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Riot Games is taking apart the closed season of its Asia-Pacific league after two years. In a post published on September 21, 2026, and signed by the staff of LoL Esports, the publisher said that from 2027 every team in the region will begin each split at home, in one of three domestic leagues: the PCS, the VCS or the LJL. The best of them will then qualify for the League of Legends Championship Pacific, the LCP.
The LCP itself changes nature. Until now it has been a season-long league of eight teams playing in Taiwan. Next year it becomes what Riot calls the bracket stage, the short knockout phase where the region's strongest teams meet to play for regional honors and for places at international tournaments. A split is one of the blocks into which a League of Legends season is divided, each with its own standings and its own title.
Riot presents the change as an adjustment and not a restart: the post says that not everything is being overhauled and that some things stay the same. What stays is the LCP's rank: it remains the top competition of the region and the only way for an Asia-Pacific team to reach a global event.
Riot Games, LoL Esports posts of September 21, 2026 and January 5, 2026.
What changes in 2027
The announcement turns on one point: where a season is played. Today a team that belongs to the LCP plays its whole year inside it. From 2027 no team does. All of them start each split in a domestic league, and the LCP opens only for those that finish high enough.
Related readPUBG Mobile names a new esports director and reworks PMGC qualification| Point | Through 2026 | From 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Where a split starts | In the LCP, for its eight teams | In the PCS, VCS or LJL, for every team |
| Access for domestic teams | One chance a year, through the Promotion Series | A chance in each split |
| Who gets that chance | One or two teams per league | Every team of the three leagues |
| Role of the LCP | Season-long league | Bracket stage leading to global events |
Riot Games, LoL Esports post of September 21, 2026.
The three leagues are national or regional circuits that existed before the LCP and have continued under it. When Riot introduced the LCP on September 30, 2024, it wrote that the PCS, the VCS and the LJL would sit just below the new league and keep operating domestically.
Riot states the difference in access plainly. Under the present rules a domestic team has one opportunity a year to reach the LCP, a tournament called the Promotion Series, and only one or two teams per league get to play in it. Under the new ones, the post says, every team in the three leagues competes for a place at the LCP in each split.
The path a team will follow
The post describes the new season as a sequence. It does not yet say how many teams pass from one stage to the next.
- Domestic leagueEvery team opens the split at home, in the PCS, the VCS or the LJL.
- LCP bracket stageThe best teams qualify and play for regional honors.
- Global eventsPlaces at international tournaments are awarded through the LCP only.
The last step is the one Riot insists on. "It will also remain the sole pathway into global events for APAC teams," the post says of the LCP, using the usual abbreviation for Asia-Pacific. A team cannot go from its domestic league straight to an international tournament. It has to pass through the regional bracket.
Riot's season primer of January 5, 2026 shows what those places are worth this year: one at First Stand, two at the Mid-Season Invitational and three at the World Championship. The announcement of September 21 does not say whether those numbers change.
Why teams are going home
The reason Riot gives is the cost of the current model for the teams. To play in the LCP, teams relocated to Taipei for the season. The post says that the relocation became expensive as costs rose, that it limited the contact teams could have with their own supporters, and that it kept players away from home and from the people around them for long periods.
Related readUbisoft opens R6 Europe MENA Challenger Circuit to partner eventsRiot's primer for the 2026 season describes the setting they moved to: matches are played at the LCP Arena in Taiwan, with tickets sold through local outlets.
From 2027, teams can return to their home regions. Riot expects two effects, according to the post: lower operating costs, and closer ties with fans and with commercial partners at home. Sheep Esports, which reported the announcement the same day, summed up the change as the end of the obligation to relocate to Taipei for a full season.
How the LCP was built
The league that is being reshaped is young. Riot announced it in September 2024 as a new multi-region competition for Asia-Pacific and one of five top-tier regional leagues in the game's ecosystem, to start in 2025. The stated aims, recalled in this week's post, were to showcase the region's talent, create new matchups and rivalries, and raise the level of competition between its territories.
A format post of November 1, 2024 gave the frame: three splits a year, opening with a Season Kickoff of eight teams. Some teams held their place as Guest teams, and the lower-placed of them may have to defend it in a promotion and relegation tournament. Promotion and relegation is the system, familiar from soccer, in which a team at the bottom of one level can be replaced by one from the level below.
The first season, in 2025, had three splits named Season Kickoff, Mid Season and Season Finals, and the winner of the last was the league's first champion. In that plan the Mid Season split sent two teams to the Mid-Season Invitational and the Season Finals carried three places at the World Championship.
Related readHow the Rainbow Six Seasonal Series ladder works for amateur teamsThe 2026 season kept that structure. It ran in three splits: from January 16 to March 1 and from April 4 to June 7, according to Riot's primer, and from July 25 to August 30, according to Riot's guide to the third split. Two of the eight teams, Deep Cross Gaming and Ground Zero Gaming, were Guest teams. The Promotion Series puts their two places in play, one described as a Free-for-All slot and one as a Regional Merit slot, and a Guest team that qualifies for the World Championship in the same year is exempt.
The season's formats were set out in the same primer. The first two splits were a single round-robin, in which each team meets every other once, played in best-of-three series, with the top six going on to a knockout stage of best-of-five series. The third used a Swiss stage, a system in which teams with the same record face each other until they reach three wins or three losses, followed by a four-team playoff in best-of-five series. A separate count of Championship Points across the year decided one of the places at the World Championship.
What the league has to show for two years
Riot's post also sets out what the league has achieved, and lists three results. The 2025 Mid Season Finals drew nearly 500,000 viewers at their peak, the highest figure the league has recorded. At the 2025 World Championship, CTBC Flying Oyster reached the last eight, the first time a team from the region had played a quarterfinal there since 2015. And in 2026 Team Secret Whales won every LCP title of the season and became the first Asia-Pacific team to beat a team from China's league, the LPL, in a best-of-five, a series won by the first side to take three games.
Related read2XKO Competitive Series will finish 2026 as Riot ends developmentThe post adds an observation about this year: the balance of power is shifting, it says, as Vietnamese teams rise to the top of the region.
Who gets revenue-pool money
The second half of the announcement concerns money. Riot shares part of its esports revenue with teams through what it calls the Global Revenue Pool, or GRP. The post describes two channels and widens the second.
The first is the Regional GRP. Teams currently in the LCP continue to receive it in 2027, and Riot specifies that this includes teams that earn promotion or defend their place in the Promotion Series. The post adds that teams entering the Promotion Series receive a direct share of the pool.
The second is the Global Event GRP. Teams that qualify for global events become eligible for it. Riot's summary of the principle is that the ceiling on what a team can earn is set by how far it goes, and not only by where it started. The post gives no amounts and no percentages for either channel.
Wild Card regions and what is still to come
Territories outside the three leagues keep a way in. Riot calls them Wild Card regions. The post says their path into the LCP is maintained and that organizers will be able to apply to run Wild Card tournaments connected to the LCP. When the league was designed in 2024, Riot named Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia as the wild card territories taking part so far. The same post said Riot was exploring a circuit for Oceania with a pathway into the LCP.
The number of LCP places per league has not been set
Riot has not said how many teams each domestic league sends to the bracket stage, how the bracket is played, or how Wild Card tournaments feed into it.
On those points the post gives a horizon and no date: "More details such as slot distribution and format will come in the coming months." The formats of the three domestic leagues for 2027, which are run with regional partners, are not part of the announcement either.
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