Top Esports defeat Invictus Gaming to qualify for LoL Worlds Swiss Stage

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 25/09/2025

Top Esports have won their LPL Regional Finals match and qualified for the League of Legends World Championships 2025.

TES defeated Invictus Gaming 3-1 to secure their spot at the international tournament.

Now, they have automatically qualified for the Swiss Stage of LoL Worlds 2025 in their home country of China.

It was relatively smooth sailing for TES as IG did not look like a Worlds-ready team.

The first match was pure domination; TES gave up only two deaths in the opening 32-minute match.

It was looking destined for a straight three-game sweep, but IG fought back.

Kang ‘TheShy’ Seung-lok had a great game on Reksai top as IG looked to start a reverse sweep.

However, the team opted for one surpirse pick too many.

Just as Rammus support made it easy for T1 to qualify for Worlds, IG bizarrely put Song ‘Rookie’ Eui-jin on Lulu mid.

The risky draft did not pay off as TES racked up an early lead and took over the game before Lulu could influence teamfights.

An early kill for Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wen-Bo let the TES bot-laner snowball as Kalista and finish the game quickly with a 7/1/7 KDA.

Surprisingly, this is the first time in TES’ history that they have qualified for back-to-back Worlds.

Last year, TES qualified as LPL’s second seeds and had a great start, qualifying from the Swiss Stages after defeating T1, Fnatic, and Dplus KIA.

However, eventual Worlds 2024 winners, T1, got their revenge on TES with a straight 3-0 sweep in the Quarterfinals.

Invictus Gaming can still qualify for LoL Worlds

The LPL still has one Worlds seed to decide.

IG will get a second chance as they will face the winner of JD Gaming and Weibo Gaming to decide who will represent the LPL in China.

Meanwhile, the losers of both upcoming series will instead compete in League of Legends’ new Asia Invitational tournament.

Having racked up more championship points this year, IG were given the advantage in the upper bracket.

However, having to recover from getting stomped by TES and trying to stop the momentum of the winning team won’t be easy.

Whoever wins and qualifies for Worlds won’t have time to relax either.

The team that earns the final Worlds slot will qualify for the newly formatted Play-Ins.

Waiting for them there will be the reigning World Champions T1, who narrowly qualified as the LCK’s fourth seeds.

Only one team will qualify for the main event from the LCK vs LPL showdown.

And T1 will be heavily favoured, considering Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok’s record versus LPL teams.

Against all 20 players in the LPL’s regional finals, Faker has an absurd record of 38 wins and only four losses versus them at Worlds.

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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