​League of Legends is a MOBA game developed by the American studio Riot Games in 2009. The creation of Riot became successful among gamers rapidly and entered the charts of the most popular video games.

With the development of the game, League of Legends quickly grew into an international phenomenon and became one of most popular disciplines in esports schedule. We are talking about the dawn of League of Legends as an esports discipline, how it became popular, and which LoL tournaments are popular among fans.

The origin of esports in League of Legends

League of Legends had all components to transform into an esports discipline, which happened eventually. The MOBA genre pushed LoL to develop its competitive environment.

The game switched to big esports completely in 2011. The countdown of major LoL tournaments can be started in 2011 when Riot Season 1 Championship was carried out.

At the first World Championship, Riot described the vector of development for LoL as an esports discipline: inclusivity, mass character, accessibility, and competitiveness. Riot did not make concessions to participants because only teams, which had passed the qualifying events, were able to go to the world championship in Sweden.

In total, Riot Season 1 Championship gathered 8 teams from 4 regions: 3 teams from North America, 3 teams from Europe, and 1 team from the Philippines and Singapore.

The Europeans from Fnatic were the triumphalists of the first championship, they grabbed 50,000 dollars of the main prize. However, the first Riot Season 1 Championship was a test and the League of Legends tournaments transformed into franchises 2 years later.

The main League of Legends tournaments and their formats

Regional leagues are the driver of the competitive League of Legends scene. In total, there were 10 main League of Legends regions but 1 of them was closed after the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine in 2022.

The list of the main regional League of Legends tournaments

• LCK – South Korea
• LPL – China
• LEC – Western Europe
• LCS – North America
• CBLOL – Brazil
• LJL – Japan
• LLA – Latin America
• VCS – Vietnam
• PCS – Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Southeast Asia

Previously, the Continental League (LCL) was operating in the CIS but it was paused. The main LoL tournaments are in 4 regions: LPL, LCK, LEC, and LCS.

In 2023, there are 9 regions, each of which has its individual qualities but is built by one principle:

• LoL tournaments are hosted in a league format.
• The competitive year is divided into equal parts, depending on the region. The most frequent ones are a spring tournament (Spring Split) and a summer tournament (Summer Split).
• Each split is finished by one big tournament: The spring one – Mid-Season Invitational, and the summer one – Worlds.

Similar aspects of regional leagues include formats. The most popular type of LoL tournament is a regular season in the Round-Robin format (bo1 or bo3 matches) and the Single-Elimination playoffs.

Riot started introducing Double-Elimination brackets to its competitions in 2023. It will be tested in LEC and also at the biggest international LoL tournaments – Mid-Season Invitational and Worlds.

The main organizers of League of Legends tournaments

The main and only organizer of League of Legends tournaments is Riot Games. They host championships in all competitive regions and, also, organize the Mid-Season Invitational and Worlds tournaments.

Mid-Season Invitational is an analog of Majors from other disciplines (CS:GO, Dota 2). The champions of local leagues compete in this series of tournaments.

The tournament is hosted in a few stages and teams are seeded depending on the international results of the region they represent. Historically, South Korea dominates the professional scene and has leading positions at such events. However, the colleagues from LPL began catching up with them in the middle of the 10s.

Worlds are the final League of Legends tournaments in a competitive year. Classically, the championship is held in autumn, after the end of summer splits in regions.

Besides, the teams, which earned points in regional ladders, proceed to Worlds. Such points are called Championship Points and are earned during the season for participating in a home league.

Worlds is carried out in a few stages: Play-In (the additional qualifiers for the top-3/top-2 teams from regional leagues), the group stage, and the playoffs.

Match formats in League of Legends

Having a pretty unique esports scene structure, League of Legends has pretty trivial match rules. It seems to be right because there is not so much room to imagine something.

The main match formats in League of Legends are bo1, bo3, and bo5. Bo1 matches are mainly played in regional leagues (LEC, LCS), just like bo3 (LCK, LPL).

Bo5 matches are especially widespread in League of Legends. Unlike other disciplines where bo5 is played in the grand finals of the biggest tournaments, this match format is used almost everywhere in LoL: the playoff stage of all major regions, MSI, and Worlds.

The tournament schedule and League of Legends matches

To say that the competitive League of Legends season is extensive is to say nothing. There are a lot of LoL matches in the main regions but there are tier-2 tournaments like EU Masters and non-partnership leagues like LFL and others.

You can try to follow all the events yourself but it is complicated. We have tried and the result of our efforts is our portal.

We have collected all important League of Legends tournaments and covered available LoL matches. Besides the titled events like MSI, Worlds, and regional leagues in major regions, we follow the local scene: Polish leagues, Spanish tournaments, Brazil battles, etc.

Also, we provide analytics on LoL matches and their live scores. Generally, we do everything possible to make watching esports League of Legends comfortable.