Riot Games has today announced changes to the League of Legends EMEA Masters 2024 spring and summer seasons.
The tournament sees the best teams from the different EMEA Regional Leagues (like the UK & Nordics NLC) compete against one another.
It sits one tier below the top-level LEC in Europe.
EMEA Masters 2024 Spring Split – shorter window and dates announced
The EMEA Masters 2024 Spring Split will run from April 15th to April 28th.
Riot said that due to ‘only having a two-week window in the competitive calendar for the EMEA Masters Spring Split due to overall calendar restrictions’, the number of parallel matches will be increased, but the overall amount of matches will remain the same.
28 teams will compete, starting with the 16-team play-ins stage. This will feature four groups of four, with best-of-one, double round-robin format.
The top two teams in each group will reach the knockouts stage, which will follow a best-of-three format.
The top four teams from there will play in the group stage, joining the top teams from each EMEA Regional League. 16 will play in here, and the top two teams in each group will head to the playoffs.
There, eight teams will play in a best-of-five single elimination bracket.
EMEA Masters 2024 Summer Split will include Last Chance Qualifiers, plus live finals in Germany
The EMEA Masters 2024 Summer Split will now be held in three stages: Last Chance Qualifiers (LCQ), Group Stage and Playoffs.
A total of 38 teams will compete throughout the season.
The LCQ will be the stage for 24 teams to compete for a ticket to the Group Stage – with one to three teams competing per region.
The Group Stage will consist of 16 teams, with 13 of the teams having automatically qualified as the winners of each respective EMEA Regional League Summer Final. The remaining three teams will qualify through the LCQ.
Four groups of four teams will fight for victory in a best-of-three, GSL format. The teams will be assigned to their respective groups then advance to the Playoffs.
Here, the top eight teams will play in a double-elimination bracket, with the first seeds from the Group Stage being placed in the upper bracket, and the second seeds progressing to the lower bracket. All matches will be best-of-threes apart from the Lower Bracket Finals and Grand Finals, which are both best-of-five.
Thenm just like the 2023 EMEA Masters, this year’s Summer Finals will be taking place on the big stage, during the 2024 LEC Roadshow. The two EMEA Masters finalists will compete at the 2024 LEC Season Finals in Munich.
In the previous EMEA Masters, Ireland’s Nativz won the NLC 2023 Summer Playoffs to reach the EMEA Masters along with Nord Esports.
Related interview: UK LoL player NoName on playing in his first EMEA Masters
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.
