Worlds Opens in a Three-Hundred-Seat Studio in Los Angeles and Ends in Front of Nineteen Thousand in Brooklyn

The 2026 League of Legends World Championship runs from the fifteenth of October to the fourteenth of November, entirely in the United States, across three venues chosen for how many people each stage of the tournament can actually fill.

The play-in stage is at the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles, which seats three hundred. The Swiss stage, quarterfinals and semifinals are at the CUTX Event Center in Allen, Texas, which holds eight thousand one hundred. The final is at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, capacity nineteen thousand.

Nineteen teams are in it. The LCK, LCP, LCS, LEC and LPL send three each, the CBLOL sends two, and the last two places go to the winner of MSI and the second-best region there. Sixteen teams reach the Swiss stage, where three wins advance and three losses eliminate, and the knockouts are single elimination best-of-fives.

This is the first Worlds to use Fearless Draft, in which any champion picked by either side becomes unavailable to both for the rest of the series. Across a best-of-five that removes a large part of the pool by the deciding game, and it forces teams to prepare depth they would otherwise never show.

It is also the first Worlds since 2024 with both LCS and CBLOL teams, after the League of Legends Championship of the Americas was discontinued in September 2025 and the two leagues went back to competing separately.

T1 have won the last three. No organisation has ever won four in a row.