Bilibili Gaming take first place in Riot's Global Power Rankings

Bilibili Gaming are the first-ranked League of Legends team in the world, by the publisher's own count. Riot Games updated its Global Power Rankings on Monday, March 23, 2026, one day after the end of First Stand 2026, and the Chinese team that won the tournament moved to the top of the list, Sheep Esports reported on March 24. Gen.G, the South Korean team that led the ranking before the event, are second. G2 Esports, from Europe, are third.

The Global Power Rankings are a list of the top-division teams of every region, each given a score computed from its match results. Riot publishes it on its League of Legends esports site, together with a second table, the Regional Strength Scores, which rate the leagues themselves. Both tables changed on March 23.

Riot Games Global Power Rankings, update of March 23, 2026, as reported by Sheep Esports on March 24, 2026.

A new leader the day after the final

First Stand is the tournament that, in Riot's presentation, kicks off the annual League of Legends esports season. Its 2026 edition was played from March 16 to March 22 at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, with eight teams, according to the primer Riot published on March 2. Bilibili Gaming, one of the two teams sent by China's league, the LPL, won it. Sheep Esports writes that the team finally closed out a tournament after years of finishing second at international events.

The ranking followed within a day. Bilibili Gaming had already been climbing. The previous update, which Riot made on March 9 once the first split of the season had ended in every region, had brought the team back into the top five, Sheep Esports wrote on March 11, after what the outlet called an underwhelming showing at the most recent World Championship. A split is one of the competitions into which a league divides its year.

Sheep Esports prints no point total for any team in either update. It gives positions, movements and one gap: fewer than 30 points separate third place from fourth.

Gen.G pay for one series

Gen.G had taken first place only two weeks earlier. The March 9 update put them back on top after they won the LCK Cup, the opening competition of the South Korean league, Sheep Esports reported. They replaced T1, another South Korean team, which had held the first position after winning the 2025 World Championship.

In São Paulo, Gen.G began with a win. On Tuesday, March 17, the second day of the group stage, they beat JD Gaming, the other Chinese team in the field, in what Sheep Esports called a clean sweep, with no game lasting more than 30 minutes. A sweep is a series won without losing a single game.

Then came the semifinal of Saturday, March 21. G2 Esports beat Gen.G 3-0. Every match of First Stand is a best-of-five, according to Riot's primer: a series that goes to the first team to win three games. Sheep Esports, which called the result a shocking upset in its headline, noted that it was Gen.G's first series loss after ten series wins in a row. The same outlet's ranking report says that this single defeat weighed heavily on Gen.G's score and cost them the first place.

The drop is one position. Gen.G remain ahead of every team except the one that lifted the trophy.

G2 Esports pass T1 for third

The largest climb near the top belongs to G2 Esports. On March 9 the European team stood seventh, three places higher than before, after winning LEC Versus, the opening competition of Europe's league, the LEC. Two weeks later it is third.

The win over Gen.G carried G2 into the final of First Stand. It was the team's first international final in 2,323 days, since its run at the 2019 World Championship, Sheep Esports counted on the day of the semifinal. G2 became the second European finalist in the two editions of the tournament, after Karmine Corp in 2025.

In the ranking, G2 now sit on the podium, just in front of T1, which is fourth. The gap between the two is under 30 points, the only margin the report gives.

Hanwha Life Esports moved the other way. The South Korean team was still third on March 9, in spite of a start to the season that Sheep Esports described as disappointing. It is now sixth. Hanwha Life Esports did not play in São Paulo: South Korea's two places went to Gen.G and BNK FearX.

From BNK FearX to LYON, the rest of the top 30

BNK FearX are the team whose position changed most over the first weeks of the season. Reaching the LCK Cup final lifted them from 25th to 13th in the March 9 update, and qualified them for First Stand. After a tournament that Sheep Esports called underwhelming for them, they lose one place and stay inside the top 15.

Karmine Corp, beaten by G2 in the LEC Versus final, gain two places. They had risen four positions to 15th on March 9. They now sit directly below FlyQuest, which is 12th and remains the highest-ranked team of North America's league, the LCS, although it did not take part in First Stand.

North America's representative in São Paulo was LYON, the LCS champion. Sheep Esports reported on March 11 that LYON had jumped 17 places to 27th in the March 9 update. In the group stage it beat LOUD, the Brazilian representative, in five games on March 17. The March 24 report places it 26th and counts that as a gain of two places, one more than the two published positions give.

Brazil's league, the CBLOL, has no team among the first 30, Sheep Esports notes. The same report says the teams of the Asia-Pacific league, the LCP, keep climbing and have become dangerous outsiders.

The regional table tightens

The second table rates leagues. The LCK stays first with 1,425 points. The LPL is second, and Sheep Esports writes that the gap between the two has narrowed dramatically, without printing the Chinese league's new score. On March 9 the LPL had 1,353 points and the LCK 1,586, a difference of 233.

Two movements stand out in the figures the two reports give. The LCK lost 161 points in two weeks, the fortnight in which its two representatives both left First Stand without the trophy. The LEC gained 128, the fortnight in which its only representative reached the final. Europe's league is third. The distance between the LCK and the LEC, 417 points on March 9, is now 128.

The LCP, which was fourth on March 9, keeps that position with 1,123 points, 33 fewer than before. The LCS is fifth with 1,081, and the CBLOL sixth with 855.

How Riot computes the scores

Riot Games introduced the Global Power Rankings on September 19, 2024, shortly before that year's World Championship, in an article signed by its esports staff. Riot presents the rankings as powered by technology from Amazon Web Services. Its purpose is stated in one line: "The Global Power Rankings provide a ranking system for all Tier 1 League of Legends teams worldwide." Tier 1 means the top division of each region.

Riot describes the method as an Elo-like model, a rating that moves up or down with each result. It keeps two ratings, one for each team and one for each league, and blends them: the team's own rating counts for 80 per cent of its power score and its league's rating for 20 per cent. A team's score therefore depends in part on its region. That is the link between the two tables of March 23.

A First Stand semifinal is both an international match and a knockout match, the two cases Riot's 2024 article says the model weighs more heavily.

The ratings also look back. Riot's 2024 article says a team's rating uses a two-year window of results and a league's rating a three-year window, a choice the article presents as a balance between roster changes and a robust sample size. Sheep Esports, citing Riot's esports site, listed four criteria on March 11: recent performance, the importance of a match in the season, playstyle and execution inside the game, and the overall strength of the opponents faced.

Riot's 2024 article presents the system as a way for fans to see where their teams stand. It names no tournament place and no seeding that depends on the ranking.

What the season holds next

The next international event is already set. On March 22, the day of the First Stand final, Riot Games set out the next international event, the Mid-Season Invitational, known as MSI. It will be played from June 28 to July 12, 2026, at the Daejeon Convention Center II in Daejeon, South Korea.

Eleven teams will qualify, the publisher said: two each from the LCK, the LPL, the LEC, the LCS and the LCP, and one from the CBLOL. Seven of them skip the Play-In stage, the preliminary round. They are the first seed of each region and, as Riot words it, the second seed of the highest-ranking two-seed region from First Stand. Seeding is the order in which teams enter a tournament. The results of São Paulo therefore carry a concrete reward for one league, separate from any ranking point.

Before MSI, the regions return to their own competitions. Riot's announcement places the event after First Stand and after the completion of the second regional splits. Riot's 2024 article says the model is updated after every game, and the next international games on the calendar are those of Daejeon, from June 28.

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