Riot Games has today announced major League of Legends changes, including a third international esports event per year, alongside Worlds and MSI.
New third international LoL event
The additional international tournament will kick off in 2025 with regional play across all five regions (Americas, LEC, LCK, LPL, and APAC – more on them below). Each region will qualify a single team for an international round robin tournament in March. Riot will also use the results from this first tournament to seed MSI.
“As a season-start event, the new tournament/split will allow pros and fans to see everything the new in-game League of Legends competitive season offers. We expect to use this event annually to experiment with different competitive formats and inject exciting innovations into our early-season competition,” Riot said in an in-depth update today called ‘LoL Esports: Building towards a brighter future’.
Next year, Riot Games will add a type of ‘Fearless’ draft for best-of-series in the new tournament, in both the regional and international rounds. This draft effectively bans champions picked in prior games in the series.
“This format helps shake up the matchups and provides more variety in the champions we watch our favourite pros play,” Riot said.
We previously wrote about the fearless draft used in the 2022 Iberian Cup here.
Multi-region leagues for APAC and Americas announced
All global esports leagues will follow a unified split schedule starting in 2025.
Riot said: “Starting next season, all regions will begin with the new international tournament/first split. A second split then will qualify teams for MSI, which will move later in the calendar to roughly the beginning of July. The third and final split in each region will culminate with a Regional Championship to crown one season-long champion in each region.”
Also, LCS, CBLOL, and LLA will come together as the Americas League.
The North American LCS and Brazil’s CBLOL will also now compete as North and South conferences, with each conference keeping six of its existing partnered teams, integrate one team from the Latin American LLA ‘based on geographical alignment, and reserve one ‘guest team’ spot for promotion and relegation through the Tier 2 system, for a total of eight teams per conference.
This would mark a return to promotions and relegations in North America for the first time since in seven years, when Riot introduced a franchising model for the LCS in 2017.
And Riot will introduce a new Asia-Pacific (APAC) league in 2025. Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, Japan, Vietnam, and Oceania will combine forces into a single multi-region league.
Eight teams are planned for the league, with Riot ‘kicking off work for a new hybrid partnership plus promotion/relegation league model’.
“The first lineup of guest teams competing in the league next year will be determined by the results of the 2024 PCS and VCS Summer Split Playoffs. This gives each team participating in the 2024 Summer Split of VCS, PCS, LJL, and LCO a chance to secure their spot in the new league. For future seasons, when the promotion/relegation league model is in effect, guest teams will have the opportunity to get promoted from their respective domestic leagues,” Riot said.
There’s more detail in Riot’s update here, including around international event slots:
Riot also said that the proposals would reduce the number of teams in its tier 1 ecosystem.
“Simply put, we have too many teams in tier 1 to support sustainably. By reducing the number of teams, we’ll be able to focus support from the Global Revenue Pool by ensuring revenues are distributed among fewer teams, thereby increasing revenue per team. This should also help concentrate player talent, making it easier for fans to follow a streamlined ecosystem, and ultimately create more high-quality matches worth your time.”
League of Legends gets new executive producer
Paul ‘Pabro’ Bellezza, one of Riot’s first interns and one of the first 10 devs on League, has worked on champions, in-game events (like the Bilgewater Burning Tides event where Gangplank was killed), the store, and more. From there, he spent a few years working on Valorant, Arcane, and Wild Rift before returning to League of Legends this month.
Paul said: “I am thrilled to be returning to work on League of Legends as its Executive Producer. I am deeply honoured and ecstatic to be coming home to the game I know and love in order to help make amazing experiences for you all. I am at your service. For now, I will be busy catching up on all things League. See ya next time Summoners…oh wait… uh…. we changed that. See ya players!”
Arcane season 2 will be the final season
Riot has dropped a new trailer for season 2 of its League of Legends animated Netflix show.
“The Arcane team set out with a specific end in mind, and season two will be the final season, but the first of many stories to tell in Runeterra,” Riot said in a dev update press release.
The team’s currently working on their next projects – across television and film – which are still ‘very early in development’ and they hope to share more by the end of the year.
The latest teaser for Arcane season 2 can be found here:
Two years ago, Arcane’s creators spoke about what fans can expect from Vi and Caitlyn’s relationship in Season 2 of Arcane.
You can see more gameplay and other updates in the latest dev update below:
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.
