La Gazzetta dello Sport

These regions are usually labeled “minor,” but every few years one of them produces a dark horse that knocks out a big favorite and rewrites expectations. Brazil’s CBLOL has one of the loudest fanbases in League, and its champions regularly turn up at MSI and Worlds looking to punch above their weight. The LCS is home to some of the longest-standing orgs and rivalries in LoL esports. Teams draft for skirmishing, fight early, and rarely shy away from coin-flip calls if it means they can blow the game open. These don’t replace Worlds, but they do give fans more cross-region matchups and more chances for underdog regions to take swings at the favorites.
In 2011, Riot Games hosted the first League of Legends World Championship which marked the start of the professional era in which the game would grow even further. The first tournaments began in 2010 when the grassroots competition began forming into regional competitions. The game was initially minimal in terms of content with only slightly more than 40 champions and basic graphics.

• That’s why you’ll often hear casters talk about “the meta” – it’s the evolving set of strategies and champions that teams are trying to master before the next big tournament.
• League of Legends Esports rests upon the foundation of its five Tier 1 professional regional leagues, that comprise the global competitive ecosystem.
• With more than 20 matches over six days now haven been played at Worlds 2025, here’s a status for how the pick’ems stats are looking.
• The free-to-play and circular, seasonal game updates facilitated reaching players around the world, while organizations such as Mastercard and Mercedes-Benz partnered with events on a professional level.
• Every League of Legends Worlds winner from 2011 to 2024, along with the region that lifted the Summoner’s Cup.
• Within a short time, this game became one of the most played titles in competitive gaming in the modern era, and the game helped shape a lot of today’s esports ecosystem.
• It occurs each fall, in a host country, and brings together the best teams in the world to compete for the Summoner’s Cup and a multi-million dollar prize pool.

The first big checkpoint of every new season is seeing how each LCK Roster looks when the league… Welcome to LOL Esports – your source for the latest news and analysis in the world of esports, especially for the game League of Legends. This allows Riot Games to control updates, security, and player accounts directly through their services. League of Legends isn’t on the Steam client because Riot Games operates its own client/launcher. This is a question that could start an argument between fans, but it would be hard to argue against Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, the legendary mid-laner for T1 (formerly known as SK Telecom T1). The game runs on Windows and MacOS, LoL updates and LoL patches are accessed via Riot’s launcher.

• These regions are usually labeled “minor,” but every few years one of them produces a dark horse that knocks out a big favorite and rewrites expectations.
• On top of MSI and Worlds, we’ve started to see new global tournaments, such as the Esports World Cup and events like First Stand.
• Following MSI 2025 in Vancouver, Canada, MSI 2026 will be held in Korea, a historical and one of the most successful regions of League of Legends history.
• In Europe, G2 Esports have had the largest impact on the global scene as the most successful team in League of Legends European Championship (LEC) history.
• As of 2025, these are the names that occupy the forefront of the game’s legacy — shaping its past and driving its future.

NRG Esports

These games can create intense competitive situations under high pressure, which create frustration and often those situations lead to negative behavior. During the offseason, typically Riot Games makes changes towards preseason to switch up the meta before the start of the new year, this is where a large number of gameplay and format changes will take place. The World Championships tournament brings together all the top teams from their respective regions, such as LCK (Korea), LPL (China), LEC (Europe) and LCS (North America), to compete against one another for the Summoner’s Cup.

When does the League of Legends season begin and finish?

It is fitting that MSI would be hosted in Korea — Korea has been the host to some legendary competitions, particularly as it is the home of some of the notable teams (T1 and Gen.G) in the esports world. Once players reach the professional level, the structure of competition starts to take a little more formality. At DreamHack 2010 in Sweden, the first event included just eight total teams and a $100,000 prize pool – which is significantly smaller than the events that take place today, which boast multi-million dollar prize pools. Because everything is tied to patch changes, the game you see at Worlds might look very different from the one you saw at MSI, even though the teams are the same.
That’s why you’ll often hear casters talk about “the meta” – it’s the evolving set of strategies and champions that teams are trying to master before the next big tournament. That means that we now know all the 12 teams who will be playing in the inaugural LEC Versus split. Seventeen teams from five regions battled for the Summoner’s Cup and a staggering one million dollar prize… Riot Games has set up systems such as Honor rewards, chat filters, and reporting systems, to encourage players to have positive interactions and reduce toxicity in the community.

The Hidden Life of Professional League of Legends Players: What Really Happens Behind the Scenes

Whether you’re climbing the ranked ladder or following pro play, LoLNow delivers expert insights and practical tips to help you improve and stay ahead. Stay updated with patch notes, meta shifts, champion guides, tier lists, and esports news. Together, these two videos give you a crash course in the plays everyone references whenever a new “insane” moment happens on stage. If you want a documentary-style tour of those plays, theScore Esports put together a longform video called “The Most ICONIC Moments in League of betista casino login Legends History”. That’s where side selection, adaptation and mental stamina become just as important as mechanics. Playoffs and international events almost always switch to best-of-five series.

Karmine Corp Claim #1 Spot in the 2026 LEC Versus Regular Season

Beyond that, there’s a whole ecosystem of other leagues across Latin America, Japan, Turkey, Oceania and more. International memes aside, NA still produces memorable storylines – from miracle lower-bracket runs to veteran players reinventing themselves on new rosters. You’ll see off-meta picks, creative flexes and funky level-one plans, especially in best-of-five playoffs where coaches have room to adapt drafts from game to game. A lot of the most entertaining series every year – base races, wild comebacks, 30-kill ADC games – come from the LPL.
Taking place in the middle of summer during 2026, we can expect nothing less than a clash between the best teams in the world, and a re-telling of the most storied international rivalries. It occurs each fall, in a host country, and brings together the best teams in the world to compete for the Summoner’s Cup and a multi-million dollar prize pool. The League of Legends World Championship, commonly referred to as Worlds, is the final event of the professional League of Legends season. While it is completely separate from League of Legends, Wild Rift is another competitive “circuit,” and has its own tournaments and the Wild Rift League (WRL) in China that is backed by Riot for competitive play. Wild Rift offers the same strategic depth and 5-on-5 gameplay as the original League of Legends on PC while creating matches that are shorter and faster, designed for touch screen controls. As the audience of esports grew, Riot Games worked to allow access to the game beyond PC.

LoL Tournament Calendar 2026 – Full League of Legends Esports Schedule

In other words, ranked play feeds the talent pipeline, and professional leagues are the key to funneling and transforming that individual skill into a team-based structure and competition that is showcased to millions. Ranked matches place players into skill tiers—from Iron to Challenger—and mimic the structure of professional leagues. That’s when LoL esports stops feeling like a random collection of games and starts feeling like a long, interconnected season you genuinely care about following.
For fans, it’s a yearly tradition — a mix of sport, drama, and history that defines what LoL esports is all about. The finances for the ecosystem of the game come from a combination of in-game purchases, sponsorships, and media rights. Other regions followed immediately; the LCK would start in Korea, then the LPL would start in China. The inaugural World Championship in 2011 garnered much attention around the globe, giving Riot Games full faith that League of Legends was ready to become an esports title on a grand scale. Through 10 years, what once began as a passion project from a community mod, spawned into an ecosystem that continues to define esports today both in size and influence.
Their core consists of mainly Spanish players, contributing to their identity as the “Spanish” team from Europe. However, certain regions – such as LPL and LCK, and most recently the LEC, has introduced Bo3 matches when playing in the regular season split. The victors of the playoff series will leave with the glory of a regional champion and the promise of pedigree to compete at an international event. The playoffs stage is the most entertaining part of every split, where teams will play in a Best-of-Five (Bo5) format for all the marbles. Competitive League of Legends employs a set event structure that looks to balance consistency and excitement in a professional league season.
Before a team ever sets foot on an international stage, it has to survive its home league. It’s the event pro players talk about when they say “I want to win everything.” G2 Esports players lifting the 2019 Mid-Season Invitational trophy.
The tournament is known and respected in the esports community for its large viewership, for the cinematic that return at the top of the day, and for the intense level of competition at all levels of play. Socially, League of Legends is a worldwide phenomenon connecting players and fans from every continent. Riot Games has continued to refresh League of Legends with regular updates and new champions, and furnishes additional thrills with global events and cross-media projects like “Arcane” which helped extend the League universe. With a unique playing style characterized as brave or courageous, Blaber has had significant positive impact throughout his career through fearless aggression in-game. Faker’s championship resume—with five titles and a career that surpassed ten years worthwhile of competition—warrants him being the face of T1 and more notably, the face of the League of Legends scene. Over in Oceania, Chiefs Esports Club still remains a consistent ‘lesser’ force within the region, while holding one of the longest legacies of any team within the southern hemisphere, as they continue to develop young talent.

Who is the best League of Legends player?

We may still have one full day of games left to go, but the new-look Karmine Corp are already set to finish the 2026 LEC Versus Regular Season as the region’s #1 team. Riot and the regional leagues also share highlights, interviews and short-form content on social channels like LoL Esports on X and the LoL Esports Instagram. Most regional regular seasons are played as best-of-one. Korean teams are famous for slow, controlled early games that explode into perfectly executed fights around dragons and Baron. By the time summer playoffs are done, each region has chosen the teams that will travel to Worlds.
The year usually starts with a spring split in every major region. The LoL season follows a rhythm that repeats every year. At the center of everything is the game itself, League of Legends, and the developer, Riot Games.