Worlds Expands to Nineteen Teams This Year and Every Series Will Be Played on Fearless Draft
Los Angeles, Allen and Brooklyn from the fifteenth of October to the fourteenth of November. A champion picked once is gone for the rest of the series, which changes what a deep roster is worth.
The 2026 League of Legends World Championship runs from 15 October to 14 November across three American venues, with nineteen teams and Fearless Draft on every series.
Where it is played
| Stage | Venue |
|---|---|
| Play-in | Riot Games Arena, Los Angeles |
| Swiss stage, quarter-finals, semi-finals | Credit Union of Texas Event Center, Allen, Texas |
| Final | Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York |
The format
| Stage | Shape |
|---|---|
| Play-in | Four teams, double elimination, best of five |
| Swiss | Sixteen teams, best of five, top eight advance |
| Knockout | Single elimination, best of five |
Regional allocation gives three direct Swiss stage places each to the LCK, LPL, LEC, LCS and LCP, plus two to CBLOL, with additional places for the winner and runner-up of the Mid-Season Invitational.
What Fearless Draft actually changes
Under Fearless Draft, any champion played by either team becomes unavailable to both for the rest of the series. In a best of five, that removes up to forty champions from the pool by the deciding game.
The effect is to price champion depth directly. A team that has practised six comfort picks and drilled them to a high standard is strong in game one and increasingly exposed by game four. A team with a wider but shallower pool is the reverse. It rewards the roster that can play the game rather than the roster that can play its game, and it makes the fifth game of a series structurally different from the first, which best-of-five formats have never previously managed.
The Americas return
This is the first Worlds featuring both LCS and CBLOL teams since 2024, following the discontinuation of the League of Legends Championship of the Americas in September 2025.
Where it sits on Playdash
Playdash carries esports markets across the major circuits. This is editorial coverage of a tournament format and schedule rather than a market preview, and no prices are quoted here.
Dates, venues, format, regional allocation and the Fearless Draft rule as published in 2026 World Championship reporting. The prize pool and the full qualified team list were not confirmed in the source consulted and are not stated here. Correct at the time of writing on 30 August 2026.