Riot Games wrapped up 2025 with a patch that felt like a late holiday gift for the Valorant faithful, and by the time 2026 rolled around, the 11.11 update had already carved out a cozy spot in the community’s memory. The five-on-five shooter had just come off a wild ride in the back half of 2025: a fifth anniversary celebration over the summer, a move to Unreal Engine 5, and a steady stream of Agent changes that kept every class on its toes. A long-awaited Harbor rework had also landed on live servers in the weeks before, giving the controller mains something to chew on. But the headline of 11.11 was not a balance tweak or a shiny new toy—it was something players had been begging for ages: the ability to gift Valorant Points.
That’s right—VP gifting finally became a real thing. The feature went live on December 3 in a staggered rollout, and it showed up as a new option on the VP purchase page in the store. For anyone who has ever stared at a friend’s wishlist and thought, “I’d love to help out, but I don’t know exactly what skin they want,” this was the answer. No more guessing. No more awkward “just pick something” conversations. Players could simply send VP and let their friends do the shopping.
Of course, Riot didn’t just swing the gates wide open and walk away. The gifting rules were familiar to anyone who had sent a skin before. The recipient needed an account level of at least 15, had to have been on the sender’s friends list for at least a week, and could not have a Valorant ban on their record. If those boxes were ticked, it was all systems go. It was a sensible set of guardrails—enough to keep the worst actors from turning gifting into a side hustle, but not so strict that normal friends got left out in the cold.
| Gifting requirement | The fine print |
|---|---|
| Account level | At least level 15 |
| Friendship status | On the sender’s friends list for at least one week |
| Ban history | No Valorant ban on the recipient’s account |
The patch also rolled out a batch of bug fixes that touched several Agents and a couple of quality-of-life corners. Clove got a whole cluster of cleanup: finishers no longer went haywire when Clove was killed right after using Not Dead Yet, the top team composition icon updated properly when Clove died inside a smoke after the ultimate, the revive-in-spawn bug with too many players standing over the body was squashed, and the Pick-Me-Up overheal HUD effect no longer stuck around after the overheal hit zero. Cypher mains also got some love: enemy positions no longer briefly popped up on the minimap while hidden by Cyber Cage, Spycam no longer looked recovered when it had actually been destroyed mid-recovery, and Trapwire no longer appeared visually active if Cypher was killed just before it finished arming.
Harbor’s fixes were another highlight, especially for anyone who had been on the wrong end of a weird interaction. Storm Surge no longer affected Yoru during Dimensional Drift, and it no longer made a dead Clove see a Nearsight HUD effect after hitting the corpse. Cove stopped snapping 180 degrees when players looked up or down, the Reckoning minimap indicator no longer lingered and blocked vision cones, and Storm Surge and Reckoning no longer displayed colored boxes on a spectator’s screen after a perspective switch. Iso’s Kill Contract got cleaned up too: Clove and Reyna now enter at full health and shields—or overheal—when they had damaged overheal beforehand, and Phoenix gets his original health and armor back after leaving Kill Contract while in Run It Back. Reyna’s HUD prompts for Devour and Dismiss no longer linger when she has no charges left, and her overheal health now displays accurately for spectators.
The notes also named Chamber, Jett, Skye, Tejo, Veto, and Vyse under Agent headings, though the visible fixes focused elsewhere. On the map side, Haven got a small but meaningful change: a spot on A Link near A Site no longer allows wall penetration where it should not have been possible. And in a classic bit of patch-note comedy, the V25A3 ranked gun buddies temporarily showed up in collections under the incorrect name “V25A6.” Riot made it clear that the buddy for the first three Acts of Season 2025 was safe, that the name would go back to normal, and that players who earned an Act rank in the last three Acts would receive their V25A6 gun buddy in the 12.00 patch. No sweat—just a labeling hiccup.
The Agents page also got a fresh coat of paint. The full roster now shows up in a grid view, and players can browse with either the mouse or the arrow keys. It was the same idea as before, but different—and, according to the patch notes’ own cheeky logic, better because it was different. Collections UI updates from Patch 11.10 also went live in Korea, rounding out a patch that was less about flash and more about smoothing the rough edges.
For the Valorant crowd, 11.11 was a long time coming. VP gifting gave friends a simple way to spread the love, the bug fixes made a handful of Agent interactions feel clean as a whistle, and the UI tweaks kept the whole experience from feeling stale. By 2026, the feature had settled into the live game like it had always been there—but for the players who had waited through years of “maybe someday,” that December rollout was a proper win. 🎁