got that pistol, but the gun rounds did not follow. Paper Rex made a series of highly questionable decisions as the rounds slid away from them over and over.
Having led 10-3 at a point, T1 did not even need Overtime to dispatch a discombobulated Paper Rex, who looked totally lost as they fell 11-13 on Summit, eliminating them from Valorant Champions 2026.
Is this the last we’ll see of Paper Rex?
After the loss, the thoughts of the community instantly fell to whether this Paper Rex roster would survive the offseason.
Paper Rex’s current roster has the following expiration dates on its contracts:
- Something – Contract expires 2026
- D4v41 – Contract expires 2026
- Jinggg – Contract expires 2026
- f0rsakeN – Contract expires 2026
- Invy – Contract expires 2027
In other words, only invy is locked in for Valorant’s new era under the PRX umbrella; every other member of the roster must re-sign or enter free agency.
That means that this loss may spell the end of an era for one of Valorant’s most stable and most well-loved rosters, especially regarding Khalish ‘d4v41’ Rusyaidee and Jason ‘f0rsakeN’ Susanto, who have been with the organization since 2021.
Their collaboration has seen Paper Rex transform from a challenger’s roster to a perennial challenger at the highest level, winning Valorant Toronto Masters in 2025, and finishing second at Valorant Masters Santiago and Valorant Masters London in 2026.
Despite those Grand Finals, something seems to have given inside the Paper Rex roster in the final split of 2026. The roster suffered a joint last-place finish at EWC 2026, only managing 5th-6th in VCT Stage 2, and now finishing 7th-8th in Valorant Champions.
There is clearly something misfiring in the roster that seems to have fallen behind the meta, a meta that they so often defined in the past with their explosive and thrilling playstyle.
All good things come to an end, and this may be a bitter end for this Paper Rex roster, but if it is, this Paper Rex roster will always be one of Valorant’s finest.
Who would you like to see on PRX next year? Share your thoughts with us on the Insider Gaming Discord.
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Darragh is an Esports Journalist for Insider Gaming specialising in Counter-Strike. He loves to explore how esports teams work, or why they very often do not.
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