Karmine Corp Went Nine and Zero in the LEC and Fnatic Will Not Be at the World Championship

Karmine Corp beat SK Gaming 2-0 on Sunday to finish the LEC summer regular season with a perfect nine wins from nine. The second game turned on an Elder Dragon steal by Martin "Yike" Sundelin.

The more consequential result was elsewhere. Fnatic lost 1-2 to GIANTX, the third defeat in a row that closed their season, and are out of the playoffs. That ends a run of World Championship appearances that had made Fnatic one of the few constants in European League of Legends since the game's first competitive season.

Europe sends its top three playoff finishers to Worlds 2026 in the United States. Fourth and fifth instead go to the Demacia Cup Global Invitational, a consolation route that did not exist in previous years. Every playoff series is a best-of-five.

The playoffs are spread across three cities and three weekends. Madrid hosts the upper bracket's opening round on 5 September, pairing Karmine Corp with GIANTX and G2 Esports with Team Vitality; the second day in Madrid decides a grand final place and, with it, a guaranteed Worlds slot. Berlin takes the lower bracket rounds, including Natus Vincere and Movistar KOI. The final best-of-five is at the Palais Nikaia in Nice on the weekend of 18 to 20 September, dates confirmed by the venue itself.

A 9-0 regular season is rare in a nine-team round robin and does not guarantee anything — the LEC's playoff format has repeatedly produced champions who did not top the regular season. What it does buy Karmine Corp is the shortest possible path: win two series in Madrid and Nice becomes a formality rather than a qualification fight.

The lower-bracket seeding beyond the confirmed matchups had not been finalised at the time of writing.

Fnatic's absence is the result that will travel furthest. They have been present at every World Championship the region has sent teams to, across a period in which almost every other founding organisation in European League of Legends has been sold, rebranded or relegated out of the league. A Worlds without them removes one of the few threads connecting the current competition to its first season.

The wider point is that Europe now has a genuine top four rather than a top two. Karmine Corp, G2, Team Vitality and GIANTX all reached the upper bracket, and only three of them can qualify.