The League of Legends World Championship is the biggest event of the esports year, and in 2026 it returns to North America. Nineteen teams, three cities, one month. Here's everything you need to follow it.
Dates and venues
Worlds 2026 runs from October 15 to November 14, and moves across three venues as the field gets smaller:
- Play-in: Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles, a small studio venue.
- Swiss stage, quarterfinals and semifinals: the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas, near Dallas. The Swiss stage is played October 23–26 and 28–31.
- Final: Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, with room for around 19,000 fans.
The format
Play-in. Four teams from the lower seeds play a double-elimination bracket of best-of-five series. Only one of them goes through to the main event.
Swiss stage. Sixteen teams play up to five rounds. In each round, teams with the same record face each other: 1–0 teams play 1–0 teams, 0–1 play 0–1, and so on. Three wins and you're through to the knockouts. Three losses and you're out. In recent years, matches that decide whether a team advances or goes home have been best-of-three, and the rest best-of-one. If you're new to Swiss, our Swiss format explainer goes through it step by step.
Knockout stage. The eight teams that reach three wins play a single-elimination bracket. Every series from the quarterfinals to the final is a best-of-five.
Draft. Worlds is expected to use Fearless Draft: once a champion is played in a series, neither team can pick it again in that series. In long best-of-fives, that means a lot of unusual picks in the later games. We explain why in Fearless Draft explained.
Who qualified
Slots are handed out based on how each region has performed internationally. The LCK and LPL get four teams each, partly because their teams finished first and second at MSI this year.
LCK (Korea): Gen.G, Hanwha Life Esports, T1, Dplus KIA
LPL (China): Anyone's Legend, Bilibili Gaming, Top Esports, Invictus Gaming
LEC (Europe): G2 Esports, Movistar KOI, Karmine Corp
LCS (North America): Team Liquid, Cloud9, LYON
LCP (Asia-Pacific): Team Secret Whales, CTBC Flying Oyster, MVK Esports
CBLOL (Brazil): two teams, decided by the CBLOL finals.
The third seeds from the LEC, LCS and LCP, along with Brazil's second seed, make up the play-in.
The storylines
Can T1 do it again? T1 have won the last three World Championships, and the "three-peat" is already one of the great runs in esports history. Making it four in a row would be extraordinary, but they're not the top LCK seed this year.
Hanwha Life's moment. Hanwha Life won MSI in 2026, beating Bilibili Gaming 3–2 in the final, with top laner Zeus named finals MVP. They arrive as one of the favourites.
Bilibili Gaming, close again. BLG won First Stand in March, beating G2 in the final, then lost that MSI final in five games. They've been at or near the top all year. The question is whether they can finally finish the job.
The West on home soil. North American teams have struggled at Worlds for years, and playing at home adds pressure as well as support. Europe's hopes rest mostly on G2, the LEC's top seed.
How to watch
Matches are broadcast on Riot's official channels on Twitch and YouTube, and many popular streamers co-stream them with their own commentary. You'll find the biggest League streams on our Live page, and the latest news on the League of Legends hub.