League of Legends is finally getting the Winter Map back

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 17/10/2025

Riot Games has announced that League of Legends will finally see the winter theme for Summoner’s Rift return this year.

The version of the game’s map covers the area in snow, freezes the river, and adds cute extra details like a Santa hat on Baron Nashor.

League of Legends fans have desperately pleaded for the map to return each Christmas, and Riot has made it happen seven years later.

The winter map hasn’t been in League of Legends since the 2018 Snowdown Showdown in-game event.

Since moving to Elemental Drakes in 2019, which change the map layout, Riot claimed it was now too difficult to implement a winter theme to Summoner’s Rift.

Riot claimed it would take too long to do the art for all the different versions of the map, with the fiery Infernal Drake map particularly challenging.

The feature has been missing ever since and it has been something that has bothered the LoL community every Christmas.

The announcement video from Riot Games’ Executive Producer of League of Legends, Paul ‘Pabro’ Bellezza, gave a sneak peek of the new version.

There is a poro riding a train around the Nexus and there are Christmas decorations on the rocks including Christmas lights along the river.

There’s even a snowman version of Urgot.

This will be the fourth new version of Summoner’s Rift that Riot has released for League of Legends this year.

The three-season split has seen various versions of the map with the regular version as well as Noxus and Spirit Blossom iterations.

When will the Winter Map 2025 release in League of Legends?

Riot has confirmed that the Winter version of Summoner’s Rift will release with Patch 25.23, which is set to come out on November 19th.

This will be just a few days after the conclusion of the 2025 LoL World Championships, of which the first Knockouts teams have been decided.

The Winter Map was first introduced to League of Legends in 2009 for the first Snowdown Showdown event.

This event also regularly included the Poro King gamemode, a new version of ARAM with a giant Poro that could be powered up with biscuits.

Then in 2016, an upgraded version of the Winter Summoner’s Rift was added to the game.

This added extra details like snow on pieces of terrain, scattered pros and presents across the map, and gave Baron a Santa hat as well as earmuffs.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introuduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

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