New LoL season removes Atakhan, adds WASD and 7th item for ADCs
Riot Games has revealed massive changes coming to League of Legends (LoL) in 2026 with 2026 Season One.
The latest Dev Update has revealed that the three-season split will return with a Demacia theme for the first third.
Meanwhile, gameplay is being overhauled with faster game starts, new role quests, and epic monster changes.
Demacia-themed Summoner’s Rift
The themed ranked seasons are returning next year with a Demacia theme for LoL and Summoner’s Rift.
This will mean Demacian champions will feature in the first cinematic of the year and some champions will get Demacian petricite-style skins.
Riot also teased that Shyvanna’s highly anticipated Visual Game Update (VGU) is going to be revealed soon.
As for Summoner’s Rift, the reskining will be much more subtle than 2025’s updates, with changes to the map’s accents and structures only.
Summoner’s Rift gameplay changes
One of the most exciting parts about preseason is finding out how Riot is updating the map to change up LoL’s core gameplay.
A lot of changes brought in last year are being removed, including the Atakhan epic monster, as Riot agrees that objective fatigue is hurting the game.
Blood roses and petals are gone as well. With Atakhan gone, Baron will return to spawning at the 20-minute mark.
Neutral objectives like Baron and Dragon are also being made more durable so that teams behind in gold have a chance to contest.
Also, Riot wants to reduce downtime so minions and jungle camps will spawn 35 seconds earlier. They say early invades will still be possible but teams will have to be quick and decisvive.
Additionally, to encourage all players to ward, a new feature called Faelights will put lit up areas around the map which will boost the range of vision from wards placed in them.
These rings will be available from the start of the game with more appearing once the elemental rift changes take effect.
LoL 2026 Turret changes
Riot wants sieging, split pushing, and other strategies than just fighting to be viable so are also making big turret changes.
Feats of Strength have also been removed with gold added back into gaining First Blood and First Turret.
Next year, A new mechanic called Crystalline Overgrowth will act as a universal demolish effect to turrets.
These crystals grow over time, with longer build-up leading to extra damage to help low-DPS and behind characters still push.
Turret platings will now stay permanently on outer turrets and be added to inner and inhibitor turrets to reward teams for pushing.
Riot says this isn’t adding more gold into the game but spreading the current gold for killing turrets across the plates.
Minion respawn rates are increasing in the late game, homeguards will be faster towards your most pushed lane, and respawning Nexus towers will now only return with partial health.
New League of Legends Role Quests bring broken upgrades
In what is likely the biggest change of the year, Riot are adding quests for top, mid and bot lane, similar to jungle pet and support item quests.
Players will progress through these helping at objectives as well as CSing, fighting and getting towers.
Doing these in your assigned lane from your picks and bans role will significantly speed up completing the quest to discourage anti-fun lane swaps.
Riot claims top and bot lane carry are the two weakest roles in the game currently, so their quest rewards will be disproportionately bigger.
Bot laners will get a large chunk of gold, increased gold for the rest of the match, and a game-breaking seventh item slot to take over the late game.
Meanwhile, top laners will be given an increased level cap, boosted experience from all sources, and access to teleport or an upgraded version if the Summoner Spell was already selected.
Whereas, the mid lane quest will only give players free tier 3 boots and a faster recall so they can continue to roam and impact the map.
Jungle and support quests are also being updated.
Riot are lowering the speed the of early game clears to give lanes more time to play out uninterrupted.
But in return, monsters are being given extra resistances and Smite is getting its damage buffed, so stealing camps is harder.
Now, upon quest completion, junglers are additionally being given bonus gold on large camp kills and bonus movement speed in the jungle.
Supports are getting a new item slot exclusively for control wards, discounts on control wards, and more gold over time.
League of Legends Ranked 2025 updates
Ranked mode is being updated to remove long queue times and to address mismatch games.
Sometimes you would get a Bronze lobby with one player who was gold. However, that gold player simply hadn’t had time to climb yet.
Now, if a player’s rank is lower than their MMR, there will be a visual indicator to show that player is quickly climbing.
Autofill is also getting big changes to feel fairer.
Firstly, if there is an autofilled player on your team, the system will try to match you against opponents with an autofilled player in the same role.
If it can’t find an autofilled player in the same role, it will try to ensure that both teams have the same number of autofilled players.
Additionally, a new system called Aegis of Valor is being introduced to reward autofilled players.
If you’re autofilled and earn a mastery score of C or greater, you won’t lose LP in a lost game and you’ll earn double LP for a win.
Players who play less popular roles will also occasionally receive these rewards.
Riot is also tackling players dodging games during the lobby.
Now, hovered champions can no longer be banned by teammates and players cannot escape being autofilled.
If you’re assigned as an autofill in a game then dodge, that autofill role will stick with you into the next lobby you queue into.
And in Master rank and higher, dodging will now count as a full loss for that player.
Plus, Duo Ranked Queue is also returning for high ranks in most regions.
Animations and picks and bans times are also being reduced to save players over a minute during every lobby.
WASD controls are coming to live
In possibly the biggest change to League of Legends ever, WASD controls are being added to the game this week.
The controversial update has been teased for quite a while and available on the PBE.
Now, it is being added to the live game on Wednesday, December 3rd as part of Patch 25.24.
This is designed to introduce new players to the game with clicking to move seen as a somewhat archaic system nowadays.
However, this is a huge change for the game as WASD particularly makes ADC much easier to play as it drastically simplifies kiting.
Hence why the community lost its collective mind when WASD was released on LoL PBE.
Consequently, Riot is adding the feature to the game slowly. For starters, it won’t be usable in normal or ranked queues.
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