If you’ve ever scrolled through Valorant’s daily skin store and sighed at the price tag on your dream Vandal or Phantom skin, you’re not alone. Most players wait months for the chance to grab premium cosmetics at steep discounts, and that’s exactly why so many people ask when is Valorant Night Market coming out each season. I’ve been playing Valorant since its closed beta launch, and I’ve only missed one Night Market run in all that time — it’s easily the best way to build your skin collection without dropping a full month’s gaming budget on a single bundle.
When is Valorant Night Market Coming Out? Typical Rotation Schedules
Riot Games doesn’t share a fixed, year-long schedule for the Night Market, but we can map clear patterns from every event run since the feature first launched in 2021. The Night Market usually rolls out every 2 to 3 months, and stays live for exactly 2 weeks once it launches. If you’re refreshing social media every day asking when is Valorant Night Market coming out, you can usually mark your calendar for 4 to 6 weeks after the start of a new act for the earliest possible drop.
Night Market never drops during a new act launch week, because Riot doesn’t want to split player attention between new battle pass content and discounted skins. The only official announcement of an upcoming Night Market comes 3 to 5 days before it goes live, via in-game pop-up notifications and Riot’s official Valorant social channels. Don’t trust random leak accounts for exact dates, because Riot often pushes event dates back last minute if they find bugs that could break the selection or purchase system.
For context, recent Night Market runs have launched in mid-April, mid-July, late October, and mid-December for the holiday season. The December run is almost always the most popular, as Riot often adds extra fan-favorite skin lines to the pool for the end of the year.
How the Valorant Night Market Selection Works
Every player gets a unique set of 6 random skins in their Night Market, with discounts ranging from 10% to 70% off the original retail price. The discount rate is tied to the skin’s tier, with premium tier skins usually getting higher discounts than deluxe or select tier options. Your Night Market pool is tied to your account’s skin preference history, so you’re far more likely to get skins for weapons you use regularly than ones you almost never pick in matches.
There are a few clear rules that dictate what skins show up in your personal Night Market, and knowing them will help you set realistic expectations before the event launches:
- Your most used weapon types from the past 3 months of casual and competitive play
- Skins you have previously favorited or clicked on multiple times in the in-game store
- Premium skin lines that have been out for at least 6 months (new release skins never show up in Night Market)
- Whether you own any variants of the skin already (you won’t get a base skin you already own, but you can get variants you haven’t purchased yet)
If you don’t like any of the skins in your initial pool beyond the one reroll, you don’t have to buy anything. There’s no penalty for skipping a Night Market run, and your pool will reset completely the next time the event comes around.
Can You Get Rare Limited Edition Skins in the Night Market?
One of the most common questions I see from new players is whether they can get rare limited-edition skins in the Night Market, and the short answer is no. Limited-edition skins like Championship bundles, Pride event skins, or collaboration bundles (like the Arcane or Snoop Dogg lines) never show up in the Night Market pool, no matter how old they are. The only skins eligible for Night Market are select, non-limited premium and deluxe tier lines — fan favorites like Reaver, Prime, Oni, Glitchpop, and Ion are almost always included in the pool.
The only exception to this rule is that battle pass skins from older acts occasionally pop up in the Night Market, but this has only happened twice in the past 3 years, so it’s not something you should count on. If you’re chasing a specific limited-edition skin, your only option is to wait for Riot to re-run the original bundle, which usually happens once every 12 to 18 months for popular collabs.
Don’t go into the Night Market expecting to get a super rare exclusive skin for pennies. It’s better to treat it like a fun surprise: you might get nothing you want, or you might get the exact skin you’ve been waiting for at half price. I once got a 60% off Ion Operator in my 2023 holiday Night Market, and it’s still the skin I use most often when I play Sentinel agents.
Pro Tips to Make the Most of Your Next Night Market
Even if you’re not sure when is Valorant Night Market coming out, you can prepare ahead of time to make sure you don’t waste VP or miss out on a skin you love. First, save up at least 2000 VP in your account in the weeks leading up to the expected event window. I’ve had so many friends miss out on their dream skin because they didn’t have enough VP saved, and had to pay extra for an overpriced VP bundle to grab it before the market closed.
Always check the skin’s full preview before you buy — some skins look great on the Night Market card, but have terrible sound effects or clunky animations that you’ll hate using in competitive matches. You can preview any skin in your Night Market by clicking on the card, and you can even test it in the practice range before you commit to buying it.
Don’t buy a skin just because it’s heavily discounted. I’ve bought three skins that were 60% off that I never used, just because the price felt too good to pass up, and that’s VP I could have spent on a skin I actually wanted later on. If you don’t use the weapon regularly, skip the purchase no matter how good the discount is.
Riot never discounts Night Market skins further during the event, so if you see something you want, buy it right away. There’s no point waiting for a better deal that won’t come, and you don’t want to miss out because you waited until the last hour of the event and the servers crashed right as you tried to check out. It’s also fun to compare your Night Market pool with friends — you can’t trade skins, but you might find out about a skin line you never considered trying before that fits your playstyle perfectly.
At the end of the day, the wait for the next Night Market is half the fun for most Valorant players. While we can guess the rough window based on past rotation patterns, the only way to get an exact answer to when is Valorant Night Market coming out is to follow official Riot announcements in the weeks after a new act launches. Whether you end up with your dream Vandal skin or six dud melee skins you’ll never use, the Night Market is one of the most fun recurring events in the game, and it’s always worth checking out when it drops.
