LEC is entering the 10th year of League of Legends in Europe. To celebrate this huge milestone, it will have massive changes and additions regarding the format, how and when the matches are played, and the countries competing.
These changes come to play not only to keep the region's level high but also to try to improve and evolve the LEC as much as possible. Europe has been and continues to be among the top regions for competitive play in League of Legends, and with the upcoming changes, it aims for the top spot.
Continue reading to find out more.
To kick things off, as it stands, the LEC is a championship that currently only hosts teams from Europe. However, with the new changes, the CIS, Türki̇ye, and MENA (Middle East and North Africa) regions will all come together to form the EMEA Championship.
Instead of having individual regions and tournaments, all of these regions will fall into one big pile and form a new competition. This was basically throwing a Thresh lantern, so everyone comes together as a bigger group.
With the additions of the CSI, Türki̇ye, and MENA regions, the splits will be shorter, and more best-of-threes and best-of-fives will be introduced, expanding the season even more.
As new faces are brought to the championship, changes to the splits are also bound to happen. In the following year, instead of two splits, the championship will have three splits, Winter, Spring, and Summer.
The Winter and Spring split will be held before the Mid-Season Invitational, while the Summer split will happen right between the Mid-Season Invitation and the World Championship.
As we mentioned, there will be three instead of two splits per season. The addition of the Winter split will see teams battling it out for a spot in the LEC Season Finals.
Let's take the Winter split as an example to give you a better perspective of how the splits will occur. Ten teams will start the Winter split, and in the first three weeks, they will go head-to-head in a single best-of-one round-robin format.
Once those three weeks pass, the top 8 teams will be split into two groups of four. In each group, the teams will play best-of-three double-elimination games. The remaining four teams will go on to compete in a double-elimination best-of-five playoff stage, where only one will be crowned the Winter Split Champion.
The winners of the Winter, Spring, and Summer splits will secure a spot in the LEC Season Finals, while the remaining spots will be filled with the teams with the best seeding and points gathered.
Previously, the 10 teams in LEC competed in an eight-week double round-robin format, with the games being best-of-one. Later, the top six teams qualified for the playoffs, with the top four in the upper bracket and the fifth and sixth teams in the lower bracket. As the competition continued, every game was a best-of-five until we had two teams in the final.
With the new changes, and the extra split added in the season, the double round-robin has been knocked back by the Poppy ultimate, and a single round-robin has been added with best-of-ones played in the first three weeks of the splits. The newest addition is the best-of-three matches, which will occur before the playoffs.
As we get closer and closer to the new season, we already have an idea of which teams will be facing each other. As it stands, Team Misfits will not compete in the new season as Team Heretics will make their first LEC appearance. We will also see a rebrand, as team Rogue will be competing under the name KOI.
These two teams will be joining Astralis, Excel, Fnatic, G2 Esports, MAD Lions, SK Gaming, Team BDS, and Team Vitality. Like any other season, teams will have roster changes, trying to improve from the season before. Some of the teams haven’t submitted their final rosters, and we just have to wait to see what they bring in.
The biggest news that has come through in recent weeks, and one which Fnatic fans were over the moon with, is that the Prodigal Son, Rekkles, is coming home. The versatile ADC is returning to the team where he made a name for himself and will try to boost them back to winning glory.
The Amazon European Masters is also getting a tune-up, and it will now be called The Amazon EMEA Masters. Two new regions are also being added to the accredited and non-accredited ERLS.
As it stood before, the accredited ERLS were the SuperLiga, LA Ligue Francaise, Prime League, and ULTRALIGA. The new addition to the accredited ERLS is with the TCL or Türki̇ye Championship League.
On the other side, the Arabian League will be joining Liga Portuguesa De League of Legends, HITPOINTS Masters, Elite Series, Greek Legends League, EBL, PG Nationals, and Northern League of Legends Championship in the non-accredited ERLS.
If the format is the same as last year, four teams will have the chance to qualify for Worlds. Based on championship points, the season's top four teams will qualify for Worlds. However, the top two will be automatically placed in the main group stages, while third and fourth place will be placed in the play-in.
Two teams have a guaranteed spot at Worlds, while two teams need to battle it if they too want to attend the main event. In the play-in tournament, the two LEC teams will be placed into two groups, where they will play best-of-ones in a round-robin format. If they manage to come in first in their groups, they will qualify for the main event.
However, if they finish from second to fourth place in their group, they enter round 2 of the play-in. The second round is a knockout round, where they will have to play best-of-five matches in order to get to the main event.
