Riot Games has just dropped the first official tease for the highly anticipated Give Back // V26 bundle. If previous years are any indication, this is about to be your absolute best chance to resurrect some of the most iconic skins in VALORANT history and add them straight to your collection.
More than just a standard marketplace drop, the Give Back bundle is widely considered one of the best events of the year. Not only does it allow the player base to dictate store inventory, but a portion of the proceeds also goes directly to charity, making it the ultimate community-driven release.
Power to the Players: How the Voting Works
The magic of the Give Back series lies entirely in democratic choice. Riot has historically handed over the reins to the community to curate the collection:
- 2021: Riot launched an official, in-game voting platform where players selected individual weapon skins to fill out the inaugural bundle slots.
- 2022: The selection shifted to massive, highly engaging polls across VALORANT’s official social media channels.
- 2024: The community once again called the shots via multi-stage brackets to finalize the weapon lineup.
For Give Back // V26, Riot is expected to stick to this tried-and-true formula. They will likely roll out a series of limited-time head-to-head voting matchups on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. The winning weapon skins from each category will be packed together, bundled up, and dropped into the live client.
The Dream Brackets: Kuronami vs. Reaver?
While Riot has yet to officially lock in the voting candidates for V26, the community is already speculating on the absolute chaos a modern voting pool could bring. With so many premium skin lines released over the years, the brackets could feature heavy-hitters like:
- Kuronami
- Reaver
- Arakashi
- Oni
- RGX 11z Pro
- Prime
- Prelude to Chaos
Let’s be entirely real: if the Kuronami Vandal or Kuronami No Yaiba clears the internal eligibility check and lands in a matchup against a community staple like the Reaver, the entire player base is going to lose its mind. There is also a massive segment of the community holding out hope for an Arakashi resurgence.
When to Expect It
Because this is a teaser phase, no specific skins or official drop dates are set in stone just yet. Historically, the voting phase goes live for a few days to a week before the developers aggregate the data and prepare the store page.
We will be tracking Riot’s social feeds closely and will provide immediate updates the second the official voting brackets go live.
