Los Ratones shut down: the end of a creator-led League of Legends team

Los Ratones, the League of Legends team owned by the streamer Caedrel, is shutting down. Caedrel, also the team's CEO, announced it on February 12, 2026, in a long video posted on the team's own YouTube channel, Sheep Esports reported the same day, after the team missed the playoffs of LEC Versus, the new winter tournament of the LEC, the top league of the EMEA region.

"Los Ratones will be shutting down," Caedrel said in the video, according to Sheep Esports. He added that it was highly likely the team would never come back, and that the project started and ended with this group of players. The shutdown closes an experiment of the European scene: a team built around a content creator, its streams and its audience, that won its way from the regional leagues to a place against the ten teams of the LEC.

A team built around a streamer

Los Ratones was built around its owner. Sheep Esports has described the team as owned by the streamer Caedrel, and its project as one that brought significant viewership and a large amount of content. The team streamed its scrims, the practice matches teams play against each other away from official competition.

The line between team and channel ran through the roster too. Until the step up to the LEC, Caedrel held two roles at once, according to Sheep Esports: head coach of the team and streamer of its matches. The top laner, Baus, is himself a streamer who joined the team from solo queue streaming. Around them stood three former LEC players, Rekkles, Crownie and Nemesis, and a rookie jungler, Velja.

Creators were present at every level of the team: before the LEC the owner was a streamer who also coached, one of the players was a streamer, and the team's own practice went out on stream.

From the regional leagues to the LEC

The results gave the project its weight. In 2025, Los Ratones won all three splits of the NLC, one of the EMEA Regional Leagues (ERLs) that form the second tier below the LEC, and two EMEA Masters titles, the tournament between the best teams of those regional leagues. According to Sheep Esports, all five finals ended in 3-0 sweeps.

Winning the second tier did not open a direct door to the first: in November 2025 Sheep Esports noted that the team had no path into a major league. What Los Ratones received instead was a guest slot. Riot Games changed the LEC's 2026 format to bring ERL teams into its winter split, and Los Ratones and Karmine Corp Blue became the two ERL guests of LEC Versus.

Riot Games set out how the two places were earned in its preview of the 2026 regional season, published on November 27, 2025. Karmine Corp Blue took its spot as the EMEA Masters Summer 2025 champion, and Los Ratones as a two-time EMEA Masters champion. Riot described LEC Versus as the first top-tier competition to include teams from the regional leagues, and guaranteed both guests at least 11 games. The price of the invitation was the regional season itself: both teams would miss their regular ERL winter seasons, and Riot said organizers were working on some flexibility for the winter playoffs.

At the same time, the team changed its own structure for the step up. Caedrel moved away from the dual role of head coach and streamer. YamatoCannon took over as head coach and Shaves as assistant coach, both signed exclusively for LEC Versus, Sheep Esports reported on December 1, 2025. The two had started working together for the team at Red Bull League of Its Own in Munich. The five players stayed the same.

How LEC Versus worked

LEC Versus was a new tournament for the 2026 season, and its format shaped the team's chances. According to Riot Games' primer of December 16, 2025, it brought together 12 teams: the ten LEC teams and the two guests from the regional leagues. It began on January 17 with a single round robin, in which every team meets every other team once, played as best-of-one games, single games rather than series. Six matches were played on each game day over four weeks, every day from 17:00 CET at the Riot Games Arena.

Only the top eight of the 12 teams went on to the playoffs, a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out only after a second defeat. Its first two rounds are best-of-three series and every later round a best-of-five. The playoffs decide the region's only place at First Stand, an international Riot Games tournament.

Riot said it wanted the two regional teams to face every LEC team, so that fans could see every matchup between them. For Los Ratones, that meant one tournament, eleven games and a top-eight line to cross.

A late run that fell short

The start was the hardest part. Los Ratones lost its first four games of LEC Versus, Sheep Esports reported. The team then won four in a row, with victories over Movistar KOI and G2 Esports among them, and went into the final day with its fate still open.

To reach the playoffs, Los Ratones needed to beat Vitality on the last day, or to get help from other results, one of them a Karmine Corp win over Team Heretics. Neither came. Los Ratones did not beat Vitality, Karmine Corp lost to Team Heretics, and Los Ratones finished outside the top eight.

In the video, Caedrel put the result on the team itself, saying that its fate had been in its own hands and that it had let it slip, as reported by Sheep Esports. He also spoke of each player's progress over the split, saying that Baus had developed into an LEC top laner in a short time and calling Crownie the team's rock in its communication and its direction. He said Velja had started slowly before finding his rhythm, that Nemesis had shown he still had what it takes, and that Rekkles, in his first LEC split as a support, had grown more confident as the weeks went on.

Why there was no second tier to return to

The owner had already closed the regional route. In November 2025, on his Twitch stream, Caedrel said the team would not play in the ERLs, the second tier, in the next season, Sheep Esports reported on November 24, 2025. Asked about the LFL, another of the regional leagues, he said the team would not go there either, and he had already said a few weeks earlier that Los Ratones would not return to the NLC.

At the time, he said he did not know what would happen to the roster after the LEC, and that the project had been great and playing in the LEC was awesome. The regional system itself was opening up for 2026. Riot's November 2025 preview listed 13 regional leagues, each playing three splits, and removed the common rule on locally trained representatives (LTRs), which had required every ERL team to field at least two of them. Each league could now set its own guidelines. Sheep Esports noted in December that this change left other regional leagues, such as the LFL or the Prime League, open to the roster in principle.

With the regional leagues ruled out by the owner himself, LEC Versus was the only competition announced for the team in 2026.

What the end leaves behind

Sheep Esports reported that Rekkles, Baus and YamatoCannon had all announced that they would not continue beyond Los Ratones. The team's line-up, built for one tournament with a coaching staff signed only for that tournament, ends with it.

The record stays: three NLC titles and two EMEA Masters titles in 2025, and a debut LEC tournament in 2026 that included wins over Movistar KOI and G2 Esports. LEC Versus continues without Los Ratones, with its playoffs to decide the region's place at First Stand.

For the scene, the experiment showed how far a team built on a creator's channel could go on the field, from the regional leagues to the LEC. It also showed where that road stopped: a guest place for one tournament, and no path the team itself was willing to take after it.

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