Your rank in Valorant is the number players talk about most, and also the thing surrounded by the most nonsense. We go through the whole ladder from Iron to Radiant, what RR is, how many games you play at the start, why Immortal and Radiant behave differently, what happens to your rank between acts and why it may not match how well you actually play.
The rank ladder from top to bottom
Valorant has nine ranks. From highest to lowest, they look like this:
| Rank | Divisions | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Radiant | none | Highest rank, limited number of players per region |
| Immortal | 1–3 | From here up, RR is calculated differently |
| Ascendant | 1–3 | Highest rank you can reach from placements |
| Diamond | 1–3 | |
| Platinum | 1–3 | |
| Gold | 1–3 | |
| Silver | 1–3 | |
| Bronze | 1–3 | |
| Iron | 1–3 | Starting tier |
Eight of the ranks are split into three divisions (1, 2 and 3, where 3 is the highest); Radiant is the only one with no divisions. That makes 25 steps in total to climb.
Before you can even get into ranked, your account needs to be level 20. That’s intentional: the game won’t let you into the competitive mode until you’ve spent some time in Unrated and seen at least most of the maps.
What RR is and how it’s calculated
RR stands for Rank Rating, and it shows your progress within a single division. Up to Ascendant 3 it works simply: you have a bar from 0 to 100, and once you fill it, you move up a division. If you drop below zero, you go down a division.
How much RR you get per game depends mainly on the result. A win adds roughly 5 to 50 RR, a loss takes about 0 to 30, and the higher you are, the less you get for a win and the more you lose for a loss. Besides the result, the score difference and your individual performance also factor in, but those mostly decide edge cases.
Underneath it all runs a hidden MMR, a value you can’t see that estimates your real skill level. MMR decides who the game matches you against and also affects the size of your gains: when your MMR and rank are far apart, the game starts adding or removing RR faster to get you where it thinks you belong. That’s why two people in the same division can get a different number for a win every time.
Placements: your first five games
You don’t get your first rank for free. After reaching level 20, you play five placement matches, and based on them the game assigns your starting rank. It also takes into account how you did in Unrated, so placements aren’t a start from zero but more of a check on the estimate the system already has of you. There’s one hard limit: you can’t place higher than Ascendant 3, and you have to climb to Immortal by playing normally.
The difference between Immortal and Radiant
From Immortal up, the “fill the bar and rank up” system stops applying. Immortal and Radiant players appear on the regional leaderboard, and their RR adds up as a total score instead of a bar within a division. Individual performance no longer counts toward your gains; the only thing that matters is whether you win or lose the match.
Radiant isn’t a rank you unlock by collecting enough points. It’s a spot among the best players in your region. You have to meet two conditions at once: pass the regional RR threshold (300 RR in both Europe and North America, 200 in Brazil, 100 in Latin America and Korea) and also make it into the top 500 players in your region. If someone overtakes you, you lose Radiant without losing a single game.
The practical consequence: the gap between Immortal 3 and Radiant isn’t just about skill, it’s mostly about hours played.
What happens to your rank between acts
Your rank isn’t permanent. At the end of every act there’s a soft reset that moves all players down a bit, so the ladder gets reshuffled a little each act and players who have improved or gotten worse in the meantime end up in the right place.
- Between acts within the same season, you only need to play one placement match for your rank to show again.
- At the start of a new season, the reset goes deeper and you play the full placements again: five matches.
- Immortal and Radiant players keep their leaderboard position, but their RR is cut by 90% and all Radiants drop to Immortal. So Radiant has to be won again every act.
Alongside your rank, the game also tracks your Act Rank, a triangle badge that shows your nine best wins in that act. It improves over the act based on the number of wins (at 9, 25, 50, 75 and 100 wins), and at the end it stays with you as a permanent record of how far you got that act. That makes Act Rank a more honest calling card than your current rank: it shows what you actually achieved, not where you happen to be after a losing streak.
Why your rank doesn’t match how well you really play
This is where the longest voice-chat arguments start, but the explanation is fairly mundane. Rank is a lagging indicator, and more things affect it than how well you aim:
- Lag behind MMR. When you improve, MMR picks it up before your rank does. It can take a few dozen games for the gap to close, and during that time you play against better people than your badge suggests.
- The reset after an act. Right after the reset, everyone’s rank is lower than it really should be. Comparing yourself with someone in the first week of an act makes no sense.
- Valorant is a team game. RR is calculated from the match result, not your score. A win where you barely contribute gives you more than a loss with the best stats in the lobby. In solo queue, only a large number of games evens this out, and a few games a month aren’t enough for the system to make a reliable estimate.
- Agent and role choice. A player who fills gaps in the lineup has worse stats than a duelist but wins more rounds. More on that in the article about agents and their roles.
In practice, the fastest way up is boring: play regularly, stick to two or three agents and one role, and learn the maps in the current pool properly. A regular squad helps too; we cover finding Czech and Slovak teammates in the article Valorant CZ/SK.
FAQ
Nine ranks: Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Ascendant, Immortal and Radiant. Eight of them are split into three divisions, and Radiant has no divisions. That makes 25 steps in total.
Level 20. Until then the competitive mode stays locked and you play Unrated, Swiftplay and other non-competitive modes.
Five at the very start and five again at the start of a new season. Between acts within one season, a single match is enough. The highest rank you can place into is Ascendant 3.
You have to meet two conditions at once: pass the regional RR threshold (300 RR in Europe) and make it into the top 500 players in your region. Radiant also resets every act: all Radiants drop to Immortal and have to fight their way back up.
The hidden MMR decides. When your rank is higher than where the system thinks you belong, your gains get smaller and your losses bigger until it evens out. The match score difference and how high you are also play a role, since higher ranks generally give less.
Information verified as of 2 September 2026. Riot adjusts the Radiant RR thresholds and the reset mechanics from time to time, so it’s worth double-checking them after a big patch. How to pick the agent that’s best for climbing is covered in the article about agents, knowing the current map pool is the other half of success, and if you’re just getting started with the game, begin with installation. The other guides are in the Valorant section.