2018 World Championship

The general information

2018 World Championship is one of the biggest events in the world of League of Legends and in the esports industry in general. The world championship will be hosted from October 1 to November 3.

The prize pool

The prize pool will be divided among participants in the following way:

The qualifiers

24 professional teams will take part in the tournament.

14 invites will be distributed among the winners of Splits in each of the divisions

Teams that will pass to Play-In:

Brazil (CBLOL)
CIS (LCL)
Japan (LJL)
The north part of Latin America (LLN)
The south part of Latin America (CLS)
Oceania (OPL)
Southeast Asia (SEA Tour)
Turkey (TCL)

These teams will go to the Play-In stage.

Teams that will pass to the group stage:

China (LPL)
Europe (EU LCS)
Korea (LCK)
North America (NA LCS)
Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao (LMS)
Vietnam (VCS)

These teams will go to the group stage as the first seeding.

5 invitations will be distributed among the best teams that have proved themselves in the spring and summer season in the following divisions:

Korea (LCK)
China (LPL)
Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao (LMS)
North America (NA LCS)

Teams with the biggest number of points will advance to the group stage as the second seeding. The rest of the participants will qualify for the regional finals, depending on the number of their points.

5 invites will be distributed among the winners of the regional finals of the following divisions:

Korea (LCK)

*the winner will advance to the group stage as the third seeding*

China (LPL)
Europe (EU LCS)
Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao (LMS)
North America (NA LCS)

*the winners will go to the Play-In stage as the third seeding*

Play-In Round 1

It will be hosted in Seoul on October 1-4. Twelve teams will be divided into 4 groups and will play by a Double Round Robin system. All matches will be hosted in a bo1 format. The top two teams from each group will advance to Play-In Round 2. The lowest two teams will finish their participation in the tournament.

Play-In Round 2

It will be hosted in Seoul on October 6-7. Teams that have placed first in their groups in the previous round will be randomly seeded with teams from other groups, which have placed second. Matches will be run in a bo5 format. The winner of each group will advance to the group stage.

The group stage

It will be hosted in Busan on October 10-21. Four winners of Play-In Round 2 will join other twelve teams from Korea, China, Europe, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao, North America, and Vietnam. Sixteen teams will be divided into four groups to play by a Double Round Robin system like it was at Play-In Round 1. All matches will be run in a bo1 format. The top two teams will advance from each group to the elimination stage. The lowest teams will be eliminated from the competition.

The elimination stage

It will be hosted in Gwangju on October 27-28 and in Incheon on November 3. Eight teams will be playing bo5 matches for five days.

World Draw Show will be carried out on September 23 and will begin at 15:00. All teams that receive an invitation to Play-In and the group stage of the upcoming 2018 World Championship will take part in it.

The coverage of the tournament

James “Dash” Patterson will be the main host of the championship. Eefje “Sjokz” Depoortere and Ovilee “Ovilee” May will interview players. Such representatives of the world of esports as Mark “MarkZ” Zimmerman and Joshua “Jatt” Leesman will analyze matches for us. Such personalities as Clayton “CaptainFlowers” Raines, Daniel “Drakos” Drakos, David “Phreak” Turley, Jake “Spawn” Tiberi, Julian “Pastrytime” Carr, Rivington Bruce “Riv” Bislan III, and Trevor “Quickshot” Henry will cast matches. The events at World Draw Show will be commented by the following casters: Andrew “Vedius” Day, Barento “Raz” Mohammed, Christopher “PapaSmithy” Smith, Indiana Juniper “Froskurinn” Black, Isaac “Azael” Cummings Bentley, Martin “Deficio” Lynge, and Sam “Kobe” Hartman-Kenzler.