First Stand 2026: eight teams and best-of-five play in São Paulo

Six of the eight teams are named, and the last two will come out of China this week. Riot Games published the primer of the First Stand Tournament 2026 on its League of Legends esports site on Monday, March 2, 2026, two weeks before the event opens at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, Brazil. First Stand runs from March 16 to March 22, in two stages, and every match in it is a best-of-five.

First Stand is the first international tournament of the League of Legends year, the one that, in the primer's words, kicks off the annual season. It gathers the teams that won the opening competition of each regional league. They play for a trophy and for something that reaches further into the calendar: better seeding for their whole region at the Mid-Season Invitational, the second international event, known as MSI.

Six names, and two places still open

The primer lists the teams by region. Korea, whose league is the LCK, sends two: Gen.G and BNK FearX. Europe's LEC sends G2 Esports, North America's LCS sends LYON, the Asia-Pacific league LCP sends Team Secret Whales and Brazil's CBLOL sends LOUD. China's league, the LPL, also has two places, and the page leaves both blank.

The two Chinese places carry dates instead of names: one is settled on Wednesday, March 4 and the other on Saturday, March 7. The primer adds that the LPL finals end before the First Stand draw show, the broadcast in which the teams are placed, also set for March 7.

The split of the eight places is not new information. Riot Games gave it on January 8, 2026, in its presentation of the season: two teams each for the LCK and the LPL, one each for the LEC, the LCS, the CBLOL and the LCP. The North American place was attached to a specific title. Riot's guide to the LCS Lock-In playoffs, published on February 17, said the winner of that competition, whose final was scheduled for March 1 in Los Angeles, would represent North America in São Paulo. The primer, published the day after that final, carries LYON's name on that line.

Seven days in the CBLOL's arena

The tournament fills one week. The group stage runs for five days, from Monday, March 16 to Friday, March 20. The knockout stage is played on Saturday, March 21, and the final on Sunday, March 22.

Each day begins at the same hour: 10 am in São Paulo, which is 6 am Pacific time and 10 pm in Korea. Half of the field, the two LCK teams and the two LPL teams, comes from leagues based in East Asia.

The venue is the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, which the publisher described in January as the beating heart of the CBLOL. Tickets went on sale on January 20 through the vendor Eventim, according to the same presentation.

The arena will already be busy. From March 4 to March 8 it hosts the Americas Cup, a five-day tournament Riot Games announced on February 18 between the second- and third-placed teams of the LCS and of the CBLOL, four teams in all. Riot wrote that it lands the week before First Stand. Its winner earns a place in a two-week training camp in Korea during MSI, paid for by the publisher. It is a separate competition: Riot's announcement attaches no First Stand place to it.

Every match a best-of-five

The format is where the primer is most direct. First Stand has two stages, a group stage and a knockout stage, and every match in both is a best-of-five: a series that ends when one team has won three games. A series can therefore last three, four or five games. Riot presents the choice as a way to give teams more room to adapt during a series and to produce more high-stakes moments.

That is a change from the first edition. In 2025, according to the primer Riot published for that tournament, the opening stage was a round robin in which each of the five teams met every other team in a best-of-three, a series won with two games. Only the knockout matches, two semifinals and a final, were best-of-fives.

The primer does not go into the composition of the groups or the number of teams that leave them. It links to the 2026 rulebook, and a separate format explainer was published the same day under a tagline that counts seven days, six regions and one victor.

One rule introduced in the regional leagues this season is worth knowing. Riot Games announced in January that "First Selection" replaces side selection in all regions from the start of 2026. Until now, the team that earned the privilege chose which side of the map it played on. It now chooses one of two things: its side, or whether it picks first or second in the draft, the phase before each game in which teams take turns selecting and banning champions, the game's playable characters. The opposing team gets the choice that is left. The publisher said the change followed the success of Fearless Draft, the rule under which a champion used in one game of a series cannot be picked again in the later games by either team.

From five teams in Seoul to eight in São Paulo

First Stand is a young event. Its first edition took place from March 10 to 16, 2025, at LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea, and Riot's primer of the time called it the inaugural First Stand Tournament. Five teams took part, one per region: Top Esports for the LPL, Hanwha Life Esports for the LCK, Karmine Corp for the LEC, Team Liquid Honda for the Americas league then called the LTA, and CTBC Flying Oyster for the LCP. The round robin eliminated one team, the one that finished fifth.

Three places were added in a year. Two come from the second places given to Korea and China. The third comes from the Americas. In 2025 the two American leagues competed inside a single structure, the LTA, which had one First Stand place. On September 29, 2025, Riot Games announced that the LCS and the CBLOL would return in 2026 as independent leagues, each running its own season and crowning its own champion, and that international qualification would go back to the model used in 2024, with First Stand included: one place for the LCS and one for the CBLOL. The publisher said then that communities had asked to have their leagues back and that the 2025 formats had felt too compressed and too complex.

For LOUD, the CBLOL's representative, the result is a first international event of the year played in its own league's arena.

What the trophy changes for MSI

The primer names two things at stake: the First Stand trophy and what it calls advantageous seeding for the winner's region at MSI. Seeding is the order in which teams are placed in a tournament, and it decides who has to play the extra early rounds.

Riot was more precise in January. Its season presentation said that a team's placement at First Stand affects MSI seeding, and that the winning region receives a bye from the Play-In stage, the preliminary round of MSI. A bye means skipping a round without playing it. The reward belongs to the league, not to the team that earns it: the club that wins in São Paulo may not be the one that uses it in the summer.

The 2025 edition shows the kind of effect involved. Riot's primer for MSI 2025 listed ten teams, two per region, and said the draw of the main bracket was based on First Stand results. Its draw tiers placed six teams outside the Play-In tier: the first seed of each of the five regions and the second seed of the LCK. The last tier was reserved for the teams coming out of the Play-In stage.

MSI 2026 will be held in Daejeon, South Korea, the first time the event goes to that city, Riot Games said in January. Venue and event details were to follow.

Money is handled differently. The primer gives no prize pool. Riot's January presentation said that, starting in 2026, the prize pools of regional splits are removed in the regions that take part in the Global Revenue Pool, while the prize pools of the three international events, First Stand, MSI and Worlds, remain funded by that pool. The CBLOL and the LCP are not affected by the change, because their partnership models differ, Riot said.

In the arena, at the fan fest and on screen

Much of the primer is addressed to people who will not have a seat in the arena. On the day of the final, March 22, Riot holds a Runeterra Fan Fest at the Visual Farm Gymnasium in São Paulo, where visitors can try the publisher's games at play stations, meet cosplayers and visit an artists' gallery. Riot states the terms plainly: "Tickets are free and are available on a first-come, first-served basis."

Co-streaming returns, including on site. Co-streamers are creators authorized to show the official matches on their own channels with their own commentary. Local creators will broadcast from the venue, the qualified teams are invited to run official team co-streams, and the full list is due on March 11.

Viewers can receive Drops, in-game items handed out during broadcasts, including an Evelynn emote during the final. Two paid items are tied to the event: a share of the Twitch subscriptions taken on the participating League of Legends esports channels goes to the Global Revenue Pool, and from March 18 to April 15 a share of the sales of the Warhounds Senna skin, a cosmetic outfit for one champion, goes to League of Legends esports teams.

The next dates are close together. The LPL fills its first place on March 4 and its second on March 7, the day of the draw show. The co-streamer list follows on March 11, and the first series in São Paulo starts on March 16 at 10 am local time.

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