Riot Games has just announced the upcoming map pool for Valorant patch 10.0, and it might come as a surprise to a lot of avid fans of the competitive shooter.
As confirmed by the Valorant devs on the game’s official X (formerly Twitter) handle, Ascent and Sunset are rotating out of the competitive map pool of the title with the Episode 10 Act 1 update.
This marks the first time that either Ascent or Sunset is being removed from Valorant’s map rotation. While the latter is a relatively recent addition, introduced in August 2023, the former has been a cornerstone of the competitive map pool since the game’s launch in June 2020
The two maps will be replaced by Fracture and Lotus.
It hasn’t been long since Lotus left the map pool of Valorant. The second three-site map in Valorant was removed from the competitive rotation alongside patch 9.08, nearly two years after the map was added to the game in January 2023.
Fracture, however, has been absent from Valorant’s map rotation for well over a year. It was removed from the competitive map pool in August 2023 and, despite undergoing significant updates, has yet to make its return.
It’s still unclear whether Fracture and Lotus will undergo further changes before being reintroduced to Valorant’s competitive map pool.
