After an anticlimactic lower bracket final matchup in China’s League of Legends Pro League (LPL) wherein JD Gaming (JDG) swiftly handled Weibo Gaming (WBG) in 3-0 fashion, all 8 teams have now been determined for the first international event of the year. First Stand (FST) 2026, hosted in Riot’s São Paolo Arena in Brazil, is the second iteration of a new tournament format featuring the first seed from all six major regions alongside the second seeds of the ever-dominant LPL and League Championship of Korea (LCK), who will fight for the lion’s share of $1,000,000 and the First Stand crown. Reigning FST champions Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) couldn’t even muster a playoff appearance in the LCK despite their splashy offseason moves, and reigning World Champions T1 will also be watching from home thanks to a surprise bracket run to be mentioned later.

This is your primer and guide to all 8 qualifying rosters and their circumstances, as well as my best guess at who lifts the crown in Brazil later this March.

Team Secret Whales - League Championship Pacific (LCP) #1

Top: Nguyễn ‘Pun’ Đăng Khoa 🇻🇳

Jungle: Lê Văn ‘Hizto’ Hoàng Hải 🇻🇳

Mid: Trần ‘Dire’ Duy Đức 🇻🇳

Bot: Hoàng ‘Eddie’ Công Nghĩa 🇻🇳

Support: Trần ‘Bie’ Đức Hiếu 🇻🇳

Team Secret Whales (TSW), after a disappointing finish to the 2025 season at Worlds 2025 – going 1-3 in the Swiss Stage before losing to LEC representative Movistar KOI (MKOI) in 3 games, came into 2026 with two major roster shakeups. First, replacing the Pacific League of Legends veteran support Đinh ‘Taki’ Anh Tài with another mainstay in the LCP, Bie. Bie is a rare case in Vietnamese LoL as he has qualified for the World Championship (Worlds) on three different rosters throughout his career. The second change, and perhaps most impactful, was the replacement of Head Coach Võ ‘Naul’ Thành Luân, instead opting for the quirks of 2019 Worlds winner Chen ‘WarHorse’ Ju-chih. Since his last successful season over a half-decade ago, WarHorse’s reputation has sputtered in the LPL, and he was teamless from the end of 2024 until TSW scooped him up prior to the 2026 split.

WarHorse’s job was simple: enable the talent on his roster. Where Naul had failed, especially at international events, was in failing to let his players flourish in the styles that best suited them. In particular, rookie mid laner Dire (pronounced Dee-ray), whose strange priority on champions such as Galio and Aurora – champions he has struggled on throughout his young career – caused frustrations among TSW fans at Worlds ‘25. WarHorse has leaned into the dynamic playmaking of Dire, selecting him champions like Ahri, Orianna, Akali, and Sylas, as well as unleashing the counterpick nightmare in top lane. Pun’s propensity for champions like Volibear, Olaf, and Sett caused enemy top laners fits all season, and his 9 solo kills were second only to Dire in the entire LCP.

Where Team Secret Whales often fall short, as is the case with most teams that come from the LCP, is their trigger-happiness in tight games. Bot laner Eddie is distinctly guilty of this, and despite his team winning the LCP, he was caught in poor positions and game-losing spots a concerning number of times both in the regular season and playoff push. While that macro gameplay problem is unlikely to be solved before the start of the event, if WarHorse can tighten them up even just a tad, TSW could absolutely contend with the best of the West at FST.

LOUD - Campeonato Brasileiro League of Legends (CBLOL) #1

Top: Carlos ‘Xyno’ Ferreira 🇧🇷

Jungle: Ko ‘Youngjae’ Young-jae 🇰🇷

Mid: Bruno ‘Envy’ Farias 🇧🇷

Bot: Song ‘Bull’ Seon-gyu 🇰🇷

Support: Ygor ‘RedBert’ Freitas 🇧🇷

Though they qualified for their first international event since 2023, LOUD had quite the tumultuous offseason to get to this point. Roster reshuffling was in order for the squad after failing to secure better than a top-4 finish in any of 2025’s regular season splits, and that meant letting go of beloved top laner Leonardo ‘Robo’ Souza, a two-time CBLOL Top of the Year recipient and the face of this Brazilian powerhouse. His departure cleared the way for not just Brazilian phenom Xyno, but for a new mixed roster to take hold, headed by former LCK coach Oh ‘Raise’ Ji-hwan.

Raise’s addition to the team wasn’t appreciated by everyone, particularly not Jean ‘Mago’ Dias, LOUD’s offseason choice for the mid lane slot, who bumped heads with the coach internally throughout the turbulent regular season, where LOUD would finish a paltry 3-4 but earned an upper bracket spot via tiebreakers with Vivo Keyd Stars. Mago’s fury would come to a head just days before they were set to take on his former parent club, RED Canids, in the upper bracket semifinals, and according to LOUD, he “did not show up to training… nor to his sessions with the psychologist and (he) communicated that he will no longer play.” Tempers flared during their last practice, and Mago was quoted as saying, “Who does Raise think he is? Faker?” That’s one way to kill team morale, I guess.

Scrambling for a replacement, LOUD opted for Envy, a 28-year-old mid laner from Brazil who has bounced around the CBLOL and its development league since 2017, most recently playing with Ei Nerd Esports. The team would find its form shortly thereafter, powered in large part by not only their star top laner’s clutch Game 4 Akali against RED Canids, but by the playstyle that coach Raise has imparted on his team. Another major facet of the Brazilian representatives is, of course, their two Korean players, Youngjae and Bull, the latter of whom earned flowers for his time as an LCK bot laner with BRION and DN Freecs. Winning the grand finals MVP for his staggering 7.7 kills per game, including a 9-kill Yunara game in the first match of the series, Bull has quickly made believers out of the Brazilian region. The faith of the CBLOL fans for hometown heroics has been restored, and it will be Bull and Xyno shouldering that weight together at FST.

G2 Esports - League European Championship (LEC) #1

Top: Sergen ‘BrokenBlade’ Çelik 🇩🇪

Jungle: Rudy ‘SkewMond’ Semaan 🇫🇷

Mid: Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther 🇩🇰

Bot: Steven ‘Hans Sama’ Liv 🇫🇷

Support: Labros ‘Labrov’ Papoutsakis 🇬🇷

The more things change, the more they stay the same for the European representatives in 2026’s first global event. Despite a rough regular season split, ending at 6-5 and, in the process, falling to meme-turned-team Los Ratones — a group of streaming friends coordinated by LoL costreaming superstar Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont, G2 still couldn’t help but turn on the afterburners once they squeaked into playoffs. Strong performances by rookies in the region, such as Team Vitality’s dominant Turkish top laner Kaan ‘Naak Nako’ Okan and Natus Vincere’s jungler Enes ‘Rhilech’ Uçan, the latter of whom snatched a league-high 5 regular season Player of the Match awards, were the talk of the town heading into the double elimination playoff bracket, but were quickly quieted once the lights got bright.

The strongest contender for the LEC title was a rebuilt Karmine Corp (KC) roster, a coalition built off the bones of Europe’s FST 2025 representative, while importing FlyQuest support Alan ‘Busio’ Cawalina from North America and Kang ‘Kyeahoo’ Yea-hoo from Korea. The KC crew faced G2 twice in the playoffs after emerging from the regular season with a league-best 8-3 record, falling flat in the upper bracket in a 2-0 sweep before rematching in the grand finals. In one of the best series of the year, an exciting 5-mapper was clinched by G2 with a legendary 45+ minute denial of a KC reverse sweep, behind a Baron and Elder Dragon empowered siege. The midlane and jungle combination for G2, Caps and SkewMond, played remarkably well in the playoff run, where the two lost games in grand finals were the only two losses they suffered throughout. Caps would earn his sixth finals MVP in the last match, and their team enters FST with real hope of contending with the East for the first time since 2023.

Courage and resiliency are the name of the game for G2 Esports in 2026, having kept their full roster from 2025 intact despite subpar international results. Sophomore jungler SkewMond will be the key for this squad in a meta that has focused heavily on flexibility between bruisers and tanks. In the bottom lane, Hans Sama has truly taken to Greek support Labrov for the first time since his arrival a summer ago, and their steady presence allows everyone else to execute their roles with precision. European hype has mounted behind the G2 banner, but will they once again be unmasked at an international event?

LYON Gaming - League Championship Series (LCS) #1

Top: Niship ‘Dhokla’ Doshi 🇺🇸

Jungle: Kacper ‘Inspired’ Słoma 🇵🇱

Mid: Kang ‘Saint’ Seong-in 🇰🇷

Bot: Kim ‘Berserker’ Min-cheol 🇰🇷

Support: Jonah ‘Isles’ Rosario 🇦🇺

LYON had a one-track mind after the completion of their disastrous 2025 campaign: to get back to their winning ways. After running the Latin American League of Legends circuit for years under the branding Rainbow7, LYON rebranded upon entering the North American LTA after 2024. Their sluggish start to the 2025 season, finishing 7th-8th in an 8-team league, was a sign of things to come for the pride. All three splits in the ‘25 season would amount to 7th-8th finishes, and LYON would respond by replacing every role but mid lane, but their flashiest (and frankly most surprising move) by far was the acquisition of reigning LCS MVP Inspired from FlyQuest. Inspired had grown unhappy with the direction of FlyQuest after crashing and burning at Worlds 2025, and LYON threw him an offer he couldn’t refuse and the keys to the kingdom as well.

Inspired set out to build his god squad, recruiting Berserker back to North America after his year away in the LCK – promising nothing short of trophies at that – while working with LYON to give the highly anticipated rookie top laner Frankie ‘Zamudo’ Lin a shot at tier one play. Zamudo has been turning heads for years in the development circuit, and after his 2025 North American Challenger League (NACL) MVP in June, it was time to show his stuff. Tragedy struck for the Canadian top laner when news broke that his visa would not be approved in time for the first split of play, so LYON – left to scour the top lane pool – settled on ‘Big Dhokes’ Dhokla, who stole the hearts of fans around the world thanks to his reliability in the top lane and showmanship at Worlds 2025 with 100 Thieves.

Dhokla, a two-time Worlds qualifying top laner, has unlocked a new gear for LYON, and they have been working like a well-oiled machine after a slow start out of the gate. Despite working their way through the lower bracket, LYON never went to a single game 5, and thanks to Inspired, have been more drilled than ever before. Dhokla’s champion pool allows the team to play him weakside on Ambessa or Sion, but also gives them an ace up their sleeve with his vicious Vayne counterpick. Toppling Cloud9, North America’s #1 that looked primed to tear things up internationally, is the most notable achievement on their resume, but with arguably the best player in the Western hemisphere at the helm of their team, there’s no way to truly count them out in São Paolo.

​BiliBili Gaming (BLG) - LPL #1

Top: Chen ‘Bin’ Zebin 🇨🇳

Jungle: Peng ‘Xun’ Lixun 🇨🇳

Mid: Zhuo ‘Knight’ Ding 🇨🇳

Bot: Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon 🇰🇷

Support: Luo ‘On’ Wenjun 🇨🇳

BiliBili Gaming has been a staple of the LPL’s upper echelon for years, peaking with a Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) and Worlds 2024 finals runs, but always coming up just short at the final hurdle. Despite winning a hard-fought 2025 Split 3 championship in the LPL just six short months ago, their run at Worlds ‘25 was a disappointment at best, bowing out in the group stage with a measly 2-3 record and even falling to American 3rd seed 100 Thieves. With additional controversy surrounding some of the players on this iteration of BLG, changes were on the horizon. Longtime LPL star and talented bot laner Zhao ‘Elk’ Jiahao and the jungler that pulled their slapstick squad to Worlds, Zhao ‘Shadow’ Zhiqiang, were mercilessly shipped off to clear the way for one of the most shocking moves in the entire offseason. HLE bot laner Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon made his return to the LPL – where he won a World Championship with EDward Gaming (EDG) in 2021 – after spending 3 seasons terrorizing LCK teams with his mechanical prowess.

The other addition, Xun, brought stability back to a jungle role that had been in flux since he last held the position down for BLG in 2024. Together, Viper and Xun slotted into a BLG that has found its championship form once again and is hungry for international competition. Though a middling regular season plagued them early, their only playoff game losses came at the hands of China’s other representative, JDG, and they didn’t drop the series in either bout. Most importantly for the Chinese superteam, top laner Bin appears to be back in prime form, stealing away MVPs in both JDG matches from Viper with impressive showings on champions such as Gnar, Gwen, and Ambessa. Despite tanking target bans for his lethal Rumble and Jax, Bin’s ability to pilot a multitude of carries in the top lane dictated the pace of their Grand Final victory, securing them the first seed headed to Brazil.

As the clear favorites from the LPL entering the first split, BLG’s appearance at FST should come as a surprise to nobody. However, their current form is concerning for fans of a region that has (at least historically) been their fathers in the server, the LCK. The flaw in the impervious BLG roster, aside from the chaotic, skirmish-heavy style that the LPL fosters, is Knight’s champion pool. His reluctance to play Azir hasn’t hurt BLG too hard in drafts, thanks in large part to Bin and Viper’s versatility, but he has played second fiddle to the upper echelon of mid laners around the world because of it. That being said, Viper has a reputation for working as a bot lane machine – unfazed by matchup or stage. If he can port that over to the first international of the year, we may have to have some uncomfortable conversations about the balance of power in LoL esports.​

JD Gaming (JDG) - LPL #2

Top: Xu ‘Xiaoxu’ Xingzu 🇨🇳

Jungle: Yu ‘JunJia’ Chun-chia 🇹🇼

Mid: Tsai ‘HongQ’ Ming-hong 🇹🇼

Bot: Chen ‘Gala’ Wei 🇨🇳

Support: Zhao ‘Vampire’ Zhecan 🇨🇳

JDG, three years removed from their days of decimating teams behind one of the greatest teams ever assembled – a team which has zero remaining players on this qualifying roster – bought high on two of the LCP’s brightest stars over the offseason. Coming from the Taiwanese team CBTC Flying Oyster, better known as CFO, JunJia, and HongQ, were the feel-good story of 2025 after qualifying for all three international events and even earning a top-6 finish at MSI ‘25. Their meteoric rise to the top of the Pacific league caught the attention of LPL staple organization JDG, and together with former Invictus Gaming (IG) bot laner Gala, formed one of the highest upside teams in the entire region. Xiaoxu and Vampire round out the rest of this ragtag bunch to solidify the LPL second seed heading to FST.

Vampire, a victim of circumstance for much of his LPL career, has been a high-risk, high-reward player for the longest time and has consistently elevated the play of those around him. Known for high-tempo plays and struggling on a WE roster that snuck into a regional quarterfinal only once in three tries in 2025, he has been the ying to Gala’s yang, and his playmaking led him to the second-highest kill participation rate in all of the LPL playoffs at 79.9%. Xiaoxu, on the other hand, was the lone player remaining from a 2025 JDG crew that finished as quarterfinalists in the final split before Worlds, but in 2026, it is his league-leading 14 champions played that have opened up draft angles for the rest of his team to shine, despite subpar statistics.

Gala and JunJia are undeniably the stars of the show for this JDG roster, with both earning Player of the Match honors throughout their lower bracket run. JunJia earned the MVP of their qualification game against Weibo and showcased comfort on both the meta-defining bruisers like Xin Zhao as well as a crucial Maokai pick that patched up a skewed composition in Game 2. With him and HongQ maintaining their mid-jungle connection from just a year ago, and an explosive bottom lane duo to boot, JDG are looking to make waves at their first international event since 2023. Will this be the return of the JDG juggernaut, or will other teams punish them as BLG did in China?​

Gen.G Esports - LCK #1​

Top: Kim ‘Kiin’ Ki-in 🇰🇷

Jungle: Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu 🇰🇷

Mid: Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon 🇰🇷

Bot: Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk 🇰🇷

Support: Joo ‘Duro’ Min-kyu 🇰🇷

New year, same old Gen.G story. Gen.G, the dominant but uncrowned kings of Korea, have started 2026 with the same lethal precision that they’ve demonstrated for years now. Making zero changes in the offseason, save for some haircuts due to mandatory military training, Gen.G is running this core back into international events and looking flawless doing so. Their storied failure at Worlds events, always falling short before claiming the elusive Summoner’s Cup, has not translated to other international events historically. In fact, outside of Worlds, Gen.G has won every international event they have qualified to since the start of 2024 – even snagging an Esports World Cup win (however dubious it may be) in 2025.​

The names on the roster are familiar, particularly Chovy and Ruler, virtually icons of the Black and Gold. The rest of the roster stayed on, in large part, because they sensed an opportunity of dynastic proportions. Kiin, an LCK veteran, has consistently established himself not just as a rock in the top lane to be counted on, but as a carry player in his own right whose Gwen and Rumble strike fear in the hearts of LCK coaches. Canyon, despite getting older (the ripe old age of 24, that is), remains the godfather of the jungle role and was even named Finals MVP for his dismantling of FearX. Last but certainly not least, Duro, who joined Gen.G just a year ago, has blossomed into a world-class support capable of playing engage, melee, and ranged champions of all shapes and sizes. His salary cap-friendly contract, enabling the organization to hold onto its world-class crew, is just the cherry on top.

Consider this: in the most competitive league in the world, the five highest Kill/Death/Assist (KDA) ratios belonged to Chovy, Kiin, Canyon, Ruler, and Duro in that order. Gen.G has lost two games in 2026, both in separate series, and has played their almost robotic, ruthlessly efficient style to perfection throughout the LCK Cup. Superteam isn’t enough to describe what this monstrosity has become; they are – and will stay – the odds-on favorites for every event, tournament, and game that they play until their Achilles heel of the World Championship rears its ugly head again. Beware, the war machine has its sights set on São Paolo.

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BNK FearX - LCK #2​

Top: Song ‘Clear’ Hyeon-min 🇰🇷

Jungle: Jeon ‘Raptor’ Eo-jin 🇰🇷

Mid: Lee ‘VicLa’ Dae-kwang 🇰🇷

Bot: Nam ‘Diable’ Dae-geun 🇰🇷

Support: Kim ‘Kellin’ Hyeong-gyu 🇰🇷

The Diable that was promised, a bot laner with not just a competent support, but a team structure that enables him to be great, has arrived on the international stage. FearX, a team that finished last in the LCK Cup just a year prior, vanquished their demons in a stunning bracket run that featured wins over World Champions T1 and a red-hot DPlus KIA that looked poised to return to the international stage for the first time since 2024. After winning the offseason Asia Invitational, a tournament that featured a DPlus KIA 3-2 Grand Finals victory as well, the pressure was officially on for the squad to make a run at an international.

FearX themselves have changed very little, only adding mid laner Yoo ‘Daystar’ Ji-myeong to provide competition for VicLa’s mid lane role in terms of players. The main loss for them over the offseason was their Head Coach Yoo ‘Ryu’ Sang-wook, who took his talents to the aforementioned Gen.G. To replace him, FearX decided to promote their academy coach Park ‘Edo’ Jun-seok to the LCK roster. His direction, alongside steady improvements all around mechanically, has turned FearX from a laughing stock to a serious contender, not just in Korea but globally. The growth from the team has been pretty surprising, especially for top laner Clear, who was regarded as a lower-end LCK top in 2025. During the LCK Cup, he died first just 3% of the time, and those safe habits combined well with the odd hard carry game he’d have, such as his series-sealing Game 4 Gnar against T1.

For four of these five players, this will be their first-ever international event, but confidence should still be high for their star bot laner. Playing alongside seasoned support Kellin, the consistency that Diable and he have found on their half of the map has given the green light to the X-factor for the team to make its mark. If FearX has any hope of a deep run at FST, it will have to be off the back of their playoff MVP in all three of their series wins, jungler Raptor. Raptor, whose stocks rose sharply throughout the offseason leading into 2026, is top 3 amongst LCK junglers in Kill Participation %, and his impact on all areas of the map has been integral in making this team more than the sum of its parts. Diable’s early career path thus far has had some fans pointing to LoL esports legend Kim ‘Deft’ Hyuk-kyu’s career arc, and if that were to hold true, Diable would be earning not just a spot at Worlds 2026 but a top-4 finish as well. We’ll see just how similar those two really are in his first dose of the international spotlight.

Predictions

With each region sending its best, and of course, the East doubling up on entrants, the stage is officially set for First Stand. Predictions for this event, as boring as they may seem, are very cut and dry to me.

The east, powered by a stronger read on the meta and higher-level players, will once more dominate an international event. However, this time I don’t think the LCK will hold a vice grip on the top-two spots the way they did at MSI a year ago. Instead, I think BLG will come to play, bolstered by Bin’s resurgence, and they will provide a relatively close match for Gen.G. All things considered, though, I have to stick with another Gen.G trophy added to the collection. This would be their first ‘First Stand’ trophy, and would slot nicely alongside their back-to-back MSI ones and the LCK Cup they just claimed earlier this month.

One thing is certain: the top 4 spots are by no means predetermined. Anybody from any region could swoop in and steal a podium finish from the East, and I can’t wait to see who might. First Stand is slated to start on March 16th, with the first match being a BLG vs. BNK FearX showdown. Will Diable and co. have what it takes to beat the BLG behemoth, or will they quickly find themselves in the lower bracket? Tune in to official Riot Games channels on March 16th to find out.

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What do you think of the field? Can Gen.G be thrown off course before Worlds? Who DOES Raise think he is? Should the West get more slots? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter.

Entering the 2026 calendar year, it was clear that South America had rebuilt its powerhouses to remedy the past misgivings of VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Americas seasons. For Made In Brazil (MIBR), it was Erick ‘Aspas’ Santos recruiting more Americans to fight alongside him, including Sentinels superstar Zachary ‘zekken’ Patrone and LEVIATAN’s lockdown anchor Ian ‘Tex’ Bosch. Few rosters, however, were scarier than the jaw-dropping unit that the Pink and White were able to assemble.

KRÜ Esports, the illustrious Latin American organization oft recognized for their stunning pink jerseys and owned by famed Argentinian soccer player Sergio Agüero, was dead-set on revitalizing their roster after back-to-back seasons of relative mediocrity. No longer, they believed, would South America sit idly by as North American teams sought international glory.

The changes came in droves, with the squad casting off long-time superstar and backbone of the KRÜ identity Angelo ‘Keznit’ Mori in late October of 2025. Keznit, who had weathered some controversy with the team earlier in his career, signed with the organization in May of 2021, making his over 4-year tenure with KRÜ one of the longest single player-organization tenures in VALORANT, rivaling players such as Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett and FNATIC in EMEA. A week before Keznit’s release, three more of his Chilean teammates: Fabian ‘Shyy’ Usnayo, Marco ‘Melser’ Amaro, and Roberto ‘Mazino’ Rivas had faced similar fates thanks to their middling 2025 performances. Only the rookie, Jesús ‘DanteDeu5’ Larrosa, an explosive duelist player hailing from Argentina, remained in the barren cupboard that was KRÜ’s team.

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The new recruits, however? Nothing short of blockbusters.

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Joining DanteDeu5 would be the most successful South American in-game leader (IGL) in the history of VALORANT esports, former world champion Matias ‘Saadhak’ Delipetro, known for his creative strategies and willingness to stray from traditional meta ideas. Alongside these two Argentines would be a trio of Brazilian talent: Leonardo ‘Mwzera’ Serrati, Caio ‘Silentzz’ Morita, and Saadhak’s world champion teammate Felipe ‘Less’ Basso in the sentinel role. For those familiar, these names screamed superstar potential – from Mwzera’s pre-VCT dominance, making his way back to a competent roster for the first time in his career, to the rapid development of ex-ascended 2G Esports’ Silentzz last year in VCT Americas. Of course, the star of the show was Less, a world-class sentinel main whose aim astounds even the sharpest of pros and has earned him the respect of all of his peers.

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Excitement mounted after the December 2025 announcement video, and the Latin American VALORANT community started to hope for the first time in years. KRÜ had not been to the playoffs of an international event in over 4 years, but with a roster this talented, the sky was the limit.

Tragedy Strikes

In January of 2026, it was reported that KRÜ was facing some unforeseen issues with securing visa approvals. As the organization’s own January 15th statement read:

“Despite having met all the required conditions under the same visa agency we have previously used—and within the timeframe in which we should have received visa approvals—we were asked to provide additional documentation for the first time since competing in VCT. This caused delays in the internal process, making it impossible to secure the timely entry of KRÜ VISA’s main roster into the country.”

A combination of inflamed American immigration tensions and the uniquity of esports in the United States meant that for the second time in two years, a VCT Americas main roster would not be able to field their team for the first tournament of the year – Kickoff. Just as FURIA Esports did a year before, the Pink and White would be at the mercy of these untimely delays. The difficulties getting their South American players into the country meant that KRÜ would be forced to field three players from their KRÜ Spark academy roster, alongside two stand-ins. The dream for a dominant kickoff had died. Now it was just about survival.

Next Man Up

Dizzy from an ever-changing landscape surrounding the eligibility of their roster, KRÜ stumbled into kickoff with a mixed bag of players. Nicolás ‘Mta’ González and Juan ‘NagZ’ Lopez, both former members of the KRÜ partner team in VCT 2023, would answer the call alongside fellow KRÜ Spark Benjamin ‘BenG’ Hidalgo. As for the stand-ins, KRÜ opted for Winthrop University teammates: the VCT veteran Peter ‘Governor’ No and Philip ‘Infiltrator’ Nguyen. Whilst the three Chileans had built some synergy together in the Latin American development circuit, they were now tasked with playing alongside two stand-ins without Spanish fluency.

The mixed roster entered Week 1 against FURIA as the underdogs, but a Map 1 win on Pearl gave them a glimmer of hope. Despite only three weeks of practice, KRÜ had some solid gameplan ideas and controlled the map well against a FURIA team that featured a red-hot Chamber player in Gianfranco ‘Koalanoob’ Potestio. That sole map would be the only win they’d earn in their first outing, falling victim to FURIA IGL Michael ‘Nerve’ Yerrow’s brilliant gameplan on the following maps and losing their opening series in a 2-1 fashion.

Their week 2 matchup would be against the newest addition to Americas from VCT Ascension: Team Envy. Envy, known for their blistering pace of play, had multiple subs of their own due to the age restrictions keeping star fraggers Ayan ‘Ion2x’ Rastogi and Alex ‘Canezerra’ Banyasz sidelined. KRÜ would once again start the best-of-three series hot with an opening map win on Envy’s kryptonite of Abyss, thanks to a standout performance from Infiltrator on Yoru. Midnight came quickly for KRÜ once more as the following two maps demonstrated Envy’s mastery of Astra and slammed the door shut on the stand-ins’ best chance at a win.

Thanks to the format of VCT Kickoff in 2026, for the first time in VALORANT history, fans of all four regions were treated to a triple-elimination tournament. KRÜ’s final opponents in the bracket would be fellow Latin American org Leviatán, who would be unshackled from the age restriction on their new Argentinian star, Bruno ‘Neon’ Rodríguez. Neon would blow open the gates of VCT Americas in his first game on stage with a brilliant Yoru performance that earned Leviatán not just a lifeline in the Kickoff tournament, but some hope for a team that looked lost before his arrival. As for KRÜ, it was an unceremonious end to an otherwise forgettable first tournament of the year. With Infiltrator and Governor returning to Winthrop and the Chilean trio once more rejoining the KRÜ Spark roster, the Kickoff roster’s run had officially closed the chapter.

Looking Ahead

Now back in the lab until mid-March, KRÜ has already received its visa approval for the main roster. Fortunately, the format changes for VCT in 2026 mean that their early season failures won’t have too harsh of an impact on the rest of the calendar year, but fans will be quick to identify that with the success of squads like MIBR and FURIA, the opportunity for KRÜ to nab a spot at Masters – a chance to play in front of their home crowd in Santiago, Chile – was more than attainable.

Questions about the language of the team’s communications and some concerns with roles have all been sent to the back burner during the turbulent Kickoff tournament, but with the weight of Latin America’s expectations on their shoulders, it is time for KRÜ’s main roster to really earn their visas in 2026.

What do you think? How much noise will KRÜ make in Stage 1? Should the stand-ins get another shot on stage? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter!

Riot Games, the game publishing giant responsible for the League of Legends (LoL) and VALORANT franchises, recently celebrated the release of their first-ever fighting game: 2XKO. 2XKO, a unique tag-team fighter that features the lovable faces of some of League of Legends’ most popular characters like Yasuo and Ahri, is looking to switch up the strategy that plagued their other intellectual properties (IPs) when it comes to Riot’s TV series, “Arcane”.

​For those unfamiliar, in November 2021, Riot Games released a 9-episode TV series titled Arcane, centered around the Piltover and Zaun regions of the League of Legends universe. The story follows LoL characters and sisters Jinx and Vi as they become enveloped in a steam-punk-esque battle over power and technology. This series was an astounding critical success, earning shelffuls of hardware ranging from Emmys to Game Awards. Riot, ever committed to the player-first model that earned them their success throughout their existence, swallowed hefty costs to bring the TV show to life. Reports from Bloomberg indicate that the show cost $250 million to produce over the first two seasons, and returns on investments were slim. Insiders at Riot, including League of Legends executive producer Paul Bellezza, attested to the unforeseen success of Arcane, claiming: “We probably missed an opportunity to do some in-game activations around it.”

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Despite this, Arcane remains a tremendous success in public view, considered a TV show that even someone who doesn’t care for League of Legends would enjoy. Arcane charted atop Netflix in 52 different countries and – to this day – boasts a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, entering the social zeitgeist and providing the soundtrack to many a gaming session for the foreseeable future with hits from Stray Kids, Imagine Dragons, Denzel Curry, and more.

What’s the fuss?

League of Legends, despite remaining an evergreen esports title and highly popular live-service game, has failed to reach the peaks of player count that it held in 2022. The consistent balance patches and incredible esports product always bring players back wanting more, and its sizable fanbase in China serves as the backbone for the title overall, but the player retention problem persists. As a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) style game, League comes with a steep learning curve that only gets more difficult to overcome as early adopters find more and more mastery over the mechanics. Further, League of Legends has had a less-than-rosy history of player conduct, and Riot’s attempts at a total crackdown on toxicity have often yielded mixed results. While Arcane was set out to be a marketing effort to draw new players to League, it was always going to be difficult to get them to stay because of the inherently intense nature of the game. In the defense of Riot Games: the implementation of new gameplay mechanics to speed up the pace of the game, as well as a stronger tutorial and “Swiftplay” game mode to maximize practice time, were great changes to assist newcomers in learning the ropes. However, their next gambit with 2XKO could be their most brilliant gamble yet.

Riot, breaking into the historically tight-knit fighting games community (FGC), has been walking on eggshells to avoid the immediate dismissal of their newest project. The early release of the game, meant to experiment with balancing and character release schedules, lasted for approximately three and a half months before Season 1 kicked off in January 2026. In this time frame, 2XKO has released twelve characters total, including five that hail from Arcane. Of those five, three – Jinx, Vi, and Ekko- were available before the release of Early Access, with Caitlyn becoming the 5th Arcane character revealed with the advent of Season 1.

​The idea is impressively simple: to get people to play 2XKO by placing their favorite Arcane characters as playable units in the game as early as possible. The developers aren’t playing coy about it either, with the release of massive Arcane-themed cosmetic bundles, even within Early Access. Given the generally low barrier to entry of fighting games (think about all the button-mashing one could do!) and the novelty of Riot’s newest project, 2XKO may be the perfect segue for Arcane fans to enter the Riot Games frequency escalator.

While complaints have already sprouted from some corners of the internet, whining about the game’s reliance on Arcane characters and their lack of depth for the other members of League of Legends’ immense 172-character roster, those complaints have been largely drowned out by the praises of both endemic FGC players and Riot Games enthusiasts. The refreshing feel of a tag-team fighter that has already earned its spot at the largest fighting games tournaments in the world, including 3 EVOs, combined with the introduction to fighting games for a large subsection of Riot’s overall playerbase, points to the marriage of two different IPs for the long haul.

Frankly, it was only a matter of time until Vi found her way into a fighting game, don’t you think?

What’re your thoughts? Will 2XKO serve as the new vehicle for Arcane fans to buy into other Riot Games products? Are YOU dropping $100 on some 2XKO skins? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter!

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With 2025 now behind us, a spectacular year for both the League Championship of Korea (LCK) and the Chinese League of Legends Pro League (LPL), who boasted all of the top 4 teams at both the Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) and the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) 2025, 2026 is setting the stage for another dominant display from the east. Roster changes, dramatic retirements, an entire format change, and now 2 qualification slots up for grabs for the first international event mean that there’s a ton to catch back up on, and less than a week before the season, there’s no time to waste!

Here’s everything you need to know about the LPL and LCK offseason, and what to watch out for heading into the new year of League of Legends esports.

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ZOFGK → DOFGK → DOFPK ?

The confetti and relief of a World Championship victory didn’t last very long for T1 attack-damage carry (ADC) Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong, and despite his heroic performances in Games 4 and 5 of the Grand Final to pull his team across the finish line, he suddenly found himself on the outside looking in.

​After a season of turmoil for the T1 core, one that had lost 2023 Worlds Finals MVP top laner Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je in the prior offseason to Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) and swapped him with HLE’s massive question mark Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-jun, Gumayusi’s time with the storied organization was sunsetting. He had spent the beginning of the year, a stretch where he was suboptimal on the game’s most important champions (characters), on the bench for T1 Academy standout ADC Sin ‘Smash’ Guem-jae, and T1 seemed to not miss a single step. Motivated by his relegation to the sidelines, “Guma” spent his time on the ranked ladder, perfecting the same champions that he was perceived to be incompetent on (namely Kai’sa and Ezreal). Fans of T1, already heartbroken by the loss of Zeus and the crumbling of the roster that had won back-to-back Worlds titles in 2023 and 2024, detested Gumayusi’s substitution and demanded he be replaced in the lineup. This was all while micromanaging and nitpicking the rookie AD carry’s gameplay despite the fact that T1 had been racking up the wins while playing alongside Smash. In the end, after a 2-3 loss to Zeus and HLE eliminated the squad from First Stand, T1 CEO Joe Marsh made the call to begin fielding Gumayusi in the starting lineup once again. During the LCK Spring regular season, Gumayusi and Smash would be swapped in and out for the first month, putting a damper on both of their performances. However, at the end of April, it was announced that Smash would once more be returning to T1 Academy to finish out the 2025 season, and the starting spot solely belonged to Guma from then on.

He was a monumental part of T1 earning their ticket to the Mid-Season Invitational, edging out First Stand Champions HLE and ex-teammate Zeus in the process. At MSI, Gumayusi avoided the Kai’sa and Ezreal champions that people derided, and instead showcased his incredible Jhin, Corki, and Jinx. Behind Gumayusi’s great play, and the team performing their typical ‘level-up’ at internationals, T1 finished in a narrow second place behind the indomitable Gen.G Esports, fellow LCK supersquad that finished the Spring with a spotless 18-0 record in regular season matches. Guma continued to level up throughout the rest of the year, even honing his once hopeless Kai’Sa into a weapon that gave T1 the edge over LPL titan Anyone’s Legend (AL) in the World Championship Quarterfinals.

Gumayusi’s performance in the Grand Finals, although enough to earn him Finals MVP at Worlds 2025, was not enough to mend the fractured relationship. In interviews, he has mentioned that leaving T1 had less to do with his relegation (although he does note it as a lowlight of 2025) and more to do with his goal of chasing the Greatest of All Time or ‘GOAT’ title that so firmly belongs to his long-time mid lane teammate, T1 icon Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok. With three titles under his belt, he certainly has a great head-start to reaching Faker’s legendary 6, but he’s got a long way to go.

In his stead, T1 opted to bring in 2024 MSI champion and former Gen.G AD Carry Kim ‘Peyz’ Su-hwan from China’s JD Gaming (JDG). Peyz, who spent the past year in China after he was unceremoniously released by Gen.G in favor of former Worlds winner Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-Hyuk, has honed his skills tremendously since the last time he was in the LCK. Analysts have noted that his time in the LPL has improved his “feel” for the game and allows his spectacular mechanics to shine. In the only tournament T1 participated in this offseason, the yearly Korea Esports Association (KeSpa) cup, Peyz’s impact was immediately felt. He scored multiple quadra kills and a pentakill throughout their run that concluded with a 3-2 victory in the Grand Finals over frenemies Gumayusi, Zeus, and the rest of Hanwha Life Esports. Is this a sign of things to come for the iconic T1 core? More importantly, will Faker transform yet another LCK outcast into a champion? Time will tell.

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Gen.G’s core seeks retribution, and perhaps a 3rd consecutive MSI, in 2026

Gen.G Esports, the Korean juggernaut that dominated the majority of 2025 – winning the LCK regular season and MSI 2025 – entered the offseason facing an identity crisis. While the season was successful, it was a failure to meet the expectations of this Avengers-level threat. Gen.G, and most crucially, their mid lane messiah Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon, have never made the Grand Finals of a Worlds event, despite perennially entering the tournament series as a favorite to take the crown. Their embarrassing top 4 finish at Worlds 2025 notwithstanding, the successes of this season muddied the future direction of this storied organization.

​Fielding a roster with some of the highest profile names in LCK history, Gen.G had refined their roster over years of trial and error to a fine point entering the 2025 season, and were on pace for absolute greatness. Entering Worlds, they were on pace for the legendary “Golden Road,” the unthinkable prospect of two domestic titles and two international wins in the same calendar year. A slow start to the LCK Cup was quickly washed away by the 37-1 regular season record, Spring and Summer LCK championship wins, and undefeated MSI 2025 run. Nevertheless, the weight of expectations continued to mount for Gen.G, and they’d be unable to shed the monkey from their backs.​

Partially because of teammate failures and partially because of his own tendency to freeze up when the lights are brightest, Chovy remains an enigma to the community. His talent is undeniable, his achievements have begun to stack, including three LCK MVP awards and back-to-back MSI titles in 2024 and 2025, but the last piece has yet to fall into place. Time is finally starting to work against the black and gold, as LCK first-team jungler and top laner Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu and Kim ‘Kiin’ Ki-in (respectively) are both on expiring deals in 2026; the time to win Worlds is now.

Regardless of their past struggles, Gen.G remains a dangerous opponent for every team around the world. The loss of 2025 LCK Head Coach of the Year Kim ‘Kim’ Jung-su will hurt, especially due to the calculated and composed style that has become synonymous with Gen.G League of Legends, but the squad did manage to maintain Kim ‘Lyn’ Da-bin from their coaching staff, which should provide some continuity for its spectacularly skilled core. Arguably one of Gen.G’s core strengths, their world-class AD carry Ruler, is entering his 10th professional season, and while he has been one of the best bot laners in the world over the past five years, esports careers are often considered to be remarkably short. Ruler is especially important to this Gen.G roster because he is the one player who is choke-proof. A former world champion who has never failed to rise to the moment, Ruler has proven that he is the steady rock that Gen.G needs alongside their generationally talented mid laner to get over the hump internationally. However, even if Chovy feels like he’s just getting started on his reign of terror, he might be closer to the end than he realizes if some of the pieces around him begin to crumble. Fans and Genrang alike will be holding their breath to see if they can put together another excellent season in 2026.

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BLG completes the zookeeper swap, goes from prey to predator

Over in the LPL, one team stood atop the offseason, and that would be 2024 Worlds finalists BiliBili Gaming (BLG). Although their most recent showings internationally, both MSI and Worlds 2025, left a lot to be desired, BiliBili took their fortunes into their own hands by not only returning to the jungler that brought them their most international success in years, Peng ‘Xun’ Li-Xun, but also acquiring one of the two active ADCs to win a Worlds title for the LPL, Korean AD carry and former Hanwha Life Esports bot laner Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon. These two, accompanied by some of the most accomplished Chinese talent in the game, including 2025 LPL Finals MVP Zhuo ‘Knight’ Ding in the mid lane, and top laner Chen ‘Bin’ Ze-Bin, look to be the odds-on favorites for LPL’s opening split in 2026.

Viper is a known quantity in both the LPL, thanks to his time on 2021 World Champion EDward Gaming (EDG), as well as in the LCK, where his elite 5.9 kills per game ranked second among all players in the LCK playoffs only behind Gen.G’s Ruler. His machine-like efficiency and strong teamfighting are hallmarks of good AD carry play, and he – like Ruler – is a playoff riser who does not shy away from the spotlight. The same cannot be said for the player he will be replacing on BLG: Zhao ‘Elk’ Jia-Hao, who, throughout his 3-year tenure with BiliBili, had consistently produced results domestically to the tune of three All-Pro selections. However, Elk’s Achilles heel is his inability to level up his game when he meets other high-level players at international events, often becoming a passive spectator instead of the hyper-aggressive carry that earns him his flowers in the LPL. In a year where historically effective Bin struggles to adjust to a meta lacking his best champion, Jax, BLG’s bot lane stuck out like a sore thumb in their falling out at Worlds 2025.

Aside from Elk, BLG also struggled with a rotating door in the jungle role for the majority of 2025, which heavily contributed to the dysfunction of the team overall. The team started with Yan ‘Wei’ Yang-Wei during the run-up to First Stand, but quickly pivoted to Yang ‘Beichuan’ Ling, whose high-risk, high-reward playstyle was exactly what the team needed to turn around their fortunes before LPL Split 2 Playoffs. Italian-born jungler Zhao ‘Shad0w’ Zhi-Qiang also made his way into the mix, and his honeymoon phase with the team was crucial in propelling BiliBili to MSI in Vancouver. At MSI, BLG flip-flopped between the two junglers, in most cases without clear reason, and they would continue to do so for the rest of the year. After both Shad0w and Beichuan were cut in December, BLG reunited with the jungler from their 2024 Worlds run, Xun, who has been stated to be a major part of the vision for the Chinese squad moving into 2025. Xun’s playstyle, an aggressively oriented early-game specialist, should open the door for a team that features as many heavy hitters as his to go far at whatever tournament they find themselves in.

BLG spared no expense in getting their guy in Viper, and the expectations are clear. Worlds qualification is a foregone conclusion, and the Summoner’s Cup is set directly in their crosshairs. How lethal will Viper be in his LPL reunion?

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ShowMaker opens up the D+ KIA daycare

For fans of DPlus KIA (DK), formerly known as DamWon Gaming (DWG) and their star mid laner Heo ‘ShowMaker’ Su, the glory days of 2020, when they were celebrating Worlds championships, can feel like a distant memory. Particularly after the strong start that DPlus opened the LCK Cup 2025 with, finishing in 3rd place behind Gen.G and champions Hanwha Life Esports, only to flounder throughout the rest of the regular season and miss out on all 3 international events, some were ready to say ShowMaker’s heyday was behind him. As one of the few LCK mid laners who still showed favor to classic mage picks like Syndra and Zoe, analysts and ShowMaker defenders alike reasoned that the “fearless drafting” meta of 2025 would be a benefit to DPlus, and despite some heroic performances like his aforementioned Zoe in the series-sealing Game 4 victory over BNK FearX in the LCK Summer Playoffs, inevitably, his bottom lane duo could not measure up to the might of T1.

Entering 2026, DK is turning over a new leaf with their roster, and substituting their aging bottom lane of Kim ‘Aiming’ Ha-ram and Cho ‘BeryL’ Geon-hee with the freshly minted support from LCK Challengers (the Korean developmental league), Oh ‘Career’ Hyeong-seok, and T1 Academy’s star AD carry, Smash. These two, in combination with sophomore top laner and 2nd-youngest LCK starter Jeon ‘Siwoo’ Si-woo and DK Academy graduate jungler Choi ‘Lucid’ Yong-hyeok, have joined ShowMaker to form the youngest team in the league.

To DPlus KIA, age is just a number (trust me, just ask Aiming), and they are determined to make a splash with this youthful collection of LCK upstarts. Siwoo, who at times last year looked to be one of the weak links of this DK squad, really flourished at the end of the year and well into the LCK Summer Playoffs. His Gwen and Rumble in particular were bright spots on a team that fell short at the final hurdle. In the jungle, Lucid, who was tapped as the replacement to LCK legend Canyon after he was recruited to the Gen.G superteam, continues to level up his game after entering the LCK as a carry jungle specialist. His development on tank champions such as Maokai and Ivern will be critical to the success of DK long term, but he can also happily whip out a Lee Sin masterclass when the situation necessitates it. Career is more of an unknown quantity, having spent his entire career in the developmental league, but he will be laning alongside the most tantalizing ADC prospect that DWG has seen since the beginning of the decade. More than any of these three, though, the real pressure appears to be on Smash, who will be playing his first full LCK season away from the organization that he’s called home since 2022. His aptitude for movement-based AD carries and propensity for making the highlight play were on full display in the offseason KeSPA cup, where DPlus KIA finished 3rd place after falling 2-3 against both finalists in T1 and HLE.

The final wrinkle for all of these players is that they will be coached by the same man that DK fielded in 2025, Kim ‘CvMax’ Dae-ho, who brought controversy to the budding squad that showed promise in the LCK Cup 2025 with his abrasive coaching philosophy and style. According to some pundits, CvMax and Siwoo were not on speaking terms as recently as the LCK Summer Playoffs, so hopefully some fresh faces and the start of a new year will be enough to mend their relationship and get this DK squad back on the right foot. If they can avoid being the cause of their own demise, DPlus KIA will be a force to be reckoned with in the LCK in 2026.

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Quick Hitters:

Some other interesting stories I thought were worth mentioning include:

- BNK FearX sophomore ADC Nam ‘Diable’ Dae-geun is coming off a 2025 LCK Rookie of the Year campaign with tons of excitement. Will his team hold him back from reaching an international event in 2026?​

- Longtime LPL superstar Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wenbo will start the season away from Worlds 2025 semifinalists Top Esports (TES), with Zi ‘Jiaqi’ Jia-qi being fielded in the ADC role in his stead. Can TES stay afloat and qualify for First Stand without their iconic AD carry?

- Anyone’s Legend (AL) escapes the LPL offseason as one of the few teams that were immune to roster changes. Does their core have what it takes to make another strong international run?

- Gumayusi reunites with ex-T1 teammate Zeus on HLE for the 2026 season, and they brought in TES jungler Seo ‘Kanavi’ Jin-hyeok to replace the retiring Han ‘Peanut’ Wang-ho as he departs for his mandated military service. Can this revamped Hanwha Life squad repeat as First Stand champions?​

- Faker’s former understudy on T1, mid laner Lee ‘Scout’ Ye-chan, makes his return to the LCK after spending almost a decade playing in the LPL. Can he and his Nongshim Redforce (NS) teammates make some noise in 2026?

- KT Rolster and illustrious LCK mid laner Gwak ‘Bdd’ Bo-seong, tasked with defending their Worlds 2025 finals run, have replaced their bottom lane with Kim ‘Aiming’ Ha-Ram and former DWG AD carry Jang ‘Ghost’ Yong-jun on support. Will Bdd once more be sent to the basement of the LCK?

- JDG cashes in on two of the highest rising stocks of 2025, former CBTC Flying Oysters (CFO) mid lane and jungle duo Yu ‘Junjia’ Chun-Chia, and Tsai ‘HongQ’ Ming-Hong, importing them from the League Championship Pacific (LCP). Can they, alongside LPL star ADC Chen ‘GALA’ Wei, return JD Gaming to LPL and international relevance?

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Both the LCK and LPL will be starting on January 14th, with KT Rolster taking on DN Soopers in Korea and Weibo Gaming taking on Invictus Gaming in China. The first domestic split of both of these regions will be feeding 2 teams each into the international tournament, First Stand 2026, to be held in Brazil in March 2026. Be sure to catch all of the action on the LCK and LPL’s respective channels this winter!

Did I miss anything? Who do YOU think will qualify for First Stand 2026? Did T1 make a mistake dropping Gumayusi? Does Aiming deserve to have a job? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh!

Game Changers Champions (GCC) Seoul is the culmination of Riot Games’ VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Game Changers circuit for the 2025 calendar year. Playing in the prestigious LoL Park venue in the Jongno District of Seoul, South Korea, 10 of the best Game Changers (GC) teams from around the globe competed for the lion’s share of $500,000 and VALORANT immortality.

Of course, those scenes were nothing new to Shopify Rebellion Gold (SRG) captain Melanie ‘MeL’ Capone and her longtime teammate Alexis ‘Alexis’ Guarrasi, who sought a GCC three-peat. Long before they were decimating the hopes of other GC squads, MeL and Lexi, as she is commonly referred to, were just teenagers with a love for first-person shooters. Competing primarily in Counter Strike:Global Offensive (CS:GO), both women remarked that a professional career in esports felt like more of a pipe dream than reality, and MeL even dabbled in producing and observing professional CS:GO matches. It’s hard to fault them for their dreary outlook, considering that in the time before VALORANT’s release, estimates from European researchers in 2019 pointed towards a 95/5 percent split between male and female professional gamers, respectively. Despite women comprising 45% of all gamers globally according to 2020 polls, the professional scene had never expressed the same split. Alexis had horror stories of co-ed teams that struggled to find partners for scrimmages and often faulted their losses on the fact that their team had female players. These two stories converged upon the release of VALORANT in the summer of 2020, a tactical shooter with fresh appeal and a new competitive circuit as well.

Freelance tournament administrators Galorants opened up the first competitive tournament, VALORANT For The Women (FTW) Summer Showdown, in September of 2020, a $50,000 women-only tournament designed to highlight the marginalized members of the first-person shooter (FPS) community. Shortly thereafter, VCT 2021 was announced – designed with multiple installations of region-based competition that fed into international tournaments – including VCT Game Changers. Riot, recognizing the potential in expanding their competitive player base, introduced the GC circuit to “creat(e) new opportunities and exposure for women and other marginalized genders within VALORANT esports.” Organizations and tournament organizers saw the vision as well, with a brand new set of stakeholders and sponsors looking to get their products in front of women in gaming.

MeL invited Alexis to form a team with fellow former CS:GO players Jasmine ‘Jazzyk1ns’ Manankil, and Katja ‘Katsumi’ Pfahnl, as well as former Overwatch content creator Annie ‘AnnieDro’ Roberts, dubbed MAJKL. MAJKL won the initial FTW Summer Showdown, earned their $50K, and was quickly scooped up by illustrious esports organization Cloud9. This roster was flashy, confident, and most importantly, unafraid to compete in the wider co-ed VALORANT circuit, a pioneer in this aspect among Game Changers teams. The Cloud9 White (C9W) roster, as they were known, was one of the most dominant teams in the history of VALORANT Game Changers, winning 7 consecutive domestic GC titles before playing in the first-ever VALORANT Game Changers Championship in 2022.

At GCC ‘22 in Berlin, C9W entered as heavy favorites, being one of the only teams that could consistently compete with co-ed teams in their region, but their dominance led to their downfall. After they were knocked to the lower bracket by European 2nd seed G2 Gozen, Cloud9’s confidence was shaken. They managed to beat Guild GC in the lower bracket but would fall in fourth place to North America’s second-seeded Shopify Rebellion. The titans had fallen, and nobody took the loss harder than MeL. In an interview later published by Riot, Capone talked about the dark place that she went to after that loss in Berlin, considering retirement or leaving gaming altogether. She remarked that true competitors know the feeling of coming up short when the ball is in your court, and that the fire to win was what helped pull her out of that low. Entering the 2022 offseason, MeL and Alexis both became free agents for the first time since their days on MAJKL, and their market value was at an all-time high.

After an offseason that saw Katsumi head to XSET’s Game Changers team and JazzyK1ns land on Complexity GX3, both top-contending squads in North America, Mel and Lexi both took their talents to a different team that trumped both offers, Version1 (V1). Beneath the glamour of Cloud9 White’s domestic dominance and the scrappy story of Shopify Rebellion GC’s constant fight for second place, there were scattered gems throughout Game Changers in North America that were sparkling on their own. For Immortals, a struggling esports entity, their team was led by Sarah ‘Sarahcat’ Simpson, an initiator main with suspicion-raising aim. For XSET, they imported Danish superstar Nicole ‘Noia’ Tierce, and she thanked them by putting up incredible numbers on the sentinel role with a particular flair for Chamber. Above everybody else, though, there was Ava ‘Florescent’ Eugene, a 16-year-old prodigy who was near single-handedly dragging her team, Misfits Black, to a top 3 placement in the final NA Game Changers event of 2022. With their pedigree, MeL and Lexi recruited these ladies to play alongside them, with a veteran mind of the game in Loic ‘effys’ Sauvageau at the coaching helm, and they formed Version1’s only VALORANT team in January of 2023. Just as quickly as Cloud9 mounted their dominant run in North America, V1 built their own legacy in 2023, winning back-to-back domestic titles in North American Game Changers and positioning themselves once again as the odds-on favorites at GCC 2023.

As the team was preparing for Champions, disaster struck. Not just for their parent organization of Version1, which ceased operations in late 2023, just before the team was set to head to São Paulo for the biggest event of the year, but for team captain MeL, who was diagnosed with COVID once she landed in Brazil. In the fallout of Version1’s closure, it was Shopify Rebellion who dropped their Game Changers roster and picked up the now-teamless GCC-bound squad. Shopify Rebellion Gold, as they would be known, was forced to play with their in-game leader off-site under strict quarantine, but this wouldn’t faze the team for long. The team dropped some maps along the way, but remained undefeated in matches to claim their first-ever Game Changers Championship in 2023, with MeL and Lexi capturing the elusive title. MeL, shortly thereafter, was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 class of 2023, for her influence in gaming, dominance in the GC scene, and for breaking down barriers that women face when it comes to professional esports. Those close to MeL knew that a GCC crown was far from the goal; what SRG sought was to become the first Game Changers team to compete in the VCT, Riot’s tier 1 league. With the title of GC’s best now secure, it was time to look ahead to their next hurdle, and they’d have their chance early in 2024.

The start of the new year meant that the mixed circuit’s developmental league, VALORANT Challengers League (VCL), was having its open tryouts. SRG threw their hat in the ring, hoping for a chance at potentially playing against some of the best talent in NA that wasn’t in the VCT yet, but came up four slots short with a top-12 finish. Committed to the grind, SRG put their heads down and once more dominated GC tournaments, winning 3 of 3 in North America, and entering another GCC in Brazil as the Goliath to the field’s David. This run, motivated by their defeat in NA VCL, was a monstrous and undefeated string of victories capped off by Florescent’s 74 kills in 3 maps of a grand final to secure a second consecutive Game Changers Championship for Shopify Rebellion. More importantly, this run was finally starting to turn the heads of VCT teams worldwide. Previously, it had been reported that some Game Changers players like MeL, had earned tryouts with VCT teams in the offseason between GC tournaments and VCT tournaments, but were eventually turned down due to “teammates being uncomfortable playing with a woman.” Overlooking the obviously reprehensible behavior from players who think that a player should be denied based on their gender, the truth is clear: Game Changers players are up-to-par with VCT competitors, and that line of reasoning was about to be put to the test.

In December of 2024, for the first time in VALORANT history, a woman was among the rostered players in VCT. Florescent, the back-to-back Game Changers Championship MVP, the engine behind the newly minted Shopify Rebellion Gold dynasty, and a student of MeL’s leadership during their tenure both at Version1 and SRG, officially joined the European Ascension team Apeks for VCT 2025. Although it was disappointing not see MeL enjoy the fruits of her own labor, times were certainly changing in the VCT circuit, and the door has now been opened a crack for future Game Changers to make the leap. And make no mistake, ‘Flor’ absolutely earned her keep in VCT EMEA, consistently performing well despite her team’s struggles and putting together one of the most insane highlight clips of 2025.

America, Shopify Rebellion Gold was looking for someone to fill the enormous shoes that Florescent had left on their team, and they settled on FlyQuest Red duelist Karnthida ‘Dodonut’ Chaisrakeo. Dodonut, a longtime veteran of the North American Game Changers scene, was considered the second-fiddle duelist of GC after Florescent, and her addition to SRG gave her the opportunity to prove how big a gap (if any at all) there really was. Her seamless addition to the team, improved coordination between Lexi and MeL, and overall improvement of the Game Changers scene over the course of 5 years culminated in Shopify Rebellion Gold becoming the first ever full Game Changers team to qualify to VCL in January of 2025. Conflicts arose between SRG’s competition schedule, wanting to pursue their Game Changers dominance but constricted by the VCL matches, yet even still SRG persisted. Their crowning achievement this year was a victory over TSM’s VCL roster, the same TSM squad that would go on to finish second in the entirety of the Americas in the biggest tournament of the year, Ascension 2025. The growth exhibited by Shopify Rebellion was palpable, and results against mixed rosters continued to pile up for the GC superteam. SRG would – despite swapping duelists – rack up three additional domestic GC trophies, this time being supercharged by the fragging power of Noia on agents like Viper and Cypher.

Which brings us to GCC 2025. Appearing in their fourth consecutive VALORANT Game Changers Championship, Alexis and Melanie were the people’s champions and the beacons of light for Game Changers fans looking for more women to make VCT. Alexis was recently named to the Forbes 30 under 30 class for 2025, making her the second member of SRG to achieve this, and the GCC trophy would be the cherry on top of this groundbreaking year for VCT Game Changers and SRG. Sadly, it was not meant to be. SRG fell in the upper bracket final to Team Liquid Visa from Brazil, and despite easily making their way back to the Grand Final by toppling the other Brazilian Representative, Made in Brazil (MiBR) GC, they would once again fall to Team Liquid in a heartbreaking Game 5. It was a truly incredible series that is worth watching all the way through, but here is Map 5 if you only have time for that.

So what’s next for the Queens of GC? Time will tell, but Flor’s breakthrough into VCT has teams seriously inquiring about GC talent, especially for VCL teams around the globe. For players like Team Liquid Visa’s Natalia ‘Daiki’ Vilela, her talented gameplay combined with her strong leadership in-game makes her an attractive candidate to Brazilian teams that are notoriously starved for in-game leaders. Players like G2 Gozen’s Aleyna ‘Vania’ Keskin, who had an exceptional GCC 2025, are now getting looks from European teams around the region. Whether they get signed to a new organization or look to join SRG as GC teams in VCL, the future is bright for Game Changers talent. For MeL, this is the vision she had as far back as 2020. Regarding the hate that women in gaming get, and specifically the C9W squad in 2021, MeL noted: “All of (it) becomes worth it if we become Tier 1 or we inspire someone else to reach these levels someday.”

I’m certain she and Lexi look back now with pride, with not just all they’ve accomplished, but the lives of the young women they’ve touched with their success.

The Overwatch Champions Series (OWCS) is nearing its conclusion to the 2025 calendar year, and the final stop is a massive LAN at DreamHack: Stockholm. There, 12 teams from around the world will duke it out to determine the best Overwatch team on the planet.

It wasn’t always this simple. Back when Overwatch 2 was still Overwatch (1) and winning Game of the Year 2016, the team at publisher Blizzard Entertainment had a vision for the first-ever geo-located, franchised esports league. A vision of grandeur where players “rolled up to the arena in sports cars” and played “in front of thousands of screaming fans,” according to an executive at the time. In esports’ very short lifetime, nothing to this scale had ever been accomplished. Frankly, we were just a decade or two removed from players lugging their 30-pound computers to and from people’s houses to play a tournament “on LAN.” To this point, Overwatch esports existed in spite of marginal support from Blizzard overall, and tournaments were localized around the world during Overwatch Contenders seasons 0 and 1.

At BlizzCon 2016, Blizzard President and CEO Mike Morhaime took to the stage and introduced the world to the Overwatch League (OWL). Twelve franchises, owned by existing esports entities alongside buy-ins from renowned North American sports property owners like the Kroenke family and the Kraft family, would compete in a league-style 40-game regular season, with 4 small “Stage Playoffs” every 10 games, culminating in a season playoffs and grand finals in the Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets. It was ambitious, it was unprecedented, and it was immediately shrouded in community-fed doubt. Even the most successful esports ventures of the past decade wouldn’t dare think about a geo-located franchised league; that’s just not how esports works! Then, to consider the buy-in, where esports organizations were expected to pay $20 million for their slot (during the first season, that is), it’s no surprise that Blizzard and the development team behind Overwatch were so confident in the product.

The league truly spared no expense entering the inaugural season, poaching the top play-by-play and color commentators from multiple other top esports, such as prolific League of Legends broadcaster Christopher ‘MonteCristo’ Mykles, as well as home-grown talent from Overwatch Contenders like Joshua ‘Sideshow’ Wilkinson, to deliver the most highly anticipated esports show in recent memory. The broadcasts for season 1 were relatively healthy considering esports standards, averaging 80,000-170,000 concurrent viewers, and that was before the seasonal playoffs brought a major multi-year partnership with Disney and ESPN that would bring the Overwatch League to households around the United States. According to Blizzard itself, approximately “1 million people were tuned into the 2018 Overwatch League Grand Finals at any given time.” Sentiment surrounding the Overwatch League project signaled that it was a great start, trending ahead of projections, and was only a small step towards a colossal goal. According to insiders with Blizzard at the time, revenue of the league exceeded $200 million thanks to massive sponsorship and licensing deals with companies like Spotify, Intel, and T-Mobile.

Things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows on the inside, however. Controversy plagued the league, with players like Dallas Fuel’s Felix ‘XQC’ Lengyel using homophobic rhetoric against competitors and Boston Uprising’s star player Jonathan ‘DreamKazper’ Sanchez being accused of child grooming and sexual misconduct. In-game, the formation of teams prior to the season led to some seriously lopsided roster construction, and there were multiple teams that struggled to attain a win per stage. Most notably, the Shanghai Dragons, owned and operated by Chinese IT company NetEase, lost every single game in the inaugural season of the Overwatch League. Pressure mounted, stage after stage, but the fully Chinese roster failed to take down a single opponent in the 2018 OWL season, cementing one of the worst losing streaks in all of professional sport history. Meanwhile, the Korean squad New York Excelsior or NYXL, won 2 of the 4 stage playoff titles, and finished runner-up in the other two. Their team, built around revolutionary support carry and Season 1 MVP Bang ‘Jjonak’ Seong-hyun, was leaps and bounds better than their competition for a great majority of the year and often led to blowouts and uninteresting matches throughout a dragging 40-game season.

Entering Season 2, more problems bubbled up from the most corporate-led esports tournament in existence. Following a disappointing performance from DJ Khaled at the halftime of the Brooklyn-based Grand Finals a year prior, multiple endemic esports entities, such as casters and analysts, attempted to weigh in on the myriad of problems the league would face when attempting to integrate itself into the wider esports scene. Bigwigs at Blizzard, most notably league commissioner Nate Nanzer, shut down these suggestions and rolled ahead with a new model to attempt to subsidize the streams with the “Overwatch League All-Access Pass” that entitled viewers to first-person perspectives of every player in every game, as well as digital goods and player interviews. This product was received generally well, but took a heavy toll on the production of the games themselves, and after signing an exclusivity agreement with YouTube in 2020 that’d send both OWL and the emerging Call of Duty League (CDL) to the platform, the OWL All-Access Pass fell to the wayside. Further, the successes of the past year led to a price hike on the entrance fee to the prestigious Overwatch League, with some teams reporting they paid as much as $40 million during the expansion to complete the total of 20 teams. Foreign organizations made up the majority of the expansion, with three extra franchises in China: namely Chengdu, Hangzhou, and Guangzhou, and Paris snagging a slot as well. Viewership in 2019 also took a dip in large part due to the unfortunate ‘GOATS’ meta that plagued the league: a slow, ultimate-heavy style that took some of the brightest and most mechanically gifted stars in the budding esport and sapped them of their primary hero choices.

Outside of those hiccups, Season 2 still performed quite well, especially as the Overwatch League continued to attract high-profile sponsors like Xfinity and Coca-Cola, with retailer Fanatics providing all things merchandise. The league started testing the waters regarding team localization and held “homestands,” or rather destination weekends, in Dallas, Atlanta, and Los Angeles to great success. A rivalry bloomed between the newly minted Vancouver Titans roster, an expansion franchise that scooped up the Korean Contenders team ‘RunAway’, and the San Francisco Shock, a returning team from Season 1 that retooled itself from a lowly bottom-three finish in 2018 to a mixed American-Korean hybrid supersquad. The titans battled one another throughout multiple stage playoffs, and met in the 2019 Grand Finals, where League MVP Jay ‘Sinatraa’ Won and the San Francisco Shock took home the 2019 championship.

Considering the success of the homestands in 2019, the Overwatch League was poised to make its biggest leap of faith yet. As the deal with YouTube came through, OWL would be moving to a roadshow model of travel for every weekend. All 20 franchises would be assigned 2 “home games” to be played in their geo-location (such as the Florida Mayhem playing at the Watsco Center in Coral Gables, FL). Teams that were already equipped with dedicated esports facilities, like Dallas and Washington, were assigned even more (Washington was on the books for five homestands in 2020). Then, of course, the COVID pandemic hit right as the games started to get underway, forcing play to be transitioned online. This change, although throwing a wrench in the season plans of OWL, was a massive relief for team owners who were hemorrhaging money on events and operations for the homestands in the early part of the season. Player burnout mirrored the effects felt by the rest of the global population when variant after variant of COVID-19 ravaged communities and forced individuals indoors for such extended periods. Some of the league’s stars started jumping ship to other emerging titles, such as Riot Games’ VALORANT, once it was released in the summer of 2020. The Overwatch League, to their credit, did have some very crafty solutions to reignite the competitive spirit of their esport, including shifting online play to Hawaii to have true international play for the first time since lockdowns were enforced. Other esports followed suit by finding middle points to host international tournaments, but Blizzard was the true innovator in that space, maintaining the initial spirit of esports tournaments despite outside circumstances. The four Hawaiian tournaments that were introduced to break up the regular season splits, dubbed the May Melee, June Joust, Summer Showdown, and Countdown Cup, as well as the overall playoffs, would become staples of OWL’s competitive scheduling for the duration of its existence.

After shocking reports and a lawsuit levied against Activision Blizzard by the State of California for toxic workplace culture and discrimination, sponsors started dropping like flies. Once the summer of 2021 came to a close, only TeamSpeak remained as the sole sponsor present during OWL broadcasts. Combine this with already declining interest in Overwatch Esports overall, and the online format was the only thing that made sense for team owners as the late stage of the pandemic raged on. Viewership for 2021 and after the release of Overwatch 2 in 2022, Blizzard’s last-ditch attempt to revitalize a floundering game, saw drops as steep as 40% across some of the mid-season tournaments. The league, despite appearing more palatable to fans with reports of their average-minute-audience breaking records set in 2018 and 2019, still struggled with overall popularity in the wider esports scene. A deal with Butterfinger and a live finals in Anaheim, the first since the league went online in early 2020, were the highlights of an otherwise forgettable year. Finally, enough was enough for the teams that made up the remainder of the league.

A bargaining agreement was reached between Blizzard and the nineteen remaining franchises still in the Overwatch League, as Chengdu’s team had disbanded entering the 2023 season. Toronto Defiant’s parent company, OverActive Media, settled with Activision to waive outstanding league fees among all teams, and multiple franchises “relocated” to better suit their teams needs, including the Philadelphia Fusion transitioning to become the Seoul Infernal to be closer to their T1 Telecom headquarters in South Korea and the Paris Eternal becoming the Vegas Eternal to better match the nationalities of their roster. The 2023 season, with new visual updates to Overwatch 2 but a looming sense of futility, was played primarily online outside of the midseason tournament and Grand Finals, held in Seoul and Toronto, respectively, closed with another new champion: the Florida Mayhem. When news broke in July 2023 that OWL met with teams to discuss liquidation and a complete shutdown of operations for the league, the end was already in sight. Officially, Activision Blizzard announced in November of 2023 that they’d be transitioning away from the Overwatch League, hot off the heels of Toronto Defiant’s exit as the second franchise to close up shop. Quick to jump on the opportunity, ESL FaceIT – the tournament organizers behind some of the biggest Counter-Strike events in the world – announced in January of 2024 that they would be hosting the new open-style format of Overwatch esports titled the Overwatch Champions Series.

Longtime desk host and one of the faces of the Overwatch League, Salome ‘Soe’ Gschwind-Repp, delivered a tear-jerking message to close out the end of the OWL era that is absolutely worth your time if you didn’t manage to see it live. She thanks the fans, the players, and every single individual who turned the Overwatch League from the pipe dream it was into the wonderful experience it became.

Through all the rose-colored glasses and happy tears that the Overwatch League brought fans, the collapse was imminent from the start. Overreliance on venture capital, a departure from the people who were diehard fans of esports, terrible misfortune and timing with league globalization in 2020, and a lack of serious identity when sponsors departed all spelled the end of the most lofty project in esports history. It was a warning sign and a set of lessons for the rest of the esports world. Riot Games, the most prolific esports publisher with (arguably) the most stable competitive esports scene, learned quite a bit about franchised leagues from OWL, including the hindrances of geo-location and the opportunities for digital marketing. Additionally, the Overwatch League, despite its faults, was capable of producing some of the most compelling stories and jaw-dropping highlights of any game on the market. The team that worked on the league, both on stage and behind the scenes, was incredibly talented, adaptable, and quick on their feet, which extended the life of this doomed product once all the money-hungry grifters jumped ship.

Now, the Overwatch esports scene is in a much smaller – but more sustainable – place. Collegiate Overwatch is a massive part of the team’s mission, and multiple collegiate circuits get the attention of the Overwatch scene at large and are even granted in-game cosmetics. The OWCS, an open-entry format that would typically discourage professional organization involvement long-term, has managed to attract and maintain some of the biggest brands in esports, like Gen.G Esports and T1 in Korea and Team Liquid and SpaceStation Gaming in North America. Above all else, the expectations are much more realistic for the competitive Overwatch scene, and all parties involved are thriving because of it.

As someone whose introduction to esports came from the Overwatch League and whose first live event was the Dallas Fuel homestand in 2019, this piece hits a little closer to home for yours truly. The slow death of the Overwatch League was tough to watch in real-time and even tougher to defend to other esports pundits. Nevertheless, as someone who stayed up until 4 AM during 2020 nights to catch the Korean OWL games, I will forever be grateful for this league and its stars. To Lee ‘Carpe’ Jae-hyeok, my unsung hero in Season 1 and 3, you will forever be my OWL 2020 MVP. To Mitch ‘UberShouts’ Leslie, who got his big break casting multiple Overwatch League Grand Finals, and is now working with Riot Games in the VCT as well as OWCS, you’re an inspiration to my content and my career. Thank you for all the memories, and I look forward to the OWCS Championships in Stockholm.

If you’re interested in hearing about some of the biggest stories from the history of the Overwatch League, I’d be more than happy to write about them, especially considering they’re almost esports ancient history. More importantly, what do you think did the Overwatch League in? What would you have done differently? Do you prefer the OWCS to OWL? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh

P.S. My cat, Xaden, insisted that his contribution not be cut, so enjoy his take: hyjunbm

Raucous crowds roared as the KT Rolster rollercoaster overcame its greatest obstacle yet, whilst another notch on T1 mid laner Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok’s LPL belt was carved from the corpse of Top Esports. The whiplash from an incredible set of semifinals now sets up the absolutely unthinkable in the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) Grand Final. League Championship of Korea (LCK) 3rd and 4th seeds KT and T1 (respectively) will battle in a best-of-five series colloquially referred to as the “Telecom War” to determine the 15th World Champion in League of Legends (LoL) history. Both teams have overcome adversity both domestically and in China at Worlds, but have traveled the beaten path and now sit one series away from LoL immortality. Let’s review their last series, their circumstances, and their x-factors so we can most accurately predict the victor of this insane Grand Finals matchup.

Gen.G Esports vs. KT Rolster

Entering their Saturday series, KT were tremendous underdogs despite their flawless record at Worlds. 7-straight game victories paled in comparison to Gen.G’s double domestic titles and Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) crown. Across the board, Gen.G had the better on-paper roster, including two former world champions: jungler Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu and Attack Damage Carry (ADC) Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk in the bottom lane. Unfortunately for Gen.G, the game was played on computers, not paper, and KT rose to the occasion, forcing uncharacteristic mistakes from the titans in black and gold. Game 1 started as bad as it gets for Gen.G, with All-Pro mid laner Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon missing his flash on an early gank from KT’s jungler Mun ‘Cuzz’ U-chan and gifting over a kill to midlane opponent Gwak ‘Bdd’ Bo-sung’s Yone. With his flash blown and lack of map pressure, Gen.G was forced to concede the first two dragons to KT, and Bdd’s squad was afforded a cushion heading into the mid-game. Gen.G hit their stride after the first fight for Rift Herald, and poured gold into Ruler and Canyon, who maintained 100% kill participation 20 minutes in. Just 10 minutes later, Gen.G’s gold lead had ballooned to over 5000, and they looked in firm control after a win at the Atakhan pit, but it was Canyon who made the back-breaking mistake to dive too deep into KT’s base and give Bdd and top laner Lee ‘PerfecT’ Seung-min a flurry of kills to sneak their way back in. KT earned the mountain dragon soul buffs, and after another extended play in the top lane, wherein ADC

Seo ‘deokdam’ Dae-gil more than earned his keep with superb Caitlyn trap placements; Gen.G were wiped. Bdd and crew marched into Gen.G’s base and stole Game 1 out from under them, visibly shaking Gen.G in the process. In the second match, Gen.G were the ones who jumped out ahead, once again supercharging their AD Carry Ruler on Ezreal. His double kill and shutdown onto Cuzz when voidgrubs spawned had nullified the early kills that Cuzz’s Qiyana earned, and it helped get his fellow All-Pro top laner, Kim ‘Kiin’ Ki-in, into the game on Ambessa. The primary strength for Gen.G all year was forcing teams into checkmates and slowly choking them out over the course of a game, and when you get Ruler into a position to post 14/3/6 as his Kill/Death/Assist (KDA) ratio, you might as well call game. As the nexus exploded in Game 2 for KT, the series was even once more, and Gen.G seemed to have shrugged off the initial sucker punch from KT. Game 3 opened as a bloodless encounter for the first 10 minutes, but it was once again Chovy in mid lane who would forfeit first blood to Bdd after a misplaced flash failed to get him over an Azir emperor’s divide. The pain wouldn’t stop there for the MSI MVP, as he would die again only a minute later to Bdd in solo-kill fashion, all but sealing him out of the game. Gen.G would only manage to net themselves 2 kills through the entirety of the third game as KT’s flawless dragon-stacking execution led them to a Chemtech dragon soul at 23 minutes. The most emblematic play of the entire series was Canyon’s attempt to use Pantheon’s ultimate to get into the dragon pit, only to be immediately ejected by way of Cuzz’s Poppy ultimate. A mere six minutes after the soul was claimed, the game itself was finished, with a deathless game for Cuzz’s Poppy and PerfecT’s K’Sante. Game 4’s draft was all over the place for both squads, with Chovy opting for his first Anivia game of his career and Cuzz doing the same for Dr. Mundo in the jungle. Deokdam’s Kalista selection was the first one of Worlds 2025, and it was a damn good one, with an undying 6/0/8 KDA, 25.1% of his team’s total damage output, and multiple saves of his lanemate Jeong ‘Peter’ Yoon-su on Renata Glasc. Bdd was once more the major difference maker in this game, utilizing Cassiopeia ultimates to freeze Gen.G in place and force another pitiful 2 kill performance from the black and gold as KT emerged from the series victorious in 3-1 fashion.

KT’s team all played incredibly throughout this series, but it was Bdd and Cuzz who once more cemented their place as a top mid and jungler at this tournament, outplaying Gen.G’s superstars Chovy and Canyon, respectively. What was once an unbelievable Cinderella story that had detractors waiting on their ‘pumpkin moment’ of realization has quickly morphed into a grand finals berth and the first chance of Bdd’s career to lift the Summoner’s Cup. As KT’s rollercoaster continues to rise, their opponents on the other side of the bracket have their own destiny to defend.

T1 vs. Top Esports

A tale as old as time for Faker and his T1 army, staring down the Chinese Legends Pro League (LPL) third-seed Top Esports (TES), and entering with the momentum of not just reigning Worlds winner status, but back-to-back champion looking for the game’s first ever three-peat. For TES, their Worlds journey has been largely defined by an upset victory over LPL #1 seed BiliBili Gaming (BLG) in the Swiss stage, before they took down Europe’s final hope, G2 Esports, in the quarterfinals. The team has been anchored by consistent play in the top lane and jungle between Bai ‘369’ Jiahao and Seo ‘Kanavi’ Jin-hyeok, who are both top 5 in their roles for damage per minute (DPM). Combined with 2019 world champion Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wenbo on ADC, TES had a scary roster heading into the semifinals against T1, who escaped the Swiss stage without beating a single Eastern team. Nevertheless, after a grueling 5-game series victory against LPL superteam Anyone’s Legend, T1 rocked up as confident as ever. Game 1 was a testament to this confidence, as despite playing right into the Top Esports game plan in draft and picking Faker’s Orianna into TES assassin main Lin ‘Creme’ Jian’s Akali, they made quick adjustments to their composition to better counteract the pick. Despite tanking three bans from TES, T1 support player and champion guru Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok still found an angle to work his magic on engage support Rakan, posting a 100% kill participation percentage alongside Faker. A low kill game for both sides, Game 1 was defined by the macro strategy of the defending champs, suffocating TES around the map and earning themselves a tough-to-beat combination of Atakhan, Baron Nashor, and Cloud dragon soul before slamming the door shut just after half an hour had elapsed. In Game 2, it was time for more of T1’s storied roster to step up to the plate, and jungler Mun ‘Oner’ Hyun-jeon, as well as ADC Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyung, did just that. Oner posted the third 100% kill participation score of the game, one Jarvan IV, while Gumayusi led the lobby in damage dealt and team damage share on Kai’Sa, a champion he has faced intense scrutiny over his ability to pilot in the past couple of seasons. Newcomer Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-jun in the top lane even decided to get in on the fun by locking in Camille as a counter pick to 369’s lethal Ambessa and absolutely flexed his muscles on the champion throughout Game 2. Keria locked in one of his defining champions of this Worlds run, Neeko, as the first selection on red side and decided to immediately start opting for highlight plays with fake-outs and clones that kept TES on their toes. Through 20 minutes, the game still hung in the balance, but once more, the Atakhan proved to be the Achilles heel of Top Esports, when 369 missed his Ambessa ultimate and, in turn, cost JackeyLove his life. Faker’s Galio, a champion he rode all the way to a Worlds Finals MVP just a year ago, was once more electric in this semifinal match, landing key ultimates and taunts to disable the TES carries and open the door for T1 to sweep through. The split pushing power of Doran’s Camille on the side lanes of the map, Creme’s struggles on the first-picked Ryze mid, and the sickening jungle gap between Oner and Kanavi all defined Top Esports’ struggles in the second match, and it appeared the series was destined for a sweep after T1 ended the game in 27 minutes. The strategy for TES in Game 3 was to get Kanavi on a playmaking, high-agency jungler, and he did just that by making Qiyana the first pick of the draft. Further, T1 locked in key matchups with Doran’s Sion and Oner’s Pantheon, forcing the Chinese 3-seed to put their strongest individual performer on Ornn, a tank, in the top lane. The real advantage that T1 secured in draft came via the bottom lane, as Gumayusi and Keria selected Ashe and Renata Glasc, the two champions that had been banned so often against them just a year ago at Worlds in Paris because of their proficiency on the pair. JackeyLove and fellow lane-mate Fu ‘Hang’ Minhang challenged them with an aggressive Draven-Nautilus duo of their own, but ultimately failed to deliver meaningful results. Kanavi’s kill-hungry playstyle in the jungle did not mesh well with the struggling Aurora midlane matchup for Creme nor JackeyLove’s gold-reliant Draven. Time and again, the kill credit (and gold bounty) would go to Qiyana, and time and again, TES paid dearly for it. By game’s end, Faker’s individual gold lead was cresting over 3,000, earning him a Rabadon’s Deathcap item advantage, and one that he swiftly employed to batter the Chinese representatives on his newly furnished Mel mid lane. Credit is due to 369’s Ornn, which was disruptive in multiple team fights and actually led the entire lobby in total damage dealt, but unfortunately, could not single-handedly will TES out of this dumpster fire. T1 once more closed the game out before 29 minutes had elapsed, and vanquished the final LPL team at Worlds in a dominant 3-0 fashion.

Pessimists would say that T1 needn’t beat TES, but rather just let TES beat themselves, but that’s an unfair argument for this matchup. While Top Esports certainly had its fair share of flaws and shortcomings, T1’s preparation and adaptation were on full display throughout the series, but especially in Game 1. Top Esports developed a counter-pick strategy to Faker’s inevitable Orianna selection, but still succumbed to the immense pressure of the Unkillable Demon King and his crew. Moreover, Faker’s individual performance throughout this Worlds run has been magnificent, certainly the best he’s played mechanically in 2025 and maybe even dating back a few more years. His traditional control mages that he hid behind throughout the spring and summer splits of the LCK are frequently banned against him, and he has had to reach deep into his bag of tricks to find selections like Mel, Anivia, and Cassiopeia to cover his bases. In the case of Guma and Oner, they have once again found another level at the World Championship. A defining year for both of their already incredible careers, T1’s jungle and ADC routinely find a hidden gear once the Worlds lights come on, and they have not been shy about flaunting it this time around with a three-peat within arm’s reach. With Doran’s historic choking pattern now looking like a distant memory, T1 set the stage for the most important Telecom War in history — this time played in Chengdu with the entire esports world’s eyes on them.

The Telecom War to end all Telecom Wars

To say that KT Rolster is playing with house money would be a gross understatement. They are practically part-owners of the casino by now, in no small part due to the shakeout of the draw, but their resounding victory over Gen.G has fans ready to use “the e-word.” Every player on their team will be playing their first Worlds final, aiming for their first international trophy, and writing a storybook finish. Their team has all leveled up their play as the year has progressed, but none more so than PerfecT, who has gone from being nearly cut after the LCK Cup and facing substitutions to now dying the least times per game at Worlds. The team play from KT has also shaped up tremendously over the past month in China, with both Bdd and Deokdam placing within the Top 5 of Kill Participation % at Worlds. Getting Cuzz onto playmaking junglers, carries or otherwise, is priority #1 for KT, as this empowers both solo laners in mid and top to press the attack and mount their advantages. KT has also heavily relied upon dragon stacking, or defeating dragon objectives consistently, throughout their Worlds run, and T1 is sure to take note.

Speaking of T1, their team faces an entirely different but similarly unprecedented challenge. For Oner, Guma, and Keria, a three-peat would firmly cement their names into the Top 3 ever for their respective roles of Jungle, ADC, and Support. Currently battling the “just teammates with Faker” allegations, earning the moniker of the first true dynasty in LoL esports history with another win will undeniably be a one-way ticket to GOAT talks. Conversely, Doran would wiggle his way into an elite group of top laners who have lifted the Summoner’s Cup, and T1’s mere appearance at Worlds is due in large part to his incredible regional performances that kept T1 afloat through their domestic slumps. His Ambessa, Gwen, and Rumble have all been instrumental to the success of T1’s draft strategy and — to his credit — he often shoulders a heavy burden of team damage percentage in those games. Lastly, and most obviously, we have surpassed what can be deemed as “uncharted territory” and entered into the realm of witnessing greatness in real time when it comes to the Unkillable Demon King, Faker. His sixth trophy, double the amount of any other player in history (the runners-up all being his own teammates), would match the historic resume of traditional sport legends like Michael Jordan in the NBA. Dominance to this degree is not just rare in esports; it simply doesn’t exist outside of Faker. He is the anomaly that propels the LoL esports community and energizes the fans of T1 to hold onto hope year after year.

An occurrence on multiple nights every year, the Telecom War was first dubbed in Starcraft as South Korea Telecom T1 (SKT), and KTF would duke it out throughout the mid-2000s for dominance in the country. Heading into League of Legends esports, the organization’s passionate fan bases continued to fuel the fire of the storied rivalry, and since 2020, they have met in 31 official matches. T1 leads the series score, and by a landslide, with a 24-7 record, but the games themselves have a tendency to devolve into absolute madness and frequently go the distance, whether they’re best-of-3s or best-of-5s. KT won the last matchup between these two teams, an August best-of-three that they claimed in a 2-0 fashion behind a pitiful performance from Faker and Gumayusi.

Regardless of who you’re a fan of, it’s impossible not to be excited for the prospect of a Telecom War in the Worlds Finals. As for the winner, it’s so difficult to make an accurate prediction when both of these rosters are so heavily dependent on vibes. Is Bdd ready to secure his first-ever Worlds title, stealing Faker’s three-peat? Will PerfecT and Peter maintain their white-hot Worlds form all the way to the end? Can Gumayusi and Keria keep up the lane pressure that has turned T1 into a dominant force once more? Will Doran turn on his monitor?

So many difficult questions, but for me, the answer is oh so simple. Aaron ‘Medic’ Chamberlain, prolific League of Legends caster from Europe, once proclaimed: “When you need someone, when you need anyone to step up to the moment and show what this game’s all about. It’s Faker.” Five Worlds titles under his belt, a victory over their nemesis from MSI in Anyone’s Legend, where Faker’s Mel was the razor-thin margin that decided the game, and an all-around better supporting cast when it comes to pedigree means that T1 is my choice to become the 15th LoL world champions. I foresee Oner being a nuisance to Cuzz and invading early and often, pushing him away from neutral objectives in a similar fashion to what he did to Kanavi. That jungle gap will earn Oner the Finals MVP, but the Telecom Wars magic will deliver and avoid the sweep.

Final Score Prediction: KT Rolster (1 - 3) T1

Finals MVP Prediction: Oner (T1, Jng)

I hope this piece has prepared you with the insight necessary to not just watch the games on LoL esports channels, but enjoy them to the highest degree. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey throughout Worlds 2025, and may the best Korean Telecom team win!

Agree with my takes? Am I just a salty Gen.G fan? Who do you think is going to raise the Summoner’s Cup? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter!

As teams geared up to head nearly 12 hours southbound towards Shanghai after the Swiss stage of the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds), 8 squads clung to hopes of a title. With that number slimming further, to only 4 remaining, the west crashed and burned, and one of Korea’s strongest representatives left empty-handed. An unexpected challenger remained undefeated at this tournament, and Faker kept his record against the LPL spotless. This piece aims to recap the four quarterfinal games of Worlds’ Knockout stage and prepare you for the highly touted Top 4.

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Gen.G Esports vs. Hanwha Life Esports (HLE)

The first game of the quarterfinals, an unfortunate draw for fans, featured a rematch of the League Championship Korea (LCK) Finals between tournament favorites Gen.G and strong challenger HLE. In their last showdown, Gen.G claimed the series easily in a 3-1 fashion after dominating Games 1 and 2. On this grand stage, however, it was anyone’s guess who would show up to play. This game also had the potential to be HLE jungler and former Gen.G member Han ‘Peanut’ Wang-ho’s last game, as he had his South Korean-mandated military service looming. The game plan for both teams was simple. In Gen.G’s case, they must bleed out the other team with their slow, methodical playstyle. Their ability to set up for objectives like dragons and Baron Nashor is rivaled by few squads in this tournament, and HLE was certainly not one of them. Mid laner Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon’s impressive performance throughout the Swiss stage was a nice buffer heading into this headliner, as he would be facing former Worlds winner Kim ‘Zeka’ Geon-woo across the stage. Zeka is widely regarded as a playoff riser, consistently bringing his A-game when the lights are at their brightest, and after years of disappointing Worlds performances, Gen.G fans waited with bated breath to see how their stars would show up for the big game. HLE’s game plan was far simpler. Zeka and their other former Worlds champ, Attack Damage Carry (ADC) Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon needed to outduel their opposing number. Hanwha Life’s strategy book was quite shallow when it comes to larger gameplay ideas, and many of their games are decided by stellar champion piloting from their mid lane and AD carry players. Entering the game, Viper was top 3 in the tournament in Kills per Game and Damage per Minute, and he would need to keep up that breakneck pace for HLE to have even a shred of hope.

Unfortunately for HLE fans, and much to the joy of Gen.G’s base, many of these games were decided before the carries could really have a serious say in the outcome. Game 1, HLE attempted to get fancy in the draft with a selection of Pantheon support for former Gen.G support and 2023 LCK Assists King Yu ‘Delight’ Hwan-jung. This, alongside Peanut’s Sejuani pick, meant that Zeka’s Taliyah would have all the assistance he’d need to get online by the time those picks lost relevant power to traditional supports. They made some critical errors that cost them the rest of the game, including a misplay around the rift herald that immediately reversed the first 2 kills they earned earlier in the game. In Game 2 – the longest game of Worlds 2025 thus far – a 58:51 long, 51 kill barn-burner, the game truly felt like a Viper against the world kind of deal. Viper dealt an unfathomable 70,000 damage and 40% of HLE’s total damage to champions, but his heroics would be in vain. An incredible late-game clutch performance from Gen.G’s newest addition, support main Joo ‘Duro’ Min-kyu on Nautilus, as well as some awful misplays from Peanut and Delight, led to the late-game demise of Hanwha Life, after Gen.G captured the fourth Baron of the game. Game 3, HLE’s sole win in the series, came off the back of a deathless Viper Sivir performance and a vintage Rakan game out of Delight. In the closeout Game 4, a game where Viper picked a late-game carry in Smolder on ADC, it was Gen.G who broke the game open in the 15th minute on a Rift Herald fight that all but sealed the game. Overall, Gen.G did what Gen.G does best: build leads and maintain them. 2020 World Champion jungler Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu recovered his poor stat lines from the end of the LCK by showcasing his signature Nidalee jungle pick in Game 4, stomping out the few remaining embers of hope for HLE in the process.

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Final Score: Gen.G 3 - 1 Hanwha Life Esports

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CBTC Flying Oysters (CFO) vs. KT Rolster

A serious test for the newly formed League Championship Pacific (LCP)’s #1 seed, CBTC Flying Oysters in their first Worlds quarterfinal ever and emerging as the feel-good story of League of Legends esports in 2025, takes on one of two undefeated teams at the tournament thus far in KT Rolster. KT, led by their superstar mid lane and jungle duo of Gwak ‘Bdd’ Bo-sung and Mun ‘Cuzz’ U-chan, who boast the two highest Kill/Death/Assist ratios (KDA) and two of the top five kill participation percentages of Worlds, came into the game untested and highly questioned. Their path to the Knockout stage was considered fairly cushy; with wins against Europe’s 2nd-seeded Movistar KOI, LCP’s 3rd-seeded Team Secret Whales, and a sweep of then-struggling Top Esports, it remained to be seen whether the 3-2 victory over Gen.G in the LCK playoffs meant that KT were a serious team on the world stage. On the other hand, CFO took down 2 of the Top 6 rosters from the Midseason Invitational (MSI) event earlier this year, including a clean 2-0 win over North America’s first-seeded FlyQuest. Taiwan’s pride boasts both new talent, such as ADC Chiu ‘Doggo’ Tzu-chuan and 18-year-old mid laner Tsai ‘hongQ’ Ming-hong, as well as seasoned names like jungler Yu ‘JunJia’ Chun-chia. A dominant domestic force that claimed all three splits in Taipei, CFO were playing with house money at Worlds, especially in the Knockout stage. Doggo’s ability to stand up to ADCs from any region was the X-factor for this squad, and his pre-Quarterfinals rankings had him listed among some of the world’s best. CFO served as the first true bend in the KT Rollercoaster, but the LCK #3 seed handled it in stride.

KT started Game 1 on the right foot before even a step was taken on Summoner’s Rift, because they were able to net Bdd, a historically limited mid laner, one of his best champions in Taliyah. Aside from the draft win for KT, it was support player and product of KT Academy Jeong ‘Peter’ Yoon-su’s Braum plays in the bottom lane that decided the early game, and inevitably, the rest of the first game of this series. His aggression caught Doggo off guard, and his poor optimization on Corki meant that KT started a snowball that would not be stopped for the rest of Game 1. Bdd’s propensity to find massive damage and game-changing seismic shoves on Taliyah pushed KT over the line and gave them an easy game 1 that took one of Rest’s best champions, Ornn, out of the pool for the series. In Game 2, Peter continued his highlight reel level plays, this time on Nautilus. Time and again, he punished Junjia, HongQ, and anyone else who dared challenge his dredge lines. With a 90% kill participation percentage to match Bdd’s 100%, it was again a two-man show that was only buffered by strong jungle play from Cuzz and KT top laner Lee ‘PerfecT’ Seung-min’s great Renekton damage. On the flipside of the HLE vs. Gen.G chess match, KT closed out Game 2 against CFO in a blistering 24:32 – marking the fastest game of Worlds 2025. Entering Game 3, KT once more had a great draft plan, taking away top lane staple and Driver’s best champion Sion from CFO, before drafting a frustrating poke composition centered around Bdd’s Zoe. It was Bdd and Peter, who had the series of his life, that were the driving forces of this clean sweep of CFO. The Zoe bubble sleeps combined with Ziggs’ explosives drew lines in the sand that the Oysters could seemingly never cross. Combine this with another middling series from HongQ in the mid lane, and even Doggo’s famed Caitlyn ADC pick could not save CFO from a sweeping exit from Worlds 2025. This series earned KT its first semifinals berth in history, and served as Peter’s coming-out party for the world. His incredible mechanical plays on every support he played had a sizable impact on each and every game, and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to call him the MVP of this series. As KT eyes their next opponent, it will be on supporting cast PerfecT, ADC Seo ‘deokdam’ Dae-gil, and Peter to keep up this level of play if they wish to stay undefeated.

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Final Score: KT Rolster 3 - 0 CBTC Flying Oysters

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G2 Esports vs. Top Esports (TES)

In the only East vs. West showdown of the Top 8, Europe’s #1-seeded G2 Esports assumed the weight of the Western world on their shoulders as they matched up against the Legend Pro League (LPL)’s inconsistent third seed, Top Esports. G2, a storied European organization that once knocked on the doorstep of Worlds titles, now finds itself in unfamiliar territory, with the quarterfinal appearance snapping a 5-year dry spell of Worlds playoffs. The undisputed leader and captain, Danish mid laner Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther, once more leads his ragtag group of guys towards glory. The hero of G2’s domestic playoff success, as well as their Swiss stage deciding series against FlyQuest, is undoubtedly their rookie jungler Rudy ‘SkewMond’ Semaan. A product of the French development league in BDS Academy, Skewmond is widely renowned for his stunning ranked ladder feats, achieving the highest ever record ladder points (LP) in Europe with 2140. His outstanding mechanics and new ideas have revitalized a G2 core that has failed to live up to expectations internationally. For Top Esports, the quarterfinals slot was far from secure until the final moment of their high-stakes matchup against fellow Chinese representative BiliBili Gaming (BLG). Considered the petulant child of the LPL region, TES has made a habit of being unwieldy and shaky in every major series they play. The stars of the show are assuredly their former MSI champion top laner Bai ‘369’ Jiahao and 2019 Worlds winner Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wenbo on ADC, the latter of whom is the most unpredictable professional player in the history of League of Legends. The decisions that “J-Love” makes on his AD carries make Doggo look like the most cerebral player at Worlds. This matchup, between two of the least threatening teams in the Top 8, would be decided by the prevailing overarching strategy developed by the respective coaching staff.

Game 1 saw G2 lean on the comfort of Caps and the historic dominance of Orianna at Worlds thus far. Dominating the draft priority for many teams, Orianna mid lane was a staple selection for some of the best teams thus far, including Gen.G and KT, so it was no surprise to see G2 spring for it. TES, however, quickly answered with an Akali composition that not only highlighted the strengths of melee mid specialist Lin ‘Creme’ Jian, but also gave Jackey and 369 more than enough room to operate on the Varus and Ambessa, respectively. An early gank into the mid lane forced Caps to invest his flash, and Creme made quick work of him in the side lane shortly thereafter. The lead only snowballed, and the final straw was 369’s teleport onto the backline of G2 at 22 minutes that eviscerated the Europeans and sent them on a fast track to Game 2. G2’s recovery in the second game was, of course, powered primarily by the mid lane pressure of Caps on Ryze and was aided by the horrific misplay of JackeyLove in the first 5 minutes of the game. His disastrous start to the game meant that the French AD Carry Steven ‘Hans Sama’ Liv could force him into a state that TES would never recover from. Draft experimentation continued, but for G2, in Game #3, where Skewmond chose to pilot an Ivern in the jungle alongside a Caps Sylas selection. A solid idea to be sure, but when Greek support Labros ‘Labrov’ Papoutsakis lobbed a Thresh into the mix, all hell was sure to break loose. A back-and-forth game ensued, but it was JackeyLove and 369 who again made the difference in the big team fights. When Ocean Dragon soul was on the line, it was a 369 triple kill that wiped G2 off the map and earned TES a 2-1 series lead. When it was TES’ turn to take the reins in Game 4, it was their jungler Seo ‘Kanavi’ Jin-hyeok who picked up early game specialist Naafiri and output an impressive 10,000 more damage than Skewmond to turn the tides for the Chinese squad. This, combined with the rock-solid laning and teamfighting from Creme and Jackey, cemented the victory for TES and pushed them to their first Worlds semifinals since 2020.

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Final Score: G2 Esports 1 - 3 Top Esports

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Anyone’s Legend (AL) vs. T1

The show we’ve all been waiting for. The one and only Unkillable Demon King, legendary T1 mid laner Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok, and his prestigious crew stand face-to-face with a familiar foe. An MSI Lower Finals rematch featuring the undefeated Swiss stage team – capable of toppling Gen.G, HLE, and CFO without dropping a series – Anyone’s Legend. T1, after stumbling through Swiss with a 3-2 series record and defeating only Western teams to qualify, seemed to be down and out of their traditional Worlds form. Perhaps it was the breakup of the T1 core that won back-to-back championships, with Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-jun replacing HLE-bound top laner Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je. Doran, who has faced his fair share of criticism for lackluster performances at Worlds past, was one of the brightest shining pieces for T1 in their run to MSI, and although he teetered on mediocrity throughout Split 2, he was still one of the premier top laners in the LCK. Combine the solo lanes with the illustrious Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyung on AD carry, and T1’s roster is enough, on paper at least, to contend with anybody at Worlds this year. AL, the upstart Chinese squad powered primarily by MSI 2022 champion head coach Wong ‘Tabe’ Pak-kan and the clear-cut best jungler in the LPL, Lee ‘Tarzan’ Seung-yong, enter this matchup as the favorites. An unlikely string of victories against mighty opponents sparked hope that the MSI lower final defeat would be a stepping stone for the Chinese second seed. Crucially, Anyone’s Legend is anchored by one of 3 non-Korean top laners to ever win Worlds, Li ‘Flandre’ Xuanjun, and his performance against Doran in the isolated 1v1 will be one of the major keys to deciding this series.

Picking up the Qiyana for Tarzan in Game 1, Anyone’s Legend entered the blue side draft confidently. However, it was T1 who jumped out ahead in the series behind a classic Faker performance on Taliyah, utilizing her seismic shoves to lethal efficacy and a 94% kill participation. Guma’s Varus, as well as LCK Spring 2022 and 2023 MVP Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok’s Rakan, also provided much-needed stability and high damage output. Flandre’s Rek’sai didn’t quite get the head of steam it was looking for, and was never tanky enough to endure the onslaught of T1 in Game 1. AL’s response in Game 2 was incredible, selecting Galio for mid laner Cui ‘Shanks’ Xiaojun and Sivir for ADC Wang ‘Hope’ Jie to pair with Tarzan’s Wukong. T1 attempted to answer with a Faker Annivia, his first game on her since 2018, but AL were not to be deterred. A 2v2 kill in the bottom lane for Hope set Gumayusi’s Draven woefully behind schedule, and T1 were never quite able to dig themselves out of the hole they found themselves in once Flandre popped Faker like a balloon in mid. The series sat tied at 1-1 and T1 on the blue side for Game 3, Korea’s 4th seed opted to pick K’Sante first, but quickly got into a bind through the draft. AL forced Keria to pivot to a Blitzcrank, the first of Worlds 2025, and Guma simply did not have the chops to make Ziggs work in the bottom lane alongside him. Keria’s early exploration into mid lane gave Faker some leeway on the Sylas, but Shanks’ Yone would not be denied. Flandre was also once more a difference maker on Aurora, outputting a staggering 28.9% of AL’s damage in Game 3. With their backs against the wall, facing his first loss in a best-of-five series to an LPL team, Faker and T1 turned up. Game 4 was the Gumayusi Kai’sa show: he output almost 20,000 more damage than his ADC counterpart, and at one point, boasted an individual gold lead of over 6,000. Despite concerns surrounding Gumayusi’s champion pool entering the event, especially his Kai’sa and Ezreal, he more than silenced the critics with this storybook performance. In Game 5, the first of Worlds 2025, T1 drafted jungler Mun ‘Oner’ Hyeon-jun, a Dr. Mundo pick, the first of his career. The lethal Guma-Keria bottom lane duo for T1 also chose to pilot Ashe and Seraphine, an oppressive lane-bullying style, to decide their tournament life. T1 simply could not have it any other way. As for AL, Flandre chose Aatrox in the top lane to match Doran’s Renekton, and Tarzan, playing for the team, selected tank jungler Sejuani to round out the composition. The game swung on a pendulum, with both teams sharing gold leads throughout, but when the plays needed to be made, there was only one man for the job. Faker, playing Mel in the mid lane for the second time of his career, not only finished with 27.2% of his team’s damage and 80% kill participation, but he also single-handedly stole the Atakhan objective in the 21st minute, securing T1’s position in the midgame. On the final Hextech Dragon, Oner also snuck away a smite to grant T1 the Hextech soul for the rest of the game, notching one final win over Tarzan. In the final teamfight, it was Guma and Faker from T1 that output immense damage all throughout to seal the deal, keeping Faker’s record spotless and propelling T1 to their 10th Worlds semifinals in as many tries.

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Final Score: T1 3 - 2 Anyone’s Legend

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The Top 4 now awaits us, featuring 3 of the 4 seeds from the LCK. A surprise? Not to most. However, the representatives themselves may be the biggest shocker of them all.

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Gen.G Esports vs. KT Rolster

The inevitable Gen.G war machine marches forward with a massive roadblock, the indomitable KT Worlds run. Among online circles of KT Rolster fans, they stress not to use “the e word.” Excitement. The absolute bane of KT fans’ existence because excitement stems from expectations, and expectations of KT always lead to disaster. KT are hot off the heels of their most impressive display of Worlds thus far, and have already beaten Gen.G in a best-of-five in the LCK playoffs thanks to a legacy-defining game from Cuzz. Single series victories are one thing, but winning a best-of-five in front of 18,000 screaming fans whilst playing against the most complete roster in the world is a whole other. Peter’s magic, Cuzz’s golden smite key, Bdd’s consistency, and level-headed support from PerfecT and deokdam are the recipe that KT must follow to win.

Gen.G’s win condition is far simpler. Don’t beat yourselves. A history of embarrassing failures at the finish line of Worlds looms like a phantom over this otherwise immaculate roster, and this is the perfect chance for Chovy to achieve what he has yet to do throughout his entire career: play in a Worlds title game. Gen.G will rely on the experience of both Canyon and 2017 Worlds winner Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk on ADC to pull them across the finish line for sure, but Chovy’s performance in this semifinal – the easiest he’s ever faced at this level – will be a cornerstone of his future legacy. I’d be remiss to doubt the Black and Gold, despite the KT hype, so I’m going with a clean Gen.G sweep.

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Prediction: Gen.G 3 - 0 KT Rolster

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Top Esports vs. T1

The messiest matchup that the semifinals could have presented, T1 with their ‘hype moments and aura’ against the pure, unadulterated chaos of Top Esports. T1 will be coming off of only a single day’s rest and will be forced to answer 369 in the top lane, a far more difficult feat than the Flandre they barely managed to contain in the quarterfinals. The major concern for Top Esports fans is whether JackeyLove can maintain his composure for long enough in the series to not give Gumayusi a way to run away with it. As he demonstrated in the AL series, Guma is capable of being not just the main carry but the SOLE carry for T1, and his newfound flexibility is sure to keep the TES coaching staff awake at night, headed into this matchup. As I mentioned, former MSI champions Kanavi and 369 will be the focal point of the TES attack, pinpointing Doran as the clear weakest link on T1. Whether or not Creme can hold his own in mid lane is neither here nor there, as Faker’s laning has yet to be a problem for opponents in 2025. Draft strategy will be a major factor in the series, and if TES can limit the champions that Faker has access to in the mid lane, particularly keeping him off Taliyah and Galio, there is real upset potential in this semifinal.

Unfortunately, I am a numbers man, and I have one stat that matters more than anything else. Faker’s record against the LPL in best-of-fives. You could overlook a single game or even an off year, but 12 consecutive wins against the LPL, including one where you yanked their heart out near singlehandedly in Shanghai, is just too much to ignore. Looking forward to another LCK matchup in the title game!

Prediction: Top Esports 1 - 3 T1

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The stage is set. The teams are ready. The Summoner’s Cup is up for grabs. Who will be the team to claim it? Do the Gen.G choking narratives have truth to them? Is T1 predestined to win their 3rd straight Worlds title? When will the KT Rollercoaster stop? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh

The League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) 2025 has thinned their ranks from 17 to 8, eliminating all of the American teams (both North and South), as well as all but 1 European squad. In 9 days of Swiss-style bracket play, where teams played until they won or lost 3 games, there have been some incredible performances and some unforgettable stories. This piece aims to equip you with the context of the remaining 8 teams, highlighting the underdog stories that were the stage 3-0, and update you on how accurate the Pick’ems I selected in my prior article (where applicable) were. Without further ado…

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The 8 teams that did qualify for the single elimination, best-of-five knockout stage are:

🇨🇳 Anyone’s Legend (AL)

🇰🇷 KT Rolster

🇪🇺 G2 Esports

🇰🇷 Gen.G Esports

🇰🇷 Hanwha Life Esports (HLE)

🇹🇼 CBTC Flying Oyster (CFO)

🇰🇷 T1

🇨🇳 Top Esports (TES)

In the first instance of tooting my own horn, I predicted 6 of these 8 teams would qualify for the knockout stage, and the only rosters I did not predict, the Eastern teams TES and KT, were immense surprises for fans everywhere. My American bias led me to cheer for FlyQuest, who, under the guidance of underwhelming Korean mid laner Song ‘Quad’ Su-hyeong, promptly crashed and burned at the international stage. A disappointing 2-1 loss to G2 Esports sitting in the 2-1 bracket, followed by a complete crumble to CFO in the deciding series, meant that the North American region would be headed home without so much as a sniff of playoff success at Worlds. Aside from FLY, the other oversight I made was overestimating the jungle role for China’s #1 seed, BiliBili Gaming (BLG.) They struggled to lock down a single person in the jungle, flip-flopping between Zhao ‘ShadoW’ Zhi-Qiang and Yang ‘Beichuan’ Ling, which was the inevitable demise of an otherwise stacked roster. The remaining teams utilized a combination of fortunate draws and strong team play to propel themselves forward, so here’s a quick blurb about each of the top 8 squads.

Anyone’s Legend: A Flawless Run Down a Difficult Road

Qualifying into the prestigious quarterfinals of Worlds is seldom easy, and for AL, it was perhaps the hardest path possible. They took down Gen.G and HLE – two of the strongest teamfighting teams in the world – in high-stakes winner-take-all single-game series. Further, their qualification game for the knockout stage was against the strongest non-Chinese or Korean team at Worlds, CFO. AL’s game plan centers around early turret aggression and stacking objectives, particularly dragons, until their carries scale up their items hard enough to carry. They average the highest dragons per game at the tournament, with 3.4, and the second-most turret plates (or turret damage before 14 minutes) per game at 5.20. They are an absolute force to be reckoned with, but have shown volatility, especially during longer series such as at the midseason invitational (MSI).

KT Rolster: A PerfecT Storm for Bdd

KT, in contrast to AL, earned its quarterfinals spot by defeating the 3rd seed of the Pacific region (League Championship Pacific, LCP) Team Secret Whales, the 2nd seed of Europe in Movistar KOI, and the dysfunctional Top Esports of China. Their mid laner Gwak ‘Bdd’ Bo-sung has willed his team into the quarterfinals behind the best statistics at Worlds thus far, including a tournament high 14.8 Kill/Death/Assist ratio (KDA) and the highest Kill Participation rate among mids with 84.4%. One of Bdd’s bugaboos over the past few years has been the depth of his champion pool, only looking truly elite at a few choice champions, namely Azir and Taliyah. In his four games at Worlds 2025, he has played 2 Orianna games and a Cassiopeia game, undefeated in the Swiss stage. Will this be the year that the KT rollercoaster and Bdd finally make a serious knockout stage push?

G2 Esports: Where There was Delusion, There is Now Hope

Following a turbulent MSI that left fans destitute, G2 has reignited the entirety of Europe off the back of a fiery 3-1 Swiss stage record and their first Worlds quarterfinals appearance since 2020. Rasmus ‘Caps’ Borregaard Winther, as always, has been great in the mid lane, but it’s the evolution of G2’s bottom laners, Steven ‘Hans Sama’ Liv and Labros ‘Labrov’ Papoutsakis, that has transformed them into a team capable of making the semifinals. Labrov leads all players in Kill Participation at 87.2% and he always finds himself in the middle of G2’s biggest brawls. Europe’s hope-filled roster now enters the first round matchup against TES, which, although tough, if Hans and Labrov stand tall, anything is possible.

Gen.G Esports: Three More Wins

As noted in one of my prior pieces, Gen.G’s entire 2025 has been an impressive display of consistency, skill, and flair that have defined the most prolific region in professional League of Legends since 2022. The performance of the GOAT’s heir apparent, Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon, in the mid lane thus far is rivaled only by the Attack Damage Carry (ADC) for Gen.G, Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk, who leads all players in kill per game at 7.6. The major concern keeping fans of the black and gold up at night is the fact that Chovy has never made it to a Worlds final and has always succumbed to the pressure of the biggest matches. A 2-1 Swiss stage loss to Anyone’s Legend may have broken the ice, but it also reaffirmed the worst fears of Gen.G’s fans. The titans can bleed.

Hanwha Life Esports: The Carries Must Carry

In a game like League of Legends, where every role impacts the outcome of the match, some games (and on a bigger scale, teams) rely on a few choice players to make all of the impact plays. That remains true for Korea’s second seed, HLE, who, after losing to AL in the first round of Swiss, refused to drop a single map for the rest of the Swiss stage, finishing 4-0 in games with a 3-1 series record. The team has been supercharged by the relentless efforts of bloodthirsty ADC Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon, who is top 3 in kills per game and damage per minute in their games thus far. Viper’s flexibility to play both caster and non-caster ADCs and particular proficiency on Lucian and Caitlyn make him a headache to gameplan for. While the rest of HLE look to regain the form that let them hoist the ‘First Stand’ trophy back in March, Viper will continue his ruthless aggression and bloodlust. Other teams beware.

CBTC Flying Oyster: Maybe Not So Much of a Miracle Run

CFO, the first seed from the League Championship Pacific (LCP), has made all three international events this year, the only team able to claim this feat. Their presence at these events has been remarked more as representation than actual contention, due to the unheralded region they hail from. However, at MSI, CFO’s ADC Chiu ‘Doggo’ Tzu-chuan and 18-year-old mid laner Tsai ‘HongQ’ Ming-hong put the world on notice, going toe-to-toe with teams like T1 after defeating Top Esports at First Stand. These young Taiwanese prodigies pilot their carries with reckless abandon and are better off for it, often boasting massive gold leads over their safer counterparts across the lane. Doggo is ranked top 3 in gold earned per minute, and ranks top 5 in team damage % and kills per game, impacting the game at all 3 major phases. CFO’s first round matchup against KT gives them the chance to earn their first Worlds semifinals appearance in organizational history, but we will have to see if they can keep pace with Bdd’s crew.

T1: A Former Champion, A Current Underdog, A Legacy Unfolding

The people’s champions, T1, formerly known under the SK Telecom (SKT) banner, and the team of iconic mid laner and first League of Legends Hall of Famer Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok, will face off against Anyone’s Legend in their first quarterfinal matchup. Despite all the ruckus and noise about how “Faker’s aura will lead them to a win” or that “Playoff T1 is a force to be reckoned with,” objectively speaking, T1 will enter that match as the underdog. Despite this, they still have some serious bright spots, including the elevated play of ADC Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyung, who leads the tournament in damage per minute. Guma’s play on Sivir, Ashe, and Corki has pushed T1 into the playoffs, and he will continue to be relied upon as T1 advances deeper in this tournament. The wrinkle with T1 is not that they lack player talent or execution, but just that the pieces are not always on at the same time. When firing on all cylinders, T1 is an unbeatable and inevitable machine that invariably marches its way to the Worlds trophy, as it has in back-to-back years. Should T1 win a third World Championship this year, it would be the first ever three-peat in League of Legends history, and an unthinkable reality from the current standpoint. As League of Legends commentator Aaron ‘Medic’ Chamberlain famously proclaimed: Form is temporary, Faker is forever.

Top Esports: Stunning BLG into a Quarterfinals Berth

The only team with a NEGATIVE gold differential per game, meaning they earned less money than their opponents on average, Top Esports are really the gold standard of runaway train squads. When matched up against them, outside of their jungler Seo ‘Kanavi’ Jin-hyeok, who leads the tournament in first blood percentage at 66.7, all of the script goes out of the window immediately. TES is notorious for entertaining the “no lead is safe” policy that plagued other teams at this event, like BiliBili Gaming from China and Movistar KOI in the EU. All in all, due to an easier draw against G2 Esports, the lone Western team in the knockout stage, TES has more than a fair chance of making it to the Worlds semifinals. If they can zero in their resources on the ever-reliable top laner Bai ‘369’ Jiahao and limit their mistakes, they are more than capable of downing the Western rep in quarters.

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Regarding my Crystal Ball predictions, I am quite proud of most of the picks I made before the tournament. Let me rapid-fire how the predictions would shake out if the tournament ended today.

Most Picked Champion:
Xin Zhao at 22
My pick: Alistar (20)

Most Banned Champion:
TIE between Poppy and Azir at 35
My pick: Poppy

Highest WinRate Champion (5+ games played):

Poppy at 87.5%
My pick: Caitlyn (41.7%)

Lowest WinRate Champion (5+ games played):
Pantheon at 12.5%
My pick: Qiyana (58.3%)

Highest Kill Champion:
Corki at 85
My pick: Kaisa (62)

Highest KDA Player:
Bdd at 14.75

My pick: Zeka (5)

Most Unique Champions:
Faker and Gumayusi at 9
My pick: Chovy (5)

Pro with a Pentakill:
None
My pick: Ruler

Most Kills in one Game:

Bin, Supa, Morttheus, Viper, etc. at 11
My pick: Elk (8)

Fastest Game Win:
24:50 HLE over 100 Thieves
My pick: Gen.G (who hold the lowest average game at 28:20)

Most Team Kills:
T1 at 121 over 7 games
My pick: Gen.G (98 in 5 games)

Most Unique Champions:
T1 at 38
My pick: G2 (24)

How Many Pentakills:
Zero
My pick: 2

Most Unique Champions:
81
My pick: 115-119

Was Teemo Picked:
No.
My pick: Yeah, no way.

(note: I couldn’t get information for First Bloods, Barons Stolen, or Elder Dragons)

With that, Worlds knockout stage is upon us, starting October 28th. Be sure to tune in at lolesports.com to catch all of the exciting and single-elimination matches!

What do you think? Will G2 win their first quarterfinal match in 5 years? Can T1 overcome every obstacle and reign once more? Who did you select for your crystal ball? Let me know in the disucssion of this post, or on my Twitter @averygdh!

On October 14th, in Beijing, China, the first match of the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) took place. This best-of-5 series, a clash between the fourth seeds of the Legends Pro League (LPL) in China and the League Championship Korea (LCK), Invictus Gaming (IG) and T1 Esports respectively, determined the final team to be seeded into the 16-team Swiss stage bracket starting the very next day.

T1, the reigning back-to-back Worlds winners in 2023 and 2024, enter as the people’s champion. Their roster, which returned 4 of the 5 starters from last year’s team, is one of the most skilled in the world. A dip in individual form coinciding with one of the greatest upsets in LCK history between KT Rolster and Gen.G Esports in the upper bracket now sets up T1 with a single best-of-five to even make the tournament.

IG, a roster that was rebuilt at the beginning of the year, went all-in on Worlds or bust. Their roster, the second oldest on average at the tournament at 26, includes former world champions such as Kang ‘TheShy’ Seung-lok, Tian ‘Meiko’ Ye, and Song ‘Rookie’ Eui-jin. After a tumultuous 2025 that saw them narrowly miss out on both international events, Invictus Gaming earned a berth on the Worlds stage. As a massive underdog, IG had to prove that their experience and team play would be enough to overcome the titans of T1.

Both of these squads, brimming with championship pedigree, held different circumstances for League of Legends’ publisher, Riot Games. T1, headed by 5-time Worlds winner Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-Hyeok, is such a universally beloved entity that they are a massive driver of the overall viewership of any international event. Like comparing the NBA Finals of the ‘90s to the 2 years without Michael Jordan, the viewership of any international tournament that doesn’t feature League’s GOAT takes a staggering hit. IG, while certainly a driver of some superfans, namely the popular costreamer Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamont, wouldn’t draw half of the eyeballs that T1 brings. Thus, Riot and their team waited, with bated breath, as the first match got underway.

Here’s a short review of the heroes, the villains, and the moments that crowned the victor of this 4-game series.

The Heroes: T1 with the Worlds Clutch Gene

While there were many points during the series, particularly in the early games, where Faker seemed to struggle against fellow aged mid laner Rookie, it was the late-game decision-making by Faker and his jungle teammate Mun ‘Oner’ Hyeon-jun that gave T1 the edge in this series. While Rookie turned back the clock and looked like the most mechanically skilled player in the server throughout the four games, when push came to (seismic) shove, time and again T1 would have the vision pocket or hero play that would tear the game open. T1’s Attack Damage Carry (ADC), Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyung, a talking point for fans and analysts due to perceived weaknesses in his champion pool, silenced all the haters in this match with a strong Yunara and an impressive 10/2/12 Kill/Death/Assist ratio (KDA) on Ashe in Game 4. Despite winning, T1 looked mortal, with top laner Choi ‘Doran’ Hyun-jeon struggling for most of the series, and Oner and Faker taking turns cosplaying ankle weights. The moral of the story is clear, though: when T1 comes to Worlds, all bets are off.

The Villains: Mistimings and Miscoordination from IG

Invictus Gaming, although labeled one of the smartest teams emerging from the LPL for their strategic gameplay, came into the Worlds play-in game ice cold. Outside of Rookie and ADC Chen ‘Gala’ Wei, the rest of the IG roster struggled to find themselves on the same page when entering major objective fights. Jungler Yan ‘Wei’ Yangwei and top laner TheShy are especially guilty of these plays, getting caught out on side lane waves and in their jungle before multiple Baron and dragon timers. Tie this into an ego-select Varus in Game 4 by TheShy in the top lane, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Where one could argue that T1’s clutch factor was the reason they won this game, it could just as easily be construed as IG opening the door again and again, begging T1 to burst through.

The Moments: Faker’s Akali and LeBlanc Continue to Give the LPL Nightmares

I’ll keep this section brief on words and let the clips do the talking for the most part. For my non-League of Legends readers, here is some context. The champions that Faker is piloting in these two clips, Akali and LeBlanc, respectively, are assassins meant to disrupt the enemy back line during a fight. They excel in one-on-one engagements and prioritize flanking movements.

In Game 2, T1 is getting annihilated in every role across the board, with only the sole assassin Akali maintaining a gold lead. Faker made play after play to keep T1 in the game and put future teams on notice when letting him wield this scary melee champion.

Faker's Akali Highlights

In Game 4, Faker was allowed to take his famed LeBlanc, a champion where he boasts an uncanny 80% win rate in over 60 professional matches. He made quick work of IG’s weakened composition, thanks to the aforementioned Varus pick. Although it was often Gumayusi lighting up the scoreboard, Faker’s threat on the flank was a constant thorn for the LPL 4th seed.

Faker's LeBlanc Highlights

In brief, Riot let out a sigh of relief when T1 finally destroyed IG’s nexus in Game 4, eliminating them from Worlds in a 3-1 fashion. T1 answered questions that had lingered after the LCK playoffs and will now need to win 3 Swiss stage matches to qualify for the double-elimination knockout stage.

The first round Swiss matchups are as follows and start on October 15th:

🇰🇷 Gen.G Esports vs. 🇹🇼 PSG Talon

🇨🇳 BiliBili Gaming vs. 🇺🇸 100 Thieves

🇺🇸 FlyQuest vs. 🇰🇷 T1

🇹🇼 CTBC Flying Oysters vs. 🇪🇺 FNATIC

🇪🇺 G2 Esports vs. 🇨🇳 Top Esports

🇰🇷 Hanwha Life Esports vs. 🇨🇳 Anyone’s Legend

🇻🇳 Team Secret Whales vs. 🇧🇷 Vivo Keyd Stars

🇰🇷 KT Rolster vs. 🇪🇺 Movistar KOI

Who are you most excited for? Can T1 go all the way from play-in to the first-ever 3-peat? Is Europe full of frauds? Let me know in the comments of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh

Across many esports, from Riot Games’ titles like League of Legends and VALORANT, Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty and Overwatch 2, and even Valve’s CounterStrike2 (CS2), there has been a sharp but quiet decline in the favorability of the traditional broadcast over the past few years. Costreaming, or the art of popular content creators streaming official events while they hold a lower-stakes, more down-to-earth conversation with their own communities, is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the first costream was over half a decade ago.

Joshua ‘Sideshow’ Wilkinson, a caster and analyst who was then with the doomed Overwatch League (OWL), struggled to attain his visa to work in Burbank, CA, where OWL was taking place. To circumvent this, he streamed from his house in the United Kingdom, often in the wee hours of the morning, his local time, with just a singular facecam overlaid onto the official OWL broadcast in 2019. As the weeks passed, and fans missed Sideshow’s presence on the show, they began searching out his channel on Twitch and found him providing the same real-time analysis and humor that his witty personality brought to the OWL desk. Thus, the costream was born, and it has only exploded since.

Since those days, when Sideshow simply streamed from his own Twitch completely unaffiliated with the Overwatch League in that capacity, costreaming has evolved into an integral part of any esports viewership metric. Now, on websites that track esports viewership like Escharts, costreamers and their viewership are directly tied to the total broadcast numbers. In fact, the publishing titans, Riot, Blizzard, and Valve, all use the numbers accrued by costreamers to prop up their own data when presenting to sponsors and stakeholders. And why shouldn’t they? These numbers are all accrued, at least primarily, off the back of their official content that these streamers are utilizing to hit monstrous viewership figures.

Costreaming’s beauty really comes in its simplicity. The official broadcast, while effective at presenting a professional feel for the sports they’re presenting, often lacks the intimacy and flavor of watching some of the games’ top creators react to the match in real-time alongside you. For League of Legends (LoL), the go-to creators are often former professionals. Marc ‘Caedrel’ Lamonte, a former competitor turned caster for the League European Championship (LEC), is the most-watched LoL creator on the planet, amassing a following of over 1,500,000 followers across his Twitch and YouTube platforms. His astute analysis of draft — predicting champion selections before they are locked in — combined with his hilarious and over-the-top reactions to momentum swings and big plays, makes it easy to see why so many League fans flock to his stream. He’s the whole package, and he’s authentically himself, even to a fault. Caedrel swears like a sailor and calls players “homeless” when they don’t have enough gold to buy items in-game. It’s hard to argue with his methods from Riot’s perspective because his streams garner nearly DOUBLE the viewership of official Riot channels. They choose to live and let live.

Riot’s other title, VALORANT, suffers the exact same reliance on costreamers. Their flavor, a mix of former professionals like 2-time international champion and “face of VALORANT” Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo and coaches such as soft-spoken former Team Liquid head coach Connor ‘Sliggy’ Blomfield. These creators push the official Riot broadcast down the list of most-watched streams on Twitch, disseminating their overall numbers among multiple channels. For CS2, it’s not a pro but rather an immensely popular CounterStrike content creator. Mark ‘OhnePixel’ Zimmermann, best known for opening weapon cases (CounterStrike’s unofficial gambling scene), tunes in to watch the biggest matches and brings not only his already large following but a lax and personable character that lures in even non-OhnePixel fans.

Costreamers come in all shapes and sizes, followings, backgrounds, and more. So what’s the big deal? Their viewership is counted into the bigger numbers, right? Why would the publishers worry? 

They don’t. But the talent that occupies the main broadcast does, and that’s the real kicker.

Formerly, making your daily rate and being on the official broadcast was the peak of talent success. Analysts, broadcasters, and translators all threw their hats in the ring, hoping for a chance to be a part of the biggest show their respective esports had to offer. Now, imagine that your day rate is lowered because the official broadcast isn’t maintaining the same numbers it once did, while you improve your craft, delivering a professional broadcast. On the other hand, your former coworker, who costreams the games from their home computer with a single facecam, not only steals the viewership you’ve worked so hard to build, but is also earning extra money from their own personal donations and subscriptions, things that your publisher won’t provide you as an official talent. It’s a tough sell, but a necessary one. If the official broadcast quality for an esport drops a noticeable amount, the product’s overall viewership will suffer, and even costreaming numbers won’t reflect well. Then again, how do you entice talent to stay in front of the official cameras instead of their own? It’s a delicate balance that I don’t think is receiving its necessary attention. Publishers like Riot have tried to lure costreamers to the venue of their major tournaments to integrate them with the overall event, attempted more casual official broadcasts, and, most creatively, have implemented a vertical broadcast to help mobile viewers stay engaged, something that the official costreamers don’t have access to. None of these have made a dent in the popularity of streamers and creators, and it certainly isn’t an issue that can be fixed with a single solution, nor can it be fixed overnight. It’ll take a concentrated reallocation of resources from the publisher that is able to crack the code, while the others continue to kick the can down the road.

An underrated aspect of the costreaming puzzle is the fact that esports organizations can actually sponsor streamers to costream all of their matches. Personalities like the aforementioned TenZ, a player that was under the Team Sentinels banner in his playing days, costreamed all of their VALORANT matches throughout the 2025 calendar year, same as their most popular creator, Tarik ‘Tarik’ Çelik. In League of Legends, Caedrel was a former official costreamer for the organization FNATIC. This kind of positive campaign, alongside the extra viewership it can contribute to your organization’s content numbers, is an excellent source of fan engagement. The downside, of course, being the price tag on these creators, is certainly one that makes teams balk, but the creators are aware of the bargaining power they possess. Unsponsored and unaffiliated content creators are free to go live when they please, and earn the same as any other streamer would that costreams these events to the scale they do. The affiliation is just icing on the costreaming cake, but one that I highly recommend organizations consider. In the world of traditional sports, organizations like ESPN have already invested millions into a costream-esque “ManningCast” with Peyton and Eli Manning.

In a world where digital engagement and attention are a chief currency, having the right creator representing your brand can push your team and organization to the next level.

What do you think? Am I overreacting? Do you watch any costreamers? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh

We are less than a week away from the advent of the premiere esports event of the year: Riot Games’ League of Legends World Championship, otherwise known as Worlds. Over the course of approximately 4 weeks and throughout three different Chinese cities, 17 teams will duke it out in a Swiss stage bracket before seeding 8 squads into a single-elimination knockout stage. The series, starting as best-of-1s and escalating to best-of-3s for qualification and elimination in Swiss, before concluding with the cutthroat best-of-5s that decide the victors of it all, will all be streamed and co-streamed in over a dozen different languages to viewers all around the world.

This year, Riot, with the help of Amazon Web Services, has provided fans with an opportunity to play along and predict the outcomes and stat lines of certain events throughout the tournament. Correct predictions for fans even correlate with in-game prizes within the League of Legends game client! I will be providing you with my best advice and predictions on the outcomes of these 20 different categories, along with my reasoning, so you can enjoy the World Championship to the fullest and make picks of your own!

​

A small disclaimer:

I do not profess to be any kind of fortuneteller or prophet. I will not be 100% accurate with my predictions. What I can and WILL do is provide you with the most sound logical reasoning for each of my selections. Final note, these picks will sometimes be made off of my arbitrary and biased decision-making.

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

​​

My Pick: Alistar

Reasoning: Alistar maintained a high pick-rate in the two most dominant domestic regions for international play, China’s Legends Pro League (LPL) and Korea’s League Championship Korea (LCK). He is also an engage support champion, a comfort pick for support mains across the globe, and highly resistant to meta changes.

Other Safe Picks: Sion, Rakan, Rell

My pick: Poppy

Reasoning: Azir has consistently been the most banned champion across every region all year, but Riot’s newest attempt at sapping the Shuriman Emperor’s power might open the door to other powerful people seeing priority in the ban phase.

Other Safe Picks: Wukong, Yunara, and Pantheon

My Pick: Caitlyn

Reasoning: Caitlyn is a late-draft high-upside bottom lane champion that is hyper lane-dominant. Although she will not see very many picks, it’s clear that when she is chosen, her objective is to bully the opponent’s lane right from the get-go. She had exactly 5 picks in the LPL playoffs, whose 79 games coincide nicely with the 82 games from the Worlds 2024 main event.

Just some food for thought: last year, Caitlyn finished undefeated at Worlds, but was only picked 4 times.

Other Safe Picks: Azir, Gnar, Gragas

My Pick: Qiyana

Reasoning: Although some players, like Anyone’s Legend jungler Lee ‘Tarzan’ Seung-yong, are absolutely elite at piloting Qiyana in the jungle, many players across every region have attempted to do so with far less success. In the LCK playoffs, spanning 41 games, Qiyana was picked 5 times and had no wins, despite elite mechanical junglers like Gen.G’s Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu taking their best shot at it. Overall, it seems like the general rule of thumb for junglers is: if you aren’t Chinese or named Tarzan, lay off the Qiyana. I expect junglers from every region to break this rule. Other safe picks include engage supports who risk being overpicked by poor teams and tanking their win rate, as well as champions entering the event with nerfs.

Other Safe Picks: Annie, Rell, Neeko

My Pick: Kai’sa

Reasoning: Kai’sa is a high-priority bottom lane champion that should receive plenty of selections throughout the tournament. For this pick, I’m betting on quantity more than quality. I expect Attack Damage carries (ADCs) in the bottom lane to rack up the kills during Worlds, just like they did last year. For other popular ADCs like Varus and Ashe, they’ll likely contest but won’t quite have the volume that I expect Kai’sa to see.

Other Safe Picks: Ashe, Varus, Miss Fortune

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My Pick: Hanwha Life Esports’ Kim ‘Zeka’ Geon-woo

Reasoning: The two factors at play are the strength of the region and champion picks. Zeka, although he struggled regionally in the regular season, turned up for HLE’s playoff run and averaged a position-high 6.6 Kill/Death/Assist ratio (KDA). The only player who bested Zeka’s KDA in the LCK playoffs was his ADC teammate, Park ‘Viper’ Do-hyeon. While some players from other regions, particularly Top Esports’ Bai ‘369’ Jia-Hao, averaged higher KDA’s in their domestic playoffs, Zeka’s champion pool and HLE’s destined success line him up nicely for this award.

Other Safe Picks: Viper, Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk (Gen.G)​

My Pick: Gen.G Esports’ Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon

Reasoning: Once again, reliant on the depth of champion pool and tournament run. The safe bets are eastern teams destined to play at least 4 series, and I am eyeing Gen.G and their rock solid core. Mid lane phenomenon Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon has played a team-high 16 different champions thus far in 2025, and fellow LCK champion guru Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok of T1 has picked 16 himself. Both guesses are solid, but I’m just going to bet on the team that is already IN the tournament, where T1 must win a high stakes best-of-three play-in to qualify.

Other Safe Picks: Keria, Ruler, Zhuo ‘Knight’ Ding (BiliBili Gaming)

My Pick: Gen.G Esports’ Ruler

Reasoning: In a meta that will likely see ADCs pick up champions especially primed for pentakills, such as Xayah, Yunara, and Zeri, I simply chose the ADC who is the most proficient at 2 of those 3. Ruler wins by process of elimination in that category, but the ADC on the winner of the T1 vs. Invictus Gaming play-in series should also be a prime candidate, as those series will likely get very bloody. Lastly, BiliBili Gaming’s (BLG) Zhao ‘Elk’ Jia-Hao is no slouch on the Zeri or Xayah either, so he could definitely find himself on this list.

Other Safe Picks: Elk, David ‘Supa’ Martinez Garcia (MKOI), Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong (T1)

My Pick: FlyQuest’s Kacper ‘Inspired’ Słoma

Reasoning: Inspired is the key to FlyQuest unlocking their team and competing with the top rosters in the world, and that all starts in the early game. When put on playmaking junglers like Sejuani, Wukong, and Vi, Inspired doesn’t hesitate to send after enemy carries early to attain advantages for FLY. Their reliance on him makes this an easy selection for me, but other junglers that could earn this include T1’s Mun ‘Oner’ Hyeon-jun and 100 Thieves’ Kim ‘River’ Dong-woo. Super sleeper shoutout to HLE’s top laner and reigning world champion Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je, who is an aggressive laner known for his first bloods and first deaths alike.

Other Safe Picks: Oner, River, Zeus

My Pick: BiliBili Gaming’s Elk

Reasoning: Chinese pro teams are often the bloodiest, engaging heavily in combat from start to finish. BLG also tends to be a messier team, particularly at the Midseason Invitational (MSI) this year, having the second-longest average match duration of any Eastern (Korean or Chinese) team going to Worlds this year, right behind HLE. Speaking of, HLE’s ADC Viper is a huge stats guy when it comes to kills and has had games finishing well into the double digits during the LCK playoffs. Lastly, looking at another Chinese team and their deadliest player, Anyone’s Legend ADC Wang ‘Hope’ Jie is another great pick, especially if you believe their late-season slump was a blip rather than a trend.

Other Safe Picks: Viper, Hope, Ruler

My Pick: Top Esports

Reasoning: The kings of running the game into the 40+ minute mark for no real reason at all, the GOATs of blowing gold leads, headed by the former Worlds champion and renowned game thrower Yu ‘JackeyLove’ Wen-Bo, is the easiest selection I’ve made so far. For all of his flair and mechanical prowess, Jackey is still the same old Jackey who will take a game that’s as good as won and turn it into an Elder flip to decide the outcome. Other teams that are eligible but don’t make it nearly as obvious when throwing their leads are the LCK’s Hanwha Life Esports and T1, should they qualify and make a deep run, and of course, G2 Esports of the League European Championship (LEC).

Other Safe Choices: HLE, T1, G2 Esports​

My Pick: T1

Reasoning: Gumayusi alone accounts for at least 1 Baron steal per tournament, and as T1’s designated AD carry, he, alongside the smite god Oner, should have this one entirely under wraps. The only way this pick flops is, again, if T1 fails to qualify to Worlds and loses to Invictus Gaming in the play-in on October 14th. If T1 fails to qualify, other teams with incredible junglers include: Tarzan of Anyone’s Legend, Canyon of Gen.G, and Hsu ‘JunJia’ Shih-Chieh of the Taiwanese squad CTBC Flying Oysters (CFO) of the League Championship Pacific (LCP).

Other Safe Picks: Canyon, JunJia, Tarzan

My Pick: Gen.G Esports

Reasoning: I’m selecting not just a team that is on the brink of being the most dominant of all time, but one that is (at least the majority of the time) straight down to business, no lollygagging allowed. Their concise map movements and overwhelming mechanical ability make this a shoo-in for me. The only other option I would even consider is potentially BLG, but even then, Gen.G is the more complete team. I expect them to crush their first opponent in the Swiss stage, especially if they’re from the West.

Other Safe Picks: BiliBili Gaming

My Pick: Gen.G Esports

Reasoning: A team that is expected to be in (at the very least) the semifinals. Check. A team that has multiple bloodthirsty players capable of having double-digit kill games at will. Check. The best organization in all of esports, undisputedly. Okay, that one might be a bit biased, but the point remains. Any team that has a hyper carry at ADC and can, at least virtually, guarantee a top 8 finish is a perfectly fine selection for this slot.

Other Safe Picks: BLG, HLE, AL

My Pick: G2 Esports

Reasoning: Whenever the circus comes to town, it is always G2 that finds themselves in the middle of it. Whether it’s their top laner Sergen ‘BrokenBlade’ Çelik busting out his famed Rek’sai or Warwick top, or their legendary mid laner Rasmus ‘Caps’ Winther rocking a Vayne, Smolder, or Gragas in the center of the map, you can always count on G2 to slip their wacky selections into any game they can. It’s the essence of their entire identity: what makes G2, G2. If you’re looking for other great choices, North America’s FlyQuest can also make some creative picks work specifically on support and in top lane, and then the LCK’s T1 and Gen.G are both solid choices for basically everything on this list.

Other Safe Picks: T1, Gen.G, FlyQuest

My Pick: Two Pentakills

Reasoning: Some of the picks here are just going to be going with my gut, but I will be able to provide some insight into this one. Last year, we were not blessed with a pentakill at any point during the tournament, but this year, thanks to a shift in meta, the pentakill machines Yunara and Xayah are up to bat. Combine this with aggressive ADC play (I’m looking at you, Viper and Ruler), and that’s a recipe to return to the form that saw 2 pentakills in both 2022 and 2023’s Worlds. If you want to assume that we are on the downward path again and assume only 1, or even 0, happens, I can’t fault you for that either.

Other Safe Picks: 0, 1

My Pick: 3-5 Baron steals

Reasoning: As I mentioned prior, Gumayusi himself should account for at least one of these, and if you believe the trend of the last few years, Baron steals are more of a thing of the past. Especially as junglers get more adept at securing Baron Nashor and fearless draft puts everyone on high alert, I think we will see a slight downtick in baron steals. If you wanted to opt for 6-8 steals, you’d be relying on history and the love of the Baron stealing game. Power to you. Anything more or less than these two, though, seems out of the question, unless fearless draft means that we are looking at EXPLOSIVE Baron steal rates.

Other Safe Picks: 6-8

My Pick: 1 Reverse Sweep during Knockouts

Reasoning: I’m simply gambling on the craziness of fearless drafting. When games get tight and champion pools get pinched, I fully expect the team with the momentum to turn things around and secure a reverse sweep. The only problem is actually reaching that threshold, and it doesn’t happen as often as one might think. If there wasn’t a single reverse sweep, similar to Worlds 2024, that wouldn’t shock me in the slightest.

Other Safe Picks: 0

My Pick: 115-119 Unique Champions at Worlds 2025

Reasoning: 88 champions were selected at Worlds in 2023, increasing to 95 at Worlds 2024. While that jump wouldn’t constitute anything absurd like 115 champions selected this year, it’s also important to contextualize that fearless drafting (which disables champions for a series once they are selected) has opened the doors for champions to get playing time where they otherwise wouldn’t. For example, MSI 2024 had 86 champions selected, but 108 were picked at MSI this year, the first full international tournament with fearless drafting. As more matches are expected out of Worlds than MSI, and teams bringing wacky picks like G2 and even T1 play more games, this 115 figure seems to be the safest to me.

Other Safe Picks: 110-114

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And Finally…

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​My Pick: No. Teemo will not be selected.

Reasoning: As much as I would love the storyline of everyone doubting a Teemo champion selection, and then ONE pro player locking it in to fulfill the pick’em, I fail to see an opportunity that will present itself where they don’t entirely risk THEIR JOB for the sake of a silly online pick’em challenge. If it comes, then by god, we’re better off for it.

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That wraps up my predictions, and I must say, it was an absolute doozy trying to explain my thought process for all of my picks. Nevertheless, I hope you enter Worlds with a newfound whimsy and a bit of a better understanding of who to cheer for and why. My 8 picks for making it out of the Swiss stage are, in no particular order: HLE, Gen.G, T1, G2, FlyQuest, CFO, AL, and BLG.

Agree with my choices? Think I’m a ragebaiter? Will T1 just win everything and sweep the team portion? It’s certainly possible, and I’d love to hear your thoughts either in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh

The 2025 season of tier 1 VALORANT esports, the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT), concluded with a stunning 3-2 NRG Esports victory over FNATIC at the VCT Champions Paris tournament. After a 7-month season complete with 4 international leagues (ILs) competing for slots at 3 global tournaments, players and teams alike can rest and recuperate while the rest of the VALORANT ecosystem, including the Game Changers Championship in Seoul and the Ascension tournament for each regional IL, run their course. While NRG celebrate their place atop the VALORANT mountain, they, along with every other team, must quickly get back to the drawing board to prepare for the 2026 season. This piece aims to identify the players, teams, and entities that gained or lost the most based on the results of VCT 2025.

A quick word on this list, as I expect it to be controversial. I have followed each of the four regional leagues (Americas, EMEA [Europe, Middle East and Africa], Pacific, and China) with a magnifying glass over these past seven months, and while I do hold a special place in my heart for VCT Pacific teams, I will do my best to put biases to the side for this piece. Further, I am only equipped with the knowledge available to me at the current moment on Monday, October 6th, 2025, so I cannot predict the future of these teams (although I may try!) Lastly, I will do my best to make these relative to every region, but I will not compromise the integrity of my choices to do so. Thank you for understanding!

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For the winners:

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VCT Pacific

To start, I couldn’t NOT mention the fact that not only did my favorite region win 2 out of 3 international trophies this year, but at the tournament they didn’t win, they had two of the top four teams. VCT Pacific, after only having a single win at a Master’s event entering the year, clearly asserted itself as the dominant region over 2025. Led by Paper Rex, the Singaporean organization that won VCT Masters Toronto in June, Pacific also claimed the Masters Bangkok trophy in April with the Korean organization T1. The region’s tendency to be hyper-innovative, especially behind the Waylay composition that shaped the meta at VCT Champions and the double-duelist looks that rocked Masters Bangkok, was the driving force behind their success this year. Players such as Ilya ‘something’ Petrov claimed the throne for the best player in the world for a time throughout the year thanks to his dominant Yoru play, and, at Champs, it was Song ‘HYUNMIN’ Hyun-Min who was the star for the Korean DRX squad who would best Paper Rex in the lower semifinal. All in all, the Pacific region earned a spot at the metaphorical table when it comes to discussing regional parity, and that is thanks in large part to their newfound identity as game changers, in every sense of the word.

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NRG Esports

The newly crowned champions of VALORANT didn’t always appear to be a roster ready for contention amongst the world’s best. In a dramatic midseason shakeup that saw them drop franchise legend Pujan ‘FNS’ Mehta and newest Made in Brazil (MiBR) standout Andrew ‘Verno’ Maust, and replace them with players from the development Americas tier 2 league, NRG were on a collision course with another failed season. Fortunately, behind the cheesy gunplay of future VCT Champs Finals MVP Brock ‘brawk’ Somerhalder, commonly referred to as “The Brawktagon,” NRG righted the ship and set out on a war path towards VCT Champions glory. When they fell in the VCT Americas domestic finals to longtime rival G2 Esports (more on them later), it seemed like the honeymoon was over. Yet it was at Champions that the team looked the most in their element, not dropping a single series before clinching a nail-biting final against FNATIC to seal the organization’s first international trophy in the VCT partnership era (post 2023). NRG, now the second American organization to win Champions (alongside Evil Geniuses in 2023), has cemented its legacy domestically, but will likely face an offseason reckoning of its core with controller ace Sam ‘S0m’ Oh hinting at retiring this offseason. NRG has a long road ahead of them in their title defense aspirations, but for the moment, glory (and a season win) is all theirs.

Young Talent

Around the globe, players of all different nationalities and roles entered their rookie years competing in the VALORANT Champions Tour, but in each region, a select few stood out as more than just a flash in the pan. In a profession like professional esports that tends to recycle talent at the top instead of hunting for new recruits, there is a sentiment among professionals that it’s nearly impossible to get an opportunity in the big leagues. These players seized that opportunity and RAN, and perhaps have opened doors for other young players and up-and-comers that want their chance on the big stage too. In VCT Americas, players like Lucca ‘lukxo’ Travaioli and Eduardo ‘Sato’ Nagahama entered their struggling squads and immediately joined the league leaders statistically. Over in EMEA, FNATIC’s Kajetan ‘kaajak’ Haremski and GIANTX’s Eduard-George ‘ara’ Hanceriuc propelled their teams not just to domestic success, but top 8 finishes at Champions. For VCT Pacific, it was DRX’s HYUNMIN and the Singaporean initiator for Rex Regum Qeon (RRQ) Bryan ‘Kushy’ Setiawan, the latter of which led his squad back to domestic relevance and the franchise’s first (and second) ever international tournament appearances. VCT China was blessed with incredible play from XLG’s highlight machine, Arthur ‘Rarga’ Churyumov, and it was controller main Wang ‘Rushia’ Xiaojie’s late-season surge that powered BiliBili Gaming (BLG) to their first-ever VCT China domestic title. This season, more than any thus far, was filled with incredible first-year players who all deserve some love and attention for ‘Rookie of the Year’ nominations.

Players with Personality

​While it certainly wasn’t the first time we got to see players showcase their goofier side on the stage (or straight up aura farm if you remember this moment), this year was ripe with player moments of pure chaos on the stage. From Wolves Esports’ in-game leader (IGL) Pong ‘SiuFatBB’ Hei playing to the crowd to Leviatán’s Sato pulling out all the stops back at home in VCT Americas, players all over the globe got involved in the shenanigans outside of the server. Even longtime goofballs like Gen.G Esports duelist Kim ‘t3xture’ Na-ra with the dramatics and FNATIC’s Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett’s dancing were seen on the international stage, but all of this ties in to the final winner of VCT 2025…

The Fans

Whether you were a weekly watcher or only showed up for the international events, this year of VALORANT esports has been nothing short of absolute cinema. From clutches to aces to fan-cams, the VCT community has been absolutely blessed in 2025. For those who want just a taste of what VCT brought us this year, I suggest the Master’s Bangkok grand final, NRG vs. MiBR at Champions, and Dragon Ranger Gaming vs. BLG in the Chinese upper finals for Stage 2. The crowd, the moments, the matches, all combine in a symphony of competitive gaming that is simply incomparable. Storylines like MiBR duelist Erick Aspas Santos’s supposed “falloff” into breaking the best-of-3 series kill record, Paper Rex winning an international, and FNATIC tripping at the finish line not once but twice, all kept fans of the sport glued to their seats, unable to move a muscle. VCT 2026 has an awful lot to live up to, but with changes to the format and new faces come new challenges that we will all be waiting to see.

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And alas, where there are winners, there must also be losers. Including things like:

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VCT China

Entering 2025 as the region housing the reigning champions of the game, China was poised for another season of improvement and success. VCT China quickly came to realize, however, that success is not linear and faced a down year of catastrophic proportions. After steady growth from 2023 to 2024, seeing international placements improving into a crescendo from EDward Gaming (EDG) at VCT Champions Seoul 2024, China failed to qualify even a single team for playoffs at Champions Paris 2025. The best placement all year for the region, tied between a top 3 finish by EDG at Masters Bangkok and by Wolves at Masters Toronto, were the brightest spots on a very dark year. The silver lining for VCT China, one that isn’t true in any other region, is that both of their ascension teams qualified for Champions Paris. Thus, the talent of the region is making its way into the IL, and their hope for VCT ‘26 and beyond should remain.

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Big Expectations, Little Results

If I’m going to give China its due flak for lack of results in 2025, it’s only fair that I give the same treatment to teams across every region that billed themselves “super teams” but lack the hardware to prove it. In EMEA, Team Vitality recruited Brazilian sentinel Felipe ‘Less’ Basso away from VCT Americas to join their “international superteam,” and in Pacific Gen.G Esports retained the core of their 2024 Masters Shanghai championship roster, but both teams failed to win on the international stage. To their credit, Vitality did manage to win the EMEA Kickoff tournament before quickly releasing their primary initiator player and disrupting team chemistry for the rest of the year. None of these even come close to sniffing the disappointment that is G2 Esports in North America. Regionally dominant, securing titles both at Kickoff and in Stages 1 & 2, G2 proclaimed they had entered their “golden era.” This golden era, however, would be completed without a matching international crown as they would fall in the Masters Bangkok grand final to T1, and would never come closer to a global tournament trophy for the remainder of the year. After an offseason where they traded their weakest link for former VCT Champion Alexander ‘Jawgemo’ Mor in the duelist role and looked primed for an enviable international run of dominance, G2 crumbled when the lights were the brightest. Not a great look for your golden era.

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All Brain, No Aim IGLs

For a long time, VALORANT has had its fair share of cerebral thinkers in the IGL role, and, more often than not, they would be the individuals with the least firepower or impact on the scoreboard. For years, players like FNS with NRG, Natus Vincere’s Kyrylo ‘ANGE1’ Karasov, and most recently, 100 Thieves’ Kelden ‘Boostio’ Pupello earned their paychecks with the influence they had over team cohesion and overall understanding of the game. Those days, it seems, are behind us as every team that won an international tournament this year featured an IGL that was a competent fragger. Whether it was T1’s storied Korean IGL Kim ‘stax’ Gu-taek, Paper Rex’s dynamic differencemaker Jason ‘f0rsaken’ Susanto, or NRG’s now 2-time VCT Champion Ethan ‘Ethan’ Arnold, each can more than hold their own with a rifle in hand. In fact, it was f0rsaken who was crowned Masters Toronto MVP for his impact both as an IGL and as one of the heaviest fraggers at the event overall. Will the fragging IGL be a passing trend? I wouldn’t hedge my bets, considering the few remaining IGLs that operated like FNS or Boostio, namely FNATIC’s Boaster, have made serious strides with their own rifling and gunplay to supplement their incredible minds for the game. VCT 2026 will be a new year, and some of the old guard may return, but in order to keep their jobs, they’ll need to stay sharp on both ends.

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KOI

​The final loser of this piece is one that came as a major surprise to fans of the VCT circuit. In early September, just after the end of VCT EMEA, Riot Games announced that they were severing ties with one of their partner teams, KOI. KOI, a Spanish esports organization owned by Spanish Twitch streamer and content creator Ibai ‘Ibai’ Llanos, has been a part of VALORANT esports since 2022, competing in the regional Spanish league. The decision, which sent shock waves through the global community, stemmed from a contract breach by Ibai centered around his broadcasting of the VCT EMEA matches. During the EMEA season, Ibai, who was struggling with burnout and mental health issues, passed off his co-streaming duties of the matches to other members of his organization or abandoned them altogether, a serious dent to Riot’s overall broadcasting numbers. This, combined with Riot’s claims of poor in-game bundle sales and lack of results domestically, meant that KOI, one of the original 10 partnered teams for VCT EMEA, would be removed from the league and their spot now eligible to other organizations in the region. It goes without saying that it is heartbreaking for fans of KOI, Ibai, EMEA, and the players on the team that they will not be competing next year. For that reason, they etch their name on this list.

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That concludes my winners and losers of VCT 2025! What do you think? Did I overrate Pacific? Who do you think I overlooked as either a winner or a loser? Did Ibai deserve to get kicked? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh!

After an incredible edition of the “RX Derby” showcasing DRX besting their longtime VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Pacific rivals Paper Rex in a 2-1 series, and FNATIC (FNC) bouncing back from a poor showing against NRG Esports in the upper finals to reassert themselves into title contention, fans of VALORANT are now blessed with the first Europe vs. North America grand finals since VCT Masters Tokyo in 2023. Coming in from the upper bracket, NRG is afforded a double map ban advantage and will likely utilize it to escape this tournament without being forced onto their worst maps in 2025. FNATIC, with a lust for revenge, enter the rematch as the mechanical favorites with a top-form Emir ‘Alfajer’ Beder showing up in their game with DRX. Here is the breakdown of what you should expect from the grand finals of VCT Champions Paris, along with my prediction on who will raise the trophy.

NRG Esports, the doubted but determined 2nd seed from VCT Americas, has done nothing but overcome the odds repeatedly in Paris. Charged by their explosive rookies, North American tier 2 standouts like Adam ‘mada’ Panpuch, Brock ‘brawk’ Somerhalder, and Logan ‘skuba’ Jenkins, this core has maintained its composure in the face of the most daunting deficits this tournament. Down 11-2 in the opening game of VCT Champions for the squad, NRG fought all the way back to knock off the defending VCT Champions of 2024, EDward Gaming. Truly in a class of his own in the playoffs thus far is skuba, whose newfound clutch gene and overgrown brown hair have become his calling card in Paris. The roster’s in-game leader (IGL), tactical FPS veteran and former VCT Champion in 2023, Ethan ‘Ethan’ Arnold, alongside Swedish head coach Malkolm ‘bonkar’ Rench, continue to innovate on a meta-shaping defensive philosophy involving all sorts of unconventional weaponry. When brawk is let loose with the ‘Odin’ machine gun, the map warps so disruptively that even FNATIC struggled to contain NRG in the upper final. Combining NRG’s white-hot form with the sound tactical strategy that they’ve approached each game with this tournament, not to mention their unbelievable resilience and mental fortitude when on the back foot, VCT Americas fans are rightly eyeing a return of the Champions trophy to their region.

Standing in their way, the FNATIC team that has already notched a second-place finish at an international event just a few short months ago in Toronto. FNC is the quintessential European VALORANT team, led by longtime IGL Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett, that grinds opponents to dust under immense map pressure and sharp decision-making. Their flawless war machine, with 3 players of the core roster that won back-to-back international titles in 2023, thrives against teams that lack information and confidence. Human battle turret Alfajer spent a majority of the tournament as the highest-rated individual player, but was recently usurped by teammates Timofey ‘Chronicle’ Khromov and Kajetan ‘kajaak’ Haremski. When Alfajer fell ill with COVID in the upper semifinal and was unable to compete, it was Chronicle’s 31-kill game on map 3 of Lotus that earned FNATIC the win over Paper Rex. After an uncharacteristically bad performance by Alfajer against NRG in the upper final, it was actually the latest addition for FNATIC, American initiator player Austin ‘crashies’ Roberts, who played well above his level and led all players statistically, to overcome the Korean representative DRX in the lower final. Without the opportunity to ban any of their least comfortable maps, FNC will be playing this grand finals on NRG’s terms, a scary proposition given the outcome of the game just a few days prior.

For the grand final itself, NRG’s double map bans should eliminate Bind and Sunset from the map pool, two maps that NRG haven’t played at Champions and will not have to show before tournament’s end. Assuming FNATIC is able to contest them on a relatively weak Haven, NRG still appears to be favored on nearly every other map behind their attack half calling structure. If FNATIC brings their absolute A-game, and NRG stumbles early, I would not be surprised to see this series go to a full five maps. However, it is impossible to overlook NRG’s unrivaled success at Champs Paris, especially on Abyss and Corrode with their unconventional Harbor and KAY/O picks, respectively. For a Grand Finals MVP, my prediction (considering current form exclusively) is skuba. His sentinel play on Vyse has been world-class, and he continues to get better when the lights get brighter (save for that one whiff on Aspas). I expect him to keep his MVP form and give NRG a clear win-condition in their hard-fought victory on Sunday.

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Final Score Prediction:

NRG 3 - 1 FNATIC

Do you agree with my take? Who do you have winning it all? Are NRG frauds? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh!

Gen.G Esports, the Korean organization competing through the League Championship of Korea (LCK), is on the precipice of something absolutely unthinkable. Despite a change to the landscape and gameplay of the regular season splits for 2025, which has eliminated the traditional Spring and Summer splits that have defined almost a decade of League of Legends, Gen.G’s in-game consistency is on pace with some of the greatest rosters that have ever competed. If you reasonably assume that LCK Road to MSI (the mid-season invitational) takes the place of the spring split, and that the ensuing regular season games before the world championship (Worlds) would constitute the summer split, then Gen.G have checked all of the boxes for what fans and analysts have labeled impossible since the creation of the franchise league model.

After entering rare air as one of two teams ever in the LCK to complete an undefeated split this “spring,” then winning MSI before coming back to the LCK, to drop only a single series in the regular season along with a swift dismantling of second-seeded Hanwha Life Esports 3-1 in the grand finals of the LCK playoffs, a victory at Worlds 2025 would secure the first double domestic, double international championship year in League of Legends history. The unattainable “Golden Road.” To claim that it is by any means a guarantee or a done deal would be a disservice, both to Gen.G, who have yet to place higher than Top 4 at Worlds since donning the black and gold persona, and to the litany of international competition that have their eyes set on immortalization as well.

This roster, tweaked and refined over multiple years of trial and error, is currently shaping up as the best lineup that Gen.G has ever fielded. Here is who Gen.G is placing their hopes on as they prepare for Worlds in Beijing later this October.

Top Lane: Kim ‘Kiin’ Gi-in

Regular Season Player of the Match (POM) Wins: 5

Joined Gen.G: November 2023

Top Champions this year: Gwen, Rumble, K’Sante, Yorick

Kiin, the ever-reliable rock for the Tigers in the top lane, has had a long career in the LCK and experienced both the highs and lows of the professional scene. He has finished in all 10 places in the final standings throughout his career, but most recently dominated the top of the ladder in 2024 and 2025 with Gen.G. Lovably labeled ‘Kiin-sante’ for his ability to pilot oppressive champion K’Sante in the top lane, Kiin utilized both carry champions and tanks to balance out compositions and produce incredible results throughout 2025. A 5-time LCK All-Pro first team selection, including both splits of 2024 and the 2025 calendar year, Kiin is recognized within the LCK as a gem of a player who can absolutely be the difference maker in a nail-biting series. Not one to shrink on the biggest stage, Kiin will once again be a critical piece of the puzzle for Gen.G’s success at Worlds this fall.

Jungle: Kim ‘Canyon’ Geon-bu

Regular Season POM Wins: 2

Joined Gen.G: November 2023

Top Champions: Wukong, Xin Zhao, Pantheon, Vi

The godfather of the Jungle role and former world champion in 2020 on DAMWON Gaming, Canyon joined Gen.G before the 2024 season, looking to cement his legacy as one of the most talented players to ever touch the position. A two-time LCK regular season MVP and 6-time 1st team All-Pro, Canyon is widely regarded as the best Korean jungler ever and still has the capacity to make jaw-dropping plays 7 years into his career. He holds the current record for most POM wins in a single split with 16, back with DAMWON in 2022, and his propensity for utilizing carry pocket-picks like Nidalee and Lee Sin to shake up drafts makes him a menace to game plan for. While his performance in the second half of 2025 left some concerns about consistency at this stage of his career, he had a couple of standout games both at MSI 2025 and during the LCK playoffs, proving he’s still the same old Canyon even in the big ‘25.

Mid Lane: Jeong ‘Chovy’ Ji-hoon

Regular Season POM Wins: 14

Joined Gen.G: November 2021

Top Champions: Azir, Ahri, Galio, Taliyah

Heir apparent to the LCK and long the uncrowned prince, Chovy finally earned some international hardware at MSI 2024, taking down Chinese first seed BiliBili Gaming in the grand final. Chovy has long been known as a ruthlessly efficient mid lane carry, garnering massive advantages in the early farming/laning phase of games, but has truly leveled up over the past couple of seasons to improve his all-around play and supplement his teammates. His 14 Player of the Match awards this split, head and shoulders above second place (8), paint the clearest picture on who the most dominant player in the region is. A 4-time LCK MVP and 1st team All-Pro, Chovy is one of just six players to earn 2500 kills in the LCK and is the only player to ever win 4 straight LCK titles. For all of his domestic success, ‘Choky,’ as he is mocked by Western fans, has a history of succumbing to pressure on the biggest stage. After winning MSI in 2024, many assumed that it was finally his time to take home a Worlds trophy too, but he fell to eventual champions T1 in the semifinal. His victory (and Finals MVP award) from MSI 2025 has sparked hope that maybe ‘Choky’ is behind him, but questions still linger about mental blocks at the World Championship. Gen.G will need their star player in the mid lane to be up to his usual shenanigans if they want any hope of capping off their historic run with a Worlds trophy.

Bottom Lane: Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-Hyuk

Regular Season POM Wins: 6

Joined Gen.G: November 2024

Top Champions: Jhin, Corki, Miss Fortune, Ezreal

One of the most storied players remaining in the LCK, Ruler has been around the block a trip or two. A world champion and Finals MVP in 2017 with the Samsung Galaxy (SSG) core that would later be acquired by Gen.G, Ruler has been at the top of the League of Legends world and is actually a returning player to Gen.G. He stuck around with Gen.G until 2023, where he boldly chose to join a newly assembled Chinese superteam at JD Gaming (JDG) who would take their own earnest shot at a “Golden Road.” JDG would famously fall to T1 and League of Legends’ greatest player Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok in the Worlds 2023 semifinal, two games shy of the legendary feat. Ruler, alongside Chovy, is one of the 6 players in LCK history with 2500 kills. He’s a former LCK MVP and 4-time 1st Team All-Pro Attack-Damage Carry (ADC), who won the LCK Finals MVP after his performance on Ezreal, Kai’Sa, and Xayah in their game. His sly veteran moves to gain advantages can sometimes be overshadowed by minor misplays or oversteps, but make no mistake, Ruler is still one of the top ADCs on earth and is looking to add another trophy to his collection.

Support: Joo ‘Duro’ Min-kyu

Regular Season POM Wins: 2

Joined Gen.G: November 2024

Top Champions: Rakan, Alistar, Rell, Neeko

After assembling the Korean Avengers for their 2025 roster, playing under the knife of the LCK salary cap, Gen.G could not opt for a huge name with their support player. Duro, unlike his teammates, is an unheralded support from fellow Korean organization BNK FearX, who let him go after just 4 months with the main roster following a stint on their development team FearX Youth. He was seen immediately as the “weak link” to an otherwise untouchable squad, but quickly proved his worth throughout the 2025 campaign with clutch plays, smart engages, and great map movement. His 2025 LCK All-Pro 1st Team is the first accolade of his young career, and his growth over this year has been instrumental in Gen.G’s consistent success. With another meta shakeup on the horizon, it remains to be seen if he will be the Achilles heel of this squad, but he has already become the unsung hero of the Gen.G bot lane this year.

Gen.G’s dominance this year, mostly propelled by stellar coaching and discipline surrounding objectives and teamfighting, has been supplemented by the ludicrous amount of talent they have put together. With unselfish players who are self-reliant but always willing to make the play to keep their teammates in the game, they have created a replicable formula for winning in a new era of “fearless drafting,” which forces teams to adapt to a new landscape after each game in a series. Their drafting strategy has sometimes raised eyebrows, especially with how often they’re dropping priority on Ruler in the bottom lane, but the results frankly speak for themselves. Entering Worlds 2025, Gen.G are the odds-on favorites to take the tournament, and rightfully so.

Perhaps they will achieve a golden crown at the end of their golden road. Save one for Genrang.

Do you agree with my analysis? Is Gen.G going to choke AGAIN? Is Canyon a mid-lane merchant? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my twitter @AveryGDH!

Another incredible week of professional VALORANT has concluded, and we are now waiting for the final weekend of VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) Champions Paris to conclude. For an esport that gets a lot of flak, being labeled as predictable and “CounterStrike’s little brother,” VALORANT has more than brought the magic with multiple showstopping plays, crazy overtimes, and ridiculous highlights to make this tournament one of the closest we have seen yet. As the teams swap venues from the cozy, 3,000-capacity Les Arènes de Grand Paris Sud - Evry - Courcouronnes to the voluminous, 16,000-seat Accor Arena, we must bid farewell to another quarter of the contenders for the VCT Champions 2025 trophy.

​GiantX was a wonderful Cinderella story, but midnight came far quicker than anyone could’ve guessed for the Spanish organization. The pieces now remain in place for a new powerhouse in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region, especially considering the relative strength of other teams.

G2 Esports claimed three domestic trophies in the VCT Americas league, but will consider 2025 a failure because of the lack of international hardware on the shelves. For IGL Jacob ‘Valyn’ Batio and star initiator Trent ‘Trent’ Cairns, it may be time to consider a breakup of a core that won Americas Ascension way back in 2023.​

Team Heretics came into the event as a written-off team that struggled at VCT Masters Toronto and regionally within EMEA, but flashed the potential that had brought them a single map away from winning VCT Champions 2024. Although this placement isn’t as close to the trophy as the prior year’s, “Los Niños” have made their fans proud by smashing their way into the playoffs and reminding teams why they were so feared just a year ago.

Made in Brazil (MiBR), the roster that was commonly ranked, among fans and pundits alike, as the worst team entering the tournament, heads home with a top 6 finish and a new glimmer of hope. MiBR, led by Erick ‘Aspas’ Santos, the duelist extraordinaire and contender for Greatest VALORANT Player of All Time, challenged all preconceptions about their squad by adopting a new style of compositions that allowed their Brazilian supporting cast to perform at peak capability. 2026, with a change or two, might come up all MiBR.

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Wishing those teams and players safe flights home as the playing field narrows to only four remaining squads, each facing their own hurdles.

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NRG Esports, the #2 seed from VCT Americas, is playing at their first international event since Champions 2023. With a nearly complete overhaul of the group that qualified two years ago, lots of new faces have led the rally to secure a top 3 finish. Will they have enough in the tank to go for more?

FNATIC, the #3 seed from VCT EMEA, has fresh wounds from their runner-up placement at VCT Masters Toronto just a few short months ago. With their star sentinel Emir ‘Alfajer’ Beder missing the upper semifinals with health complications, fans are holding their breath that he is feeling 100% for the rest of the tournament.

Paper Rex, the #1 seed from VCT Pacific and reigning VCT Masters Toronto champions, find themselves in the first bit of adversity since the grand final in Toronto. Clawing tooth and nail to defeat Team Heretics in a 3-map series in the lower bracket, they must now remain flawless to claim the first-ever Masters and Champions trophy in the same year. Can they overcome their remaining foes?

DRX, the #4 seed from VCT Pacific, who nearly didn’t make this tournament, now sit at the highest placement they’ve earned at an international tournament since 2022. Powered by their newly minted Waylay specialist Song ‘HYUNMIN’ Hyun-min, the hyper-drilled excellence of DRX has caught many teams underprepared.

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As for the matches themselves, here’s what you can expect.

FNATIC vs NRG Esports:

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The upper bracket finals feature a clash of EMEA and Americas titans that hasn’t happened since VCT Masters Tokyo in 2023. A lot has changed since then for both organizations, including Austin ‘Crashies’ Roberts swapping teams from NRG to FNATIC. The American initiator, originally brought in this summer as a temporary replacement for superstar Leo ‘Leo’ Jannesson while he dealt with COVID complications, has now become an integral part of FNATIC’s game plans through and through. After winning a nailbiting 2-1 series against Paper Rex, which included a comeback from 1-9 down on map 3 with clutch moments from Crashies, FNATIC (FNC) appears absolutely indomitable now. Should Alfajer be healthy and back at peak form, they will be a tough team to beat, especially considering him and Polish rookie Kajetan ‘kaajak’ Haremski are the two highest-rated players in the playoffs of Champs. NRG, with 3 rookie talents seeing their first international tournament, won multiple extra overtime games against MiBR to make it to the upper final. After an incredible performance in the upper quarterfinal from Brock ‘Brawk’ Somerhalder on the initiator role, where he shattered the Kill/Death/Assist record set by former NRG and now MiBR player Andrew ‘Verno’ Maust earlier in this tournament, NRG was ice cold in their match against the Brazilian squad. NRG’s attacking halves have been a thing of beauty all tournament long, but their map pool leaves a lot to be desired, with serious holes on Sunset, Ascent, and Bind. FNATIC, led by In-Game Leader (IGL) Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett, has whittled down opponents with patient game plans and sharp shooting, but lacks a strong Corrode. Assuming that enters as their first ban and NRG bans Sunset, FNC is guaranteed to get a matchup on Ascent if they want it. Assuming map vetoes are not thrown to the wayside (as they have often been in this tournament), this seems like a safe FNC 2-0.

Prediction: FNATIC 2-0 NRG Esports

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DRX vs Paper Rex:

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The famed “RX Derby” between these two VCT Pacific squads has been split 9-4 towards Paper Rex (PRX) since the inception of the VCT Pacific league in 2023. This matchup looks to continue to the PRX train that started before Masters Toronto, and has continued to chug along relentlessly at Champions Paris. For Paper Rex, a late-game collapse against FNATIC started to worry longtime fans of the Indonesian franchise, who have seen PRX get inches from the finish line but collapse at multiple international events, including their second-place finish at Champions Los Angeles in 2023. However, a strong bounce back against the other EMEA representative, Team Heretics, in the lower bracket has reignited the hype that labeled Paper Rex as the favorites to lift the Champions trophy just a month ago. The secret sauce lies within IGL Jason ‘F0rsaken’ Susanto and X-factor duelist Ilya ‘something’ Petrov, who have consistently elevated their individual play when the lights get brightest. DRX’s strategies have struggled to stop the newest edition of PRX, and their reliance on Waylay compositions appears to be the biggest hindrance to further advancement in this tournament. Paper Rex also has the combined coaching forces of a former 2x Masters winner with FNATIC, Jacob ‘Mini’ Harris, in the coaching booth alongside head coach Alexandre ‘alecks’ Sallé, combining two of the brightest minds of the east and west together. As beautiful as DRX’s set executes have looked, Paper Rex enters this lower bracket semifinal with a firepower advantage and regional dominance in their favor.​

Prediction: Paper Rex 2-1 DRX

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The top 4 is chock full of teams that are capable of lifting the Champions trophy given the right circumstances, but only one can be the victor. Make sure to tune in to watch the event on YouTube at ValorantEsports on October 3rd so you can catch the high-octane gameplay for yourself!

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Think I’m wrong? Who do you have winning the entire event? Is the Top 4 venue large enough for an international final? Let me know in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh​

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With news that LeBron James has full autonomy in his future with the Los Angeles Lakers dropping this week, I found myself drawing a comparison to esports’ undisputed Greatest [player] of All Time (GOAT), Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok of T1 League of Legends. Faker and LeBron, the two most dominant forces in the history of their respective sports, have both, in this (expected) final chapter of their careers, been given a metaphorical ‘hall-pass’ to pursue the rest of their playing time on their own terms. Respect like this is not given, but earned, and both of these incredible athletes have played so well for so long that it is only fitting that their respective management teams have lent them the green light to navigate the twilight of their careers this way.

That being said, the situation these two find themselves in currently, at least competitively speaking, could not be more different. This piece aims to break down the history of LeBron James and Faker’s rise to the top, what they mean to their sports, and how they’re currently contributing to their teams.

LeBron James was always destined to be a star. Back in 2002, while still in high school, he was plastered on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s magazine with the words “The Chosen One” right beside him. He was just 17 years old then, but his meteoric rise whilst playing basketball at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, was just too much to overlook for many basketball pundits. The Ohio native was a legendary player who was seen not just as a surefire NBA contributor but as the future face of the league. Fate would have it that the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, coming off a horrific 17-65 season the year prior and with a 22.5% chance to win, secured the #1 pick in the 2003 NBA Draft. James was anointed the King of Cleveland before his first NBA dribble, but quickly proved why after a commanding rookie season where he averaged 20.9 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game and was named Rookie of the Year in 2004. It wouldn’t take long for ‘The King’ to lead the Cavaliers to the NBA playoffs, earning them a postseason berth in just his third season. The NBA was officially put on notice: the entire league was ‘under new management.’

For Lee ‘Faker’ Sang-hyeok, his journey started from far humbler beginnings. In Season 3 of League of Legends competitive play (2013), Faker was just a Korean kid who would dominate the online ranked ladder in the mid lane. South Korea Telecom (SKT) took notice. They scooped him up that February and formed a team around his spectacular talent in the middle of the map. In the first tournament that SKT entered into, Olympus Champions Spring 2013, they placed 3rd, and talk started about Faker’s statistics among analysts and teams alike. In a matter of months, Faker had vaulted himself from a mere ‘ranked demon’ to within consideration of the best player in the world. He wouldn’t let this momentum stall either, receiving MVP honors in the HOT6IX Champions 2013 Summer split and securing his first-ever League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) appearance in his rookie year. Faker had the press buzzing about his miraculous outplays, smothering lane phases, and ridiculous teamfighting coming into Worlds 2013 – so much so that a “Korean Hype Train” led by famed analyst Christopher ‘Montecristo’ Mykles was born. Also during this tournament, in an interview preceded by another dominant Faker series against Chinese OMG Esports, OMG mid laner Yu ‘Cool’ Jia Jun dubbed the T1 superstar the ‘Unkillable Demon King,’ a nickname that would stick for his entire career. Not one to be fazed by expectation, Faker more than lived up to the moniker by not only reaching the grand finals but sweeping the Chinese Royal Never Give Up (RNG) squad that challenged him, earning his first Worlds trophy at just the age of 17.

LeBron wouldn’t take long to find the brightest lights in the NBA, earning his first NBA Finals berth in 2007 at the age of 22. This appearance, which ended as a quick 4-0 in favor of the San Antonio Spurs, was the first in the history of the Cleveland Cavaliers franchise and an important stepping stone for LeBron. He used this defeat as fuel for his future playoff series, where, despite being surrounded by subpar talent, he consistently went above and beyond to drag undeserving teams deep in the NBA Playoffs. His conference finals losses, both in 2009 and 2010 after winning the regular season MVP, served as a catalyst for the first major shift of LeBron’s career. He chose, after a disappointing playoff series against the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and join the Miami Heat and assemble a superteam with fellow Eastern Conference All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors. He joked in pressers afterwards that the team would win “not 1, not 2, not 3 (championships)...” and ignited a hatred within Cleveland fans who wished him failure for leaving his hometown and the city that drafted him. It was time to prove that the disappointment in ‘07 and the ensuing playoff runs were not his fault, and that he could be ‘the guy’ on a championship team. In 2011, his first full season in Miami, James was presented another chance to claim the NBA title but disappeared in multiple fourth quarters throughout the Finals series to drop to 0-2 in the title game. It was only in the next year, LeBron’s third MVP season, that Miami would finally overcome their demons and win the 2012 NBA championship, defeating the Oklahoma City Thunder 4-1.

Faker’s first title at Worlds meant that the weight of the crown was now placed on his shoulders. In the ensuing regular season, at OnGameNet (OGN)’s Pandora.TV Champions Winter 2013-14, Faker and SKT would put together the most dominant split in OGN history, and quite possibly the most dominant stretch of League of Legends ever. SKT did not lose a single game, sweeping every series to the final, where – once again – Faker flexed his jaw-dropping mechanics and mind-blowing plays to secure a 3-0 series win against Samsung Ozone in the finals. Already, Faker’s best player in the world title was starting to look like “Best Player Ever” status, but when his support Lee ‘PoohManDu’ Jeong-hyeon or Mandu was forced to step away because of health issues, SKT and Faker’s performance took a dip. They struggled that spring to uphold their lofty expectations, and a missed Worlds opportunity in 2014 meant that SKT would not have the chance to defend their title.

With the monkey finally being lifted off James’ back thanks to a 2012 championship and Finals MVP, an unkept promise to Miami still lingered. He set out on an encore tour for his 2012 MVP, winning it again the following year and doubling up on his titles and Finals MVP trophies in 2013 against the San Antonio Spurs, vanquishing the team that had trounced him in his first Finals appearance. All was not sunshine and rainbows in Miami, though, as age and regression started to set in on Miami’s ‘Big Three’, leading to a flustered 2014 playoff campaign. James narrowly missed out on the 2014 MVP to up-and-coming OKC Thunder forward Kevin Durant, and would also suffer a loss in the finals rematch to the 2014 Spurs, 4-1. With his contract expiring in Miami, LeBron made the bold choice to return to Cleveland, his hometown, which had drafted him before turning their backs and burning his jerseys in 2010. The goal? To bring Cleveland their elusive first NBA title.

In 2015, SKT’s sister teams merged, leaving behind the iconic SKT T1 roster featuring stars like Bae ‘Bang’ Jun-Sik and Lee ‘Wolf’ Jae-won in the bottom lane alongside Faker, now splitting time with the former midlaner for the other SKT squad: Lee ‘Easyhoon’ Ji-hoon. Despite fan pressure to start Faker, Easyhoon was played most often. However, it was a late-season surge powered by Faker that earned the squad a bid at the 2015 Mid Season Invitational (MSI) tournament. There, they defeated European FNATIC 3-2 before a classic matchup with Chinese superpower EDward Gaming (EDG), where in Game 5, EDG baited Faker into selecting his legendary, undefeated LeBlanc. EDG promptly drafted a composition designed to shut down Faker, resulting in a 3-2 victory for the Chinese representatives. Faker would bounce back in Summer, cleanly winning the domestic Korean split before losing only a single game at Worlds 2015 to claim his second Worlds title.

His second stint with the Cavs started with a bang, as they fielded a roster centered around James and his new “big three:” Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving. When the team finished the regular season, however, the injury bug crept up, taking out players one by one, including Kevin Love in the Eastern Conference semifinals and Kyrie in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. LeBron attempted to emulate the carry job he was doing before leaving the city originally, but it was not enough to overcome the Golden State Warriors, who closed the series out in 6 games. In 2016, LeBron’s revenge tour began, with a dominant regular season that was overshadowed by a historic 73-9 record by the Warriors out west. In the finals, LeBron would accomplish the impossible by not only leading his team back from a 3-1 deficit, something that had never been done before in the NBA Finals, but by leading the entire series in every major statistical category. Points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks – James did it all, and none were more important than what is perhaps the defining moment of his career: a chasedown block on Warriors forward Andre Iguodala that sealed the win for the Cavaliers and LeBron’s first trophy for the city that drafted him. A full circle moment that would be short-lived, as the following years would be plagued by Eastern Conference dominance followed by an insurmountable talent mismatch in the NBA Finals. Kevin Durant, who had sneakily taken away James’ MVP in 2014, was now the star of the show in Golden State, winning two NBA titles alongside Finals MVP honors in 2017 and 2018.

Coming off the roaring success of 2015 Worlds, SKT slumped early domestically, falling short in the semifinals of the Korean Esports Association’s League of Legends Cup. Doing as Faker does, a quick turnaround in the spring split, topped off with a domestic victory, earned the roster a spot at MSI 2016. There, Faker and SKT recaptured the glory of the MSI tournament that they missed out on a year prior. Later that year, after a second-place finish in the Korean summer split, they would finish as Worlds champions again, marking the only team to ever win the world championship three times, and the first (and only) repeat winners of Worlds. Faker continued to rack up achievements, including an MSI win in 2017, and his resume densified alongside it. By spring 2018, he had won 6 domestic trophies in Korea, 2 Mid-Season Invitationals, and 3 world championships. He was, by all extents of the phrase, the greatest. Faker would soon learn, however, that even paradise isn’t immune to the sunset. Worlds 2017 marked the beginning of a struggling time for SKT, who would later rebrand to the much cleaner T1, as they fell in the grand finals 0-3 to Samsung White (who would later become Gen.G Esports). Faker’s rosters began to shuffle around him, and as he aged, he couldn’t cling to his server-shifting mechanics to carry every game like he could in his youth. 2018 and 2019 ended without a single international trophy for T1, but domestic titles in both Spring and Summer of the latter. By now, the former OGN domestic league had transformed into the most popular league in the history of League of Legends: the League Championship of Korea, or the LCK. 2020 would bring a spring LCK trophy, Faker’s 9th, but a loss to Gen.G in the regional finals meant that Faker would once again miss out on a chance at the international crown.

As LeBron continued to age, and his roster was rebuilt and retooled to try to compete with the unstoppable force out West, his patience (and hair) thinned. In the summer of 2018, James would take his talents right to Golden State’s doorstep, joining the storied franchise of the Los Angeles Lakers. After a couple of seasons of disappointing finishes in LA, LeBron and the Lakers would make a huge playoff run in ‘The Bubble’ or the NBA season held during COVID in 2020. LeBron and fellow All-NBA teammate Anthony Davis would give the city its 17th championship, and after receiving finals MVP honors, James became the only player in NBA history to win Finals MVP on three different teams. A true testament to his ability to alter the course of a franchise. The past five years have been rather quiet for LeBron and the Lakers, at least championship-wise. They had an opportunity to potentially make a deep playoff run in 2023, but were silenced by an incredible series from Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray in the Western Conference finals. James and the Lakers won the first iteration of the NBA’s in-season tournament (IST), but without nearly the same pomp and fanfare that a regular championship brings.

Entering 2021, T1 returned to the drawing board and brought in rejected support Ryu ‘Keria’ Min-seok from fellow domestic rival DRX. Without a single trophy throughout the year, but a top 4 finish at Worlds, fans began to wonder if this was the beginning of the end for Faker. He hadn’t been at the top of the world for almost 5 years now, and if his supporting cast kept rotating, it seemed he might never make it back. That was until T1 decided to revamp their roster heading into 2022. T1 promoted its academy players, homegrown talents from their farm system, to the main roster heading into 2022, including future stars like Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je, Mun ‘Oner’ Hyeon-jun, and Lee ‘Gumayusi’ Min-hyeong. This roster, labeled ZOFGK for the first letter of Zeus, Oner, Faker, Guma(yusi), and Keria’s in-game tags, would form the newest dynasty for the illustrious T1 branding. After winning the LCK spring split with an undefeated 18-0 regular season, T1 made a mad dash for the MSI finals, Faker’s first international finals since Worlds 2017. Faker continued to get so close to the finish line, slipping at the final hurdle, as T1 fell to old foe RNG in a heartbreaking 5-game series. Second-place finishes would continue to plague T1 in 2022, as they would succumb to Gen.G in the 2022 LCK summer finals and then Keria’s old team DRX in the grand finals of Worlds. Running it back with the same ZOFGK core in 2023, T1 finished spring with a 17-1 regular season and a second-place finish to Gen.G domestically. At MSI, T1’s momentum stalled once more, leaving with a 3rd place finish to China’s BiliBili Gaming (BLG). After a summer split that saw Faker step away for some time to treat a wrist injury, a stretch that saw T1 lose 7 of 8 games in his absence, T1 stumbled into the LCK summer playoffs with a 9-9 record. Thanks to their earlier performance in the year, T1 qualified for Worlds on points and represented the LCK as the second seed, with Faker finally back and ready to play.

At Worlds 2023, the dominant storyline surrounded Chinese superteam JD Gaming (JDG), who had spent a rumored $16 million to assemble what was considered an unbeatable team. JDG mopped the floor with their domestic competition in both Spring and Summer, beat BLG in the finals of MSI, and were now seeking the chance to make League of Legends history by completing the “golden road.” T1, after defeating BLG and avenging their MSI loss in the swiss stage, made it to the best-of-five series playoffs. In the quarterfinals, they faced Chinese league MVP and former SKT member Lee ‘Scout’ Ye-Chan, whom they swiftly swept 3-0. This set up a date with destiny, a semi-final matchup maybe bigger than any Worlds final we could’ve seen, T1 versus JDG. The pre-match teaser, a video shrouded in legacy now, showcased Faker and JDG bot laner Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk talking about the implications for the match. Faker, always the showman, uttered the now infamous line: “All roads lead to me,” in response to Ruler’s claim that the golden road was inevitable. In the end, it was Faker who sealed the game and the series for T1, claiming the series 3-1 and shutting down the golden road. The finals, predestined by this point, ended in a clean 3-0 sweep for T1 over their final Chinese opponent at Worlds 2023, Weibo Gaming. Now, with three different cores, Faker had won the biggest tournament in the world and been the frontman for it. With GOAT status now firmly secured, Faker and T1 entered into 2024 looking to repeat. After a second-place finish to Gen.G in LCK Spring 2024, T1 experienced MSI deja vu, placing 3rd and once again falling to BLG. After a summer split that saw Faker struggle to adapt to a meta that focused on heavily mechanical carry mid lane champions, T1 squeaked their way into Worlds once more as the fourth seed.

By now, nobody was falling for their same old tricks. A new meta that allowed Faker to explore picks outside of the mechanical mids and a bot lane duo that innovated to change the game entirely put T1 on a collision course with another grand finals. This time, another matchup against tournament favorites BLG, who had already taken down T1 at MSI and were looking for their first Worlds win as a franchise. After going down 2-1, all hope was starting to drain from T1, but like clockwork, Faker’s aura reigned supreme. His game 4 Sylas had multiple solo kills and an oppressive lane phase that seemed to turn back the clock, and in game 5, his Galio selection singlehandedly won T1 the series. A 3-2 victory marked Faker’s historic 5th Worlds trophy, a mark that will likely never be seen again. His 2nd series MVP for Worlds finals was also a jaw-dropping 8 years apart from his initial win back in 2016.

​Meanwhile, under the bright lights of LA, LeBron built on his media and investment empire, becoming only the second active athlete ever to reach $1 billion in net worth according to Forbes. He acted in the sequel to the legendary Looney Tunes basketball movie ‘Space Jam’ and has appeared in numerous commercials for brands like Nike (where he is a part-owner), as well as Amazon and Sprite. He opened the “I Promise” school in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, targeted to provide education for “at-risk” students. He surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for #1 on the all-time scoring list in the NBA. He championed a movement that supported Black athletes and their stances on civil rights when he refused to “shut up and dribble.” He has won nearly every award there is to offer in the NBA outside of Defensive Player of the Year (which he certainly had an argument for in 2012 and 2013 in Miami). James has defined the era he competed in, the face of the NBA in the 2010s, as the only true contender to Michael Jordan as the basketball GOAT. To the United States and the world at large, LeBron is more than just an athlete; he’s an icon of perseverance and greatness.

​Faker, on the other side of the same coin, is a cultural icon. He has appeared on the cover of every kind of magazine from Marie Claire to GQ in Korea, and his presence in the country is the same, if not greater than LeBron’s in America. He is a prolific philanthropist, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he donated to the Community Chest of Korea. In 2020, Faker’s contract with T1 included a minority stake and a blank check, and he currently owns about 5.66% of the company, according to Inven Global. Recently, Faker crossed over into the Korean-pop (K-pop) world as well, making a cameo in Stray Kids’ music video for “Ceremony.” He is soft-spoken but a fearsome force, and was the first player recognized by League of Legends publisher Riot Games into the League of Legends Hall of Fame, the Hall of Legends. Faker’s mere presence at Worlds tournaments determines the viewership of millions of esports fans, and the day he retires will bring a reckoning to Riot Games and League of Legends as a whole. In-game, Faker holds a host of achievements and records that appear nigh untouchable, including most Worlds titles, most international trophies, most kills internationally, most kills in the LCK, most champions played professionally, and more of that same flavor. His longevity is truly rare in esports, and the most insane part is, he doesn’t think he’s anywhere close to done.

For LeBron, these last few years in the NBA have been about upping the counting stats for his records and getting to play professional basketball with his oldest son, fellow Los Angeles Laker Lebron James Jr., or ‘Bronny.’ The fearsome competitive spirit and dominant on-court play have unfortunately begun to escape him as Father Time continues to beckon. According to James, he has but a few seasons left in the tank before he laces up for the last time. Lakers President of Basketball Operations Rob Pelinka has made it very clear that the organization wants LeBron to operate on his own terms, and he is doing just that. As the 2025-26 season starts kicking into gear, all eyes will be on the workload that James takes on for himself, especially since the arrival of Slovenian All-Star Luka Dončić has propelled the LA team back into playoff talks.

In Korea, Faker is currently packing his bags to prepare for his (obviously) record 10th Worlds tournament in China next month, where T1 has their eyes set on a new record: the first-ever 3-peat. After an offseason filled with drama and turmoil, ZOFGK is no more. Instead, former Gen.G top laner Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-joon joins the fray to help T1 recapture the magic that has crowned them back-to-back champs. Gen.G, T1’s long-standing LCK rival, just defeated them in a 5-game series in the MSI grand finals and stand as a major roadblock in their way for a 3rd Worlds trophy in as many years. Fortunately for Faker, he just resigned to be a part of T1 until 2029, so this won’t be the last chance. This Worlds feels particularly difficult for T1, since Faker’s champion pool is out of the meta and quite small compared to some of the other top mid laners in the world. But if there’s one thing you should never do, it’s count out the Unkillable Demon King.

See you in Beijing.

Did I miss any critical moments? Will Faker ever get usurped? Is LeBron ACTUALLY the GOAT of basketball? Let me know in the comments of this post or on my Twitter: @averygdh !

The most important tournament of the VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT) calendar year, VCT Champions, has already eliminated half of the invited teams to the event. Over the past two weeks, teams from VCT China, Pacific, Americas, and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), have fought in double elimination best-of-three series to determine the final 8 teams seeded into a double elimination playoff bracket.

For the fallen teams thus far:

Dragon Ranger Gaming: Maybe next time, don’t replace your star bilingual sentinel player with a duelist player who doesn’t speak Mandarin. Hope the clout was worth it 💔.

EDward Gaming: Losing the best support player in the country was always going to hurt, even if dropping him was the right choice. Here’s to hoping that the rebuild around your championship core will yield more fruitful results in 2026.

BiliBili Gaming: The international tournament debuff hit your team harder than most, and although your showing in VCT China was impressive, it may be time to experiment with a coach or performance staff member that can quell those jitters next year.

Team Sentinels: The offseason is here earlier than expected and a roster change might be the flavor you need to return to your winning ways.

T1: Amid all of the roster turmoil and internal problems your VALORANT roster has faced throughout 2025, you can hold your heads high knowing that you did win an international trophy this year. My main question is: who will be on the chopping block for this Korean juggernaut?

Team Liquid: A victim of a surge of expectations, you had a very solid year from start to finish. Despite an EMEA championship in Stage 2, however, you could never quite put it together internationally. Not sure the next move for your franchise, but locking down your superstars Ayaz ‘nAts’ Akhmetshin and Georgio ‘Keiko’ Sanassy are musts.

Rex Regum Qeon: For you squad and particularly the Indonesian fans, 2025 was an absolute slam dunk. A Pacific championship and two international appearances is the absolute dream for a fanbase that has mostly watched regional matches with despair in the VCT partnership era. Can your team build on this year with the creativity of your coaching staff?

Xi Lai Gaming: At the very least, you avoided the misfortune of fighting for your slot in VCT China when Dragon Ranger Gaming bombed out just before you. As this team continues to display domestic dominance, it remains to be seen how clutch your squad is on the biggest stage.

Now, onto the matches for September 25th.

Paper Rex vs. G2 Esports

Clash of the regional titans and a rematch from the upper quarterfinal of Masters Toronto. Where G2 stumbled against Team Heretics in the first try for playoff qualification, Paper Rex didn’t miss a beat, humming along to a 2-1 win. Despite virtually never playing Ascent, Paper Rex still kept it close with the EMEA #2 seed, losing 11-13 before regaining control over the series. As for G2, their lower bracket run put some of the fears about their ‘choking tendencies’ to bed, with strong 2-0 wins over Dragon Ranger Gaming and T1. While it is arguable that both of these teams played in relatively weak groups where some teams didn’t show up in top form, they beat who was in front of them and qualified so that is all you can ask of them.

This series will come down to map picks and bans, something that teams have struggled with all tournament long regardless of group. G2 has only shown 3 of the 7 maps in the pool, whereas Paper Rex have had to show 4. G2 has also shown the ability to switch compositions mid-tournament, which makes them a massive question mark when it comes to creating anti-strategies. G2, so far as I can tell, doesn’t have a permanent map ban and instead opts to ban based on opponent preference. That said, it is likely that Sunset will be taken out of the map pool. Paper Rex have floated a few different maps this tournament, but with tons of time to prepare and such a small sample size, it is fair to believe that their weakest maps and likely bans are Ascent and Haven. If the map pool shakes out to include Abyss in any capacity, I think that G2 have the advantage, as Paper Rex haven’t demonstrated the ability to consistently give star Raze player Wang ‘Jinggg’ Jing Jie the right agent and toolkit to maximize his skill set. Paper Rex themselves haven’t played Abyss since February, and there’s no point in starting now! Outside of Paper Rex floating Abyss, which I doubt they will do, G2’s could also focus on their Ascent.

All in all, Paper Rex come into this rematch with a head-to-head win under their belt in the last 4 months and all of the swagger of a 2-0 team from the group stage. G2 has to bring their A-game to even have a shot.

Prediction: Paper Rex 2-1 G2 Esports

FNATIC vs. DRX

Legendary VALORANT franchises, entering this tournament on opposing ends of the hype spectrum, will do battle in the second timeslot of the day. FNATIC, as mentioned in some of my other pieces, are the kings of slowing the game down to an absolute crawl and grinding out the win. That, combined with DRX’s tendency to utilize a double duelist composition centered around Waylay and Yoru to get downhill FAST, means that the stylistic matchup will determine which way the meta pendulum swings for the rest of the tournament.

As a Waylay apologist myself, and someone who has long sung her praises, my heart throws its weight behind DRX. Unfortunately, all evidence does point to FNATIC being in a better position to take this opening match. Wins FNATIC earned against Rex Regum Qeon and Made In Brazil (MiBR), who both have spectacular Waylay players in their own right, makes this a tough ask for DRX. One of the major keys for FNATIC’s strong start that they likely will not be able to rely on is the incredible individual firepower from British In-Game Leader (IGL) Jake ‘Boaster’ Howlett. He’s currently +18 in kill/death ratio across 2 maps of Abyss this tournament, but I think that his performance is more sparkles than substance. Particularly because of DRX’s unique approach to Waylay overall, Boaster’s playstyle (and individual statistics) should take a hit during this best-of-three series.

Sadly for fellow Waylay enjoyers, I just cannot see a way where DRX can out-ban FNATIC in the map draft, and they will be forced to play the game FNATIC’s way: slow, sleep-inducing, and suffocating.

Prediction: FNATIC 2-1 DRX

The League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) tournament for the 2025 competitive year is less than a month away. Since Opening Day on January 25th, 8 teams in the League of the Americas (LTA) North conference and 8 teams in the LTA South conference have been battling for the opportunity to represent their region on the biggest international stage in the sport. Through the ebbs and flows of team performance, through roster shuffles and storylines, only the first seed from each region and the winner of the LTA Championship lower bracket semifinal would be given the chance to play on-stage in front of thousands in Beijing, China. Here is who will represent the Americas: their stories, their stars, and their likely placements.

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LTA North Champion: FlyQuest 🇺🇸

​The 2-time LTA North champions came into this season with the same roster that pushed 2024 international Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) champion Gen.G Esports to 5 games in the 2024 Worlds Quarterfinals. Without making any changes, some were worried if FlyQuest (FLY) had maybe hit a peak that they’d be unable to attain.

Was this all this roster would ever be? One miracle run at Worlds ‘24?

Fears intensified after the LTA North Split 1 playoffs, where FLY was unceremoniously dispatched in a distant 3rd place, unable to even play in the qualifying match for the first international event of the year, First Stand, in South Korea. Team chemistry seemed tempered, and other North American powerhouses, namely Team Liquid, were out for blood after their dismissal from Worlds the prior year. FlyQuest were stuck at home watching First Stand, and needed an answer (particularly in the mid lane) in order to contest the best of the best in the LTA.

When the meta of the game, or the most ideal way to play, shifted in Split 2, FlyQuest was one of the quickest adapters. FLY began to focus their carry roles to the top lane with Gabriël ‘Bwipo’ Rau piloting champions like Renekton, Ambessa, and Gwen, and the bottom lane with AD carry (attack damage carry, or ADC) Fahad ‘Massu’ Abdulmalek dominating games on champions such as Kai’sa, Varus, and Corki. This swap, allowing mid laner Song ‘Quad’ Su-hyeong to focus on less melee carries and more traditional mages such as Azir, Taliyah, and famed Cassiopeia, propelled FlyQuest to the upper echelons of the LTA North. They finished the Split in first place, only losing to Cloud9, but beat them in a tiebreaker decider 2-0. Their victory in the Split 2 Playoffs, achieved by taking down Cloud9 twice, each time in a hard-fought 5 games, earned them the right to play at MSI 2025, held in Vancouver, Canada. Instantly seeded into the playoffs, FLY was tasked with China’s #1 seed, Anyone’s Legend (AL). AL’s crafty drafting and exceptional team fighting led to a 1-3 FLY defeat and a quick entry into the lower bracket. FlyQuest came into the lower bracket white-hot at MSI, defending the North American region’s honor by valiantly walloping European G2 Esports 3-0. The celebration was short-lived, as they quickly found themselves face-to-face with Worlds ‘24 runner-up BiliBili Gaming (BLG) in the lower semifinals. After another brutal 5-game series, where FlyQuest jungler Kacper ‘Inspired’ Słoma repeatedly proved why he was deserving of his LTA North Split 2 MVP honor, FlyQuest were dismissed in a 2-3 series loss. Overall, FLY’s strategy of hiding Quad on control champions in the mid lane fell apart once he was forced to make plays on picks like Annie and Ryze against stronger mid laners such as BLG’s Zhuo ‘knight’ Ding. A disappointing international performance at their first tournament since losing to Gen.G might’ve stifled the growth of some teams, but not FlyQuest.

Split 3 brought out even more changes in the game, and propelled a certain magical enchanter support champion into a pivotal meta-defining spot. Bard, one of the earliest champions added to League of Legends, had made a resurgence in popularity after teams recognized the value he can provide to lanes around the map early on in the game. Teams that could play Bard could flex their drafting strategy around him, and no North American team was better at Bard than FLY. FlyQuest’s support player Alan ‘Busio’ Cwalina led the entire LTA North in Kill/Death/Assist ratio this split, and was a massive part of their undefeated record in 6 regular season games. As they entered the playoffs, Busio’s performance dropped a hint, but he was quickly covered by his other 3 All-Pro teammates, particularly Inspired. The North American playoffs were marred with some controversy (more on that later), but FlyQuest’s reign in the latter half of the year is unquestionable. They are the kings of North America and are the hope of the region at Worlds ‘25.

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LTA South Champion: Vivo Keyd Stars 🇧🇷

​It has been far from smooth sailing this year for the Vivo Keyd Stars (VKS) squad, as they were ranked 7th-8th in the LTA South at the end of Split 1. Their roster is very different from last year, remaining primarily Brazilian but importing Polish support player Adrian ‘Trymbi’ Trybus from Team Heretics in the LEC. Trymbi was tasked with, through a language barrier, transforming this roster into a competitor in the LTA South, and it certainly looked like he would struggle to do so. Poor performances from Australian mid laner Ronald ‘Kisee’ Vo led to Vivo Keyd continually coming up short in close games. The standout player for their squad, jungler Pedro ‘Disamis’ Gonçalves, is a home-grown talent in his second year with Keyd Stars, who specializes in tank jungle champions like Sejuani.

VKS’s Split 1 failures were the result of a new team attempting to gel with one another while they watched one of their future stars thrive. In the fast-paced LTA South region, Kisee was never awarded the first kill of the match (first blood), meaning his team was often making up the difference. Despite being placed on high-agency champions like Ahri and Azir, Keys Stars were not getting the early leads that their region demanded. Timely mistakes and dying to ganks spelled the end for VKS, who did not win a single game in their first split.

In the first taste of the full regular season, VKS improved. Trymbi had control over a weaker region in the LTA South and led the team to a 4th-place finish and a 2nd-team All-Pro award for himself. Disamis developed into an All-Pro level player in his own right, being selected to the 3rd team for Split 2. But once again, the woes for Vivo Keyd Stars continued in the middle of the map. It was Kisee who was most often caught out, suffering from being first blooded a position-high 29.4% and putting VKS behind early and often. Despite this, Keys Stars still made the playoffs and were seeded third, matching up against FURIA Esports, the eventual champions. FURIA made quick work of VKS in a 3-0 sweep and sent them to the lower bracket, where a 3-1 bounce-back game against RED Canids would lead to a lower semifinal against Isurus Estral (IE). IE, a roster blending Argentinian talent with Korean imports and other standouts like former LCS (now LTA North) MVP Park ‘Summit’ Woo-tae, had an amazing series, and defeated VKS off the back of a great performance by jungle-bot duo Brian ‘Snaker’ Distefano and Brandon ‘Josedeodo’ Villegas. VKS ended Split 2 in 4th place, and their shot to make Worlds was dimming…

Between Split 2 and 3, after Isurus Estral ended their partnership and reverted their rosters back to Isurus Gaming and Estral Esports respectively, Vivo Keyd Stars jumped on the opportunity to patch their biggest weakness. They snagged mid laner Jeong ‘Mireu’ Jo-bin from IE and formed their roster for the rest of the 2025 season. The improvement was instant. Mireu transformed VKS from a team that was playing from behind into a proactive unit that feasted on unsuspecting mid laners. He was second in the LTA South for first blood percentage and total team damage share, at 44.4% and 27.3% respectively. Trymbi’s stellar teamfighting that had been keeping Keyd Stars afloat became not just a silver bullet, but an option to unlock players like Disamis, too. VKS fought through adversity to make it to Worlds too: they had to defeat FURIA in a best-of-five series (which they did, 3-0) and win out all of the LTA South in order to secure their spot. Finally, everything fell into place. A proactive mid-jungle duo, a star support import, and great talent in the bottom and top lanes. VKS were rewarded for their stellar end to Split 3 by receiving 4 of 5 votes for the All-Pro First team, and their top laner, Felipe ‘Boal’ Boal, made All All-Pro Second team.

After FURIA’s surprise performance at MSI ‘25 in Vancouver, expectations have risen for Vivo Keyd Stars at Worlds. We will see how they fare when the lights are as bright as they get.

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LTA Championship Tournament Qualification: 100 Thieves 🇺🇸

​As an owner of a provisional guest slot in the LTA North, 100 Thieves (100T) were not guaranteed the chance to compete in the LTA in 2026. They came into the first split of 2025 with a fire fueled by their surprising defeat in the Worlds ‘24 Play-In Stage. Their roster, which remained mostly the same, included: a Korean mid lane and jungle duo of Lim ‘Quid’ Hyeon-seung and Kim ‘River’ Dong-woo, respectively, as well as returning top laner Rayan ‘Sniper’ Shoura, a product of the 100 Thieves academy system. Their bot lane duo changed just a bit, with Australian support Bill ‘Eyla’ Nguyen joined by fellow compatriot Victor ‘FBI’ Huang at ADC. FBI, a member of the NRG Esports squad that scored a top 8 finish at Worlds ‘24, looked to provide additional stability in the ADC role that 100T were missing in the summer split of 2024. 100T started 3-0, dropping only a single game domestically, and qualifying for the offline in-person “Cross Conference Tournament” in São Paulo that would determine the LTA representative at First Stand. 100 Thieves, who defeated FlyQuest on their way to the grand finals of the interconference tournament, came up just short in the grand finals, losing to Team Liquid 0-3 and missing out on the first event of the year.

Looking towards Split 2, 100T were confident, rightly so, since they were but a single best-of-five from an international event. Their first three weeks in the positioning phase had them drop series only to FlyQuest and Team Liquid, marking their record at 5-2. Placed into Group B, alongside FLY, Shopify Rebellion, and Dignitas, 100 Thieves certainly appeared to be a favorite, but a tough 1-2 loss to Shopify Rebellion (SR), particularly where it was Sniper in the top lane getting outclassed, stung their playoff chances. They did qualify into the lower bracket quarterfinals with a win against struggling Disguised Esports, but they once again felt the difference in the top lane once there, as SR bullied them 3-0 and Sniper contributed a pitiful 14% of his team’s damage share across the series. It was time for 100 Thieves to make a change.

The team welcomed FBI’s former teammate and top laner for the ‘24 NRG squad, Niship ‘Dhokla’ Doshi, who had been playing for Tier 2 organization NTMR Esports, before joining 100T in Split 3 as a positional coach for Sniper and then a 6th man. He got his first dose of playing time at the end of the Pick & Play phase of the regular season, and once 100 Thieves were facing elimination, he was never on the bench again. While Sniper, who is merely 18 years old, is a flashy top laner who can make game-changing plays and force solo kills, he lacks the reliability and, most importantly, champion pool that ‘Big Dhokes’ brings to the roster. Similarly to the prior split, 100T were slotted into the lower bracket quarterfinal after defeating LYON 3-1. At risk of elimination in every game, the LTA North broadcast began dubbing each 100T game “One Last Heist”, which became increasingly funnier as 100 Thieves continued to win games. Dhokla’s performances completely transformed 100T’s outlook on the game. No longer reliant on their Korean duo in mid and jungle to carry each match, FBI and Eyla improved game over game, with FBI even developing one of the most fearsome Lucians in the entire LTA North. It was all thanks to Dhokla up top, who maintained a top 3 KDA among top laners and whose self-sufficiency improved others in spades. As 100T defeated struggling Team Liquid, bounced powerhouse Cloud9 in a hype 5-game series, and overcame their demons in the lower bracket final, dominating SR in their rematch 3-0, where FBI died only a single time in those 3 games. After a humbling end to their Cinderella story, a 3-1 loss at the hands of FLY, 100 Thieves had done more than enough to earn their spot at the LTA Championship event in Allen, Texas.

In Allen, once more seeded in the lower bracket quarterfinal, 100T and Dhokla brought the hammer down on the LTA South region. Both representatives from Brazil, paiN Gaming and RED Canids, fell 3-0 at the hands of the Thieves, with Quid and FBI being 2 of the top 5 gold-farming players at the tournament. 100 Thieves have now secured their place as the 3rd LTA team at Worlds this year, and will play VKS in the lower bracket final on Saturday, September 27th, for seeding.

This qualification must feel incredible for Dhokla, who bickered with FLY top laner Bwipo about perceived perseverance and how Dhokla’s career should be considered “a failure.” Bwipo himself ended up in more trouble outside of their petty drama, once clips from his stream revealed some incredibly sexist comments about women competing in esports. FlyQuest decided to suspend Bwipo from competing in FLY’s opening match against VKS and will donate all of Bwipo’s prize winnings to causes that “support women in gaming.”

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Keys for These Squads 🔑

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For FlyQuest, Quad must open up his champion pool. His comfort mages are great, but if he still lacks the playmaking to keep up with Eastern mid laners, he will once again put a cap on how far FLY can go at Worlds this year. Busio and Massu should also be looking to use this World Championship to cement themselves as the best bot lane in the West. With Sivir receiving nerfs on this patch, a champion that Massu never really took to, this could be a great meta for him.

For Vivo Keyd Stars, their teamplay will have to tighten. Winning in the LTA South is an entirely different thing from winning on the world stage. Brazil has often been dubbed a solid mechanical region, but one that has trouble coordinating themselves for larger objective fights later in the game. With Trymbi as, what I assume is, the main shot caller, VKS must be ready to transform early game leads into late game wins. If they can get some experience in the swift stage against a weaker opponent before being forced to play against the eastern teams, that will serve them well. I am eyeballing Mireu, because should he retain the form that earned him the Finals MVP in the LTA South, they are capable of taking down any team in the West.

For 100 Thieves, multiple meta changes need to be monitored. For one, carry jungle champions Brand and Lillia received buffs on the most recent patch, and that could enable River to be more of a force in late-game team fights. On the other side of the same coin, Corki and aforementioned Sivir received nerfs to their kits, two champions that FBI had leaned on during 100T’s run. With buffs to other hypercarry ADCs like Jinx, Caitlyn, and Draven, perhaps FBI will be forced to take on a bigger role than he did during this late split surge. Is he up to the task?

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How Far Can These Teams Go? 🤔

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In my 3 years of watching professional League of Legends, which admittedly is not as long as some other die-hard fans, I have seen 3 different miraculous stories unfold at the World Championship. All 3 years, a Korean team has hoisted the Summoner’s Cup, and I (unfortunately) do not see a Western team being able to overcome the East this year. That being said:

I believe that FlyQuest will make it to the top 4 of the tournament, winning a playoff best-of-five on stage in Shanghai, and secure the best placement for a Western team at Worlds in half a decade.

I believe that Keyd Stars have the potential to win a swiss stage match, but I think their lack of international experience and sloppy teamfight setup will result in them going home 1-3 or 2-3 in swiss.

Lastly, I believe that 100 Thieves could potentially make the playoffs if FBI can find champions that work for him in the bottom lane. More likely, 100T will go out in swiss stage, just missing the playoffs with a 2-3 record.

Did I miss anything? Am I overdosing on LTA hopium? Who will not play like themselves at Worlds this year? Let me know either in the discussion of this post or on my Twitter @averygdh !

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The independent Power Esports Conference (PEC), which comprises 9 member schools including Syracuse, Boise State, Baylor, and Minnesota, concluded its opening weekend LAN at Syracuse University in conjunction with Gen.G Esports’ Campus Takeover on Saturday, September 20th. The opening weekend, a long-planned Rocket League LAN (local area network, or in-person) event was held in the newly furnished Schine Student Center Gaming and Esports lounge on Syracuse’s main campus. Matches were highly anticipated and preceded by a college-gameday-esque preshow and desk segment provided by the Syracuse Esports student staff and production team.

The slate for the weekend featured Syracuse vs. Michigan State University (MSU) as the first game, with Nebraska vs. Boise State following. The third match on stream would face the winners of the former games against one another to crown the official champion of the Syracuse PEC Kickoff Weekend LAN. The stakes were high and the hype was higher. Here’s how the matches shook out.

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MATCH 1: Michigan State 3 - 1 Syracuse

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Spirits were high during the fiery announcements of the teams, shrouded in smoke and doused in orange lights when they walked up the stage to take their seats. Syracuse’s squad, anchored by sophomore superstar Gabriel ‘ga.baby’ Goodwin, was completed this past summer with ga.baby’s friends, transfer Alex ‘tiz’ Ortiz-Rosado and fellow high school standout Matthew ‘Llessur’ Russell. They enter a Syracuse roster with high expectations after a disappointing 3-9 season in PEC conference play a year ago.

Michigan State, coming off a PEC 2nd Place finish this past season to Boise State, was a dominant regular season team and the heavy road favorites. Everything goes out the window on LAN though, and everything felt in flux after the first two games. While game 1 stuck to the script with MSU winning a nail-biting 3-2 score, game 2 reversed paths with Syracuse evening the series after a 3-1 victory. The raucous Syracuse home crowd, a room filled with over 100 fans of the Orange, must’ve shaken the Michigan State Spartans early. That wouldn’t last long.

​Games 3 and 4 were very dominant victories for the Spartans, who easily decimated the Orange and the spirits of their fans. They silenced the crowd behind white-hot frontman Connor ‘opp_bomb’ Neiheisel and his multi-goal games. For the Orange, the debut for tiz went about as well as you could hope, with his two scores in game 2 giving Syracuse their only game win on stream today.

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Game 2: Boise State 3 - Nebraska 0

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The crowd that initially energized the Syracuse Gaming and Esports Lounge had, by this point, mostly dispersed. For the University of Nebraska’s Rocket League team, this was a blessing in disguise. The Boise State Broncos came into this match as defending champions of the PEC for Rocket League and played like they had something to prove. The preshow analysts listed Boise State as the favorites, and even predicted them not to drop a game in the series.

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But I don’t think anyone could have expected the way this one played out.

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After the first match, a swift 6-1 thrashing led by Boise State ace Cade ‘wuzy’ Hall, things started to look dire for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Wuzy and his exceptional teammates, Emiliano ‘Durtho’ Flores and Preston ‘PRSTN’ Ferrante, came off a top 8 finish in the wider Collegiate Rocket League (CRL) circuit and displayed fantastic teamwork throughout. Games 2 and 3 carried more of the same unfortunate fate for the Cornhuskers, who nearly missed the game entirely due to travel complications. A 9-1 game 2 scoreline followed by a 10-2 game 3 means that Boise State resumes their place atop the PEC mountain, and were slated to play Michigan State for the opportunity to hang the inaugural PEC Kickoff banner among their trophies.

As the casters set the stage, “#1 and #2 in the preseason coaches poll,” the hype began to re-enter the venue. This final best-of-five series would decide it all.

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The Final: Boise State 3 - Michigan State 0

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Game 1 of the final series started with a bang, as Durtho scored a goal in the first five seconds after a lapse from the MSU defense. The Boise State squad continued to pressure the Spartans early, scoring again before Michigan State got one of their own to bring the scoreline to 1-2. MSU’s opp_bomb’s relentless attempts at offense was consistently drowned in the sea of Broncos cars. As the final whistle sounded, a 3-1 score left MSU in an early series deficit.

Game 2 started in much the same way as Game 1, with another quick score, this time from PRSTN, who knocked it in within 10 seconds of kickoff. Opp_bomb could not muster more than a single score as the suffocating Boise State attack kept MSU in their half of the field for what felt like a millennium. The final score of 5-1, propelled by a great game from wuzy and Durtho once again, placed Boise State on the cusp of an undefeated run at this season's kickoff.

Game 3, without an early score from either team, was a much slower affair. As the casters for this game poignantly identified: “Boise State can simplify their defense for this simple offense (from MSU).” After a late score from wuzy all but sealed the sweep, Boise State flexed its incredible mechanics and shut out the Spartans in the closeout game, 3-0. The Broncos will head home with an additional banner to hang in their rafters and a 6-0 game record to start their PEC run.

Off-stream, Syracuse evened their season record at 1-1 after their consolation match against Nebraska ended in a 3-0 sweep. The Cornhuskers fell to 0-2 and will resume conference play like Syracuse next week.

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Outlook

Boise State’s incredible run was capped off by an MVP award being issued to wuzy, which he proudly raised among his teammates. The Broncos utilize incredible fundamentals, complex passing attacks, and a suffocating boost-stealing system to trap opponents in an infinitely defensive loop. They are undeniably the same team from a year ago, and are poised for another deep PEC playoff run on LAN at the HyperX Arena in Las Vegas next April.

Michigan State, despite the disappointing result in the final, still looked like an incredibly solid team in this tournament. They should continue to grow and improve as a unit, and in both PEC and CRL, they will be a force to be reckoned with. Don’t lose track of Christian ‘Morveu’ Riegert on his redemption arc for 2024, and former pro Andrew ‘Druee’ Prill, who will look to right the wrongs from this final in Vegas.

Syracuse, contextually, had a very solid opening weekend for a roster that was full of question marks and new blood. The steady foundation that Director Esports Competition Travis Yang has laid with the help of ga.baby will shape the future of this exciting team. As the season progresses, all eyes will be on the development of new kid Llessur and how collegiate experience strengthens his already impressive mechanics.

Nebraska, after two tough games, leaves with a lot to think about. Their coaches will have a lot of excellent review material, and their next PEC game should be against less steep competition where their experienced players can shine.

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With a playoff format that includes every team in the league and a long season ahead, all eyes should be on the Power Esports Conference and its elite schools to produce in every collegiate league this fall.