Riot Games has confirmed the European countries hosting the 2019 League of Legends World Championship (Worlds), and the UK is not among them.
Germany, Spain and France will play host to Worlds this year. Specifically, Berlin will host the play-in stage at the LEC studio between October 2nd and 8th, and the group stage at the Verti Music Hall from October 12th to 20th.
Madrid’s Palacio Vistalegre will host the quarter-finals on October 26th and 27th and semi-finals on November 2nd and 3rd.
Finally, the grand finals will take place in Paris’ AccorHotels Arena on November 10th, as confirmed in this official post.
Some have said that Brexit is likely a core reason why Riot decided not to head back to the UK this year.
Oh look! It’s highly likely that Brexit directly affected esports. Who could possibly have seen that coming? ?
— James ‘Stress’ O’Leary (@StressCasts) June 20, 2019
Worlds hits 3 of the 4 major ERL Regions.
There’s one missing
One which Brexited
and doesn’t recognise Esports properly/sort Visas for Esports players
and who’s royalty called it all ‘created to addict’
We still have a lot of work to do on UK Esports. Let’s get to it folks!
— Grant Rousseau (@GrievanceGR) June 20, 2019
Worlds in the UK in 2015 was actually amazing. Can’t believe we’re getting nothing this time round.
Brexit means Brexit I guess.
— Richard Froom (@froomielol) June 20, 2019
Riot hosts Worlds in a different global region each year. The last time it took place in Europe was in 2015, where London’s Wembley SSE Arena played host to the quarter-finals.
Esports News UK had just launched and we had the opportunity to interview star players at Wembley including xPeke, Febiven and SKT Wolf, who of course went on to win the tournament alongside Faker.
Some of our other memories from Worlds 2015 for us also include fellow SKT player MaRin mobbed by UK fans coming out of a Tesco Express, Gross Gore having some drama with Riot Games, some excellent cosplay, interviewing fans outside the arena and being treated like a pro player when leaving the venue.
The UK has played host to some EU Masters finals in recent years at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, but it’s of course not on the same scale as Worlds.
In 2020 and 2021, Worlds will take place in China and North America respectively.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
