MISA Esports, three-time TCL champion, leaves League of Legends

MISA Esports won 20 of the 21 games it played in the Turkish league this spring, and took the title without losing a game in the playoffs. On Friday, June 19, 2026, the organization announced on X that it was ending its time in League of Legends, Sheep Esports reported the same day. The whole section is disbanded, and MISA will not take part in the Summer 2026 split of the TCL, the Turkish Championship League.

The statement, as Sheep Esports relays it, says MISA has decided to bring its journey in League of Legends esports to an end. It describes a group that became, over three years, a family as well as a team, and an organization that wanted to help the Turkish League of Legends scene advance.

The league loses its reigning champion. According to Sheep Esports, the Spring 2026 title was MISA's third in a row.

What MISA announced on June 19

The announcement covers one game and all of it. Sheep Esports writes that MISA is disbanding its entire League of Legends section, and that the Summer 2026 split will be played without it.

The organization was founded in 2023, according to the same report. Its first split in the Turkish league came the following year: Sheep Esports's team page for MISA starts its record with the TCL 2024 Winter split.

The timing sets the news apart. MISA leaves as the holder of the title, after a spring final won three games to none against PCIFIC Esports.

From mid-table to 95 per cent

Sheep Esports keeps a record of MISA's games split by split, and the curve is steep. In its first TCL split, the team won fewer than half of its games. Two years later it was losing one game per split.

The jump comes between the summer of 2025 and the start of 2026. The Kickoff split that opened the 2026 season counts 15 games and a single defeat. The spring split counts 21 games and, again, one defeat.

That spring can be followed match by match on the same page. MISA beat Ozarox Esports, Team Phoenix, SU Esports, BoostGate Esports, PCIFIC Esports and Dark Passage two games to none. Bushido Wildcats took the only game it dropped, in a series MISA still won 2-1 in the sixth week. In the playoffs it beat Ozarox Esports 3-0, then PCIFIC Esports 3-0 in the final.

Across the whole of 2026, Turkish league and European competition together, the page counts 63 games and 50 wins.

The spring that came apart in Europe

The domestic record tells half of the season. The other half was played in the EMEA Masters, and it is there that the project met its limits.

The winter edition began on March 9. MISA was one of the three Turkish representatives, with S2G Esports and Bushido Wildcats, while the four best-represented leagues, the French LFL among them, sent four teams each.

The format was laid out by Sheep Esports before the start. The champions of the eight highest-ranked leagues first met in best-of-three series, won by the first team to take two games; the winners went straight to the playoffs and the losers dropped into the groups. Eight groups of four followed, with only the winner of each group going through. The twelve teams left then played a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out after its second lost series. According to Sheep Esports, the support player Stend had replaced Way in the line-up ahead of the tournament. The support is the player who protects and sets up the team's main damage dealer.

The stakes went beyond the trophy. Sheep Esports reported that the two best teams of the event that were not academy sides would earn a place in a qualifier against teams of the LEC, the top league of the region, for the Esports World Cup.

MISA reached the lower-bracket final. On April 14 it led Solary, the French champion, two games to none and lost 3-2. Solary took the place in the grand final and, with it, the second and last spot in the Esports World Cup qualifier.

Ziyad Misali, MISA's chief executive, reacted after that series. "After this, I have no stronger card left to play for TCL," he said, as quoted by Sheep Esports.

Two days later, the roster began to open up. On April 16, Stend said he was looking for a new team after the organization had decided to stop with its current roster, Sheep Esports reported on April 17. The jungler 113, the player who roams between the lanes of the map, said the same evening that he had been given permission to explore his options for the rest of the season. The assistant coaches HirumaY and Nalkya received the same permission.

The team that finished the spring was not the one that had started the year. Sheep Esports writes that MISA went into the Spring split with three new players while keeping 113 and the top laner Ragner. Its team page lists Kofte in the middle lane, Ruep in the bottom lane and Carry as support beside them.

That line-up won the Turkish title and went back to the EMEA Masters for the spring edition. It beat E WIE EINFACH E-SPORTS twice, 2-0 each time, lost 0-2 to UCAM Esports, and reached the quarterfinals. There it lost 0-3 to Galions, the French team that had played the winter final. Sheep Esports writes that the defeat ended MISA's season. It was the last series the team played.

A league that keeps losing its names

MISA's is the fourth departure from the TCL announced in 2026.

On January 6, the league itself announced on social media that three teams would not return for the new season, Sheep Esports reported that day: Beşiktaş Esports, Papara SuperMassive and ULF Esports.

Beşiktaş Esports had played in the league since the Winter 2015 split, and only Dark Passage had been there longer. Its statement in January said that its presence in the league was not sustainable for now, that the departure was not final and that it would like to return if conditions changed. Papara SuperMassive, which joined in 2016, had represented the league at the World Championship in 2018 and 2020. ULF Esports had bought its place only a year earlier and decided to end its League of Legends division; it has qualified for VCT EMEA in another game, Valorant.

Sheep Esports adds a fifth name to the list of those gone since 2023: Istanbul Wildcats.

Each organization has given its own account, or none. MISA's statement, in the passages Sheep Esports relays, speaks of a decision and of three years, and names no cause.

What the Turkish title is worth today

Part of the background is the status of the league itself, which has changed since MISA's founders started their project.

Sheep Esports recalls that the TCL was once counted among the major regions. Through 2022, its champion went to the Play-ins of the World Championship, the opening stage of the game's biggest tournament. A Turkish title was a ticket to the world stage. Beşiktaş's history shows how far back that goes: Sheep Esports notes that it was one of the six teams of the first Mid-Season Invitational, at a time when the Turkish league was a first-tier region.

In 2023 the TCL was integrated into the circuit of European regional leagues. Its champion now qualifies for the EMEA Masters, alongside the champions of leagues such as the French LFL, and no longer directly for the World Championship.

MISA was founded that same year. Every one of its titles was therefore won under the new status, where the road for a Turkish champion leads to the EMEA Masters and, this year, to a possible qualifier for the Esports World Cup against LEC teams. In April, MISA came within one game of that qualifier.

The summer split without its champion

The TCL Summer 2026 split will be played without the team that won the last three. Sheep Esports's report gives no replacement for MISA's place and no change to the format.

Stend has been looking for a team since April 16, which is 64 days before the announcement of June 19, and the two assistant coaches were cleared to explore their options at the same period. For 113, Ragner, Kofte, Ruep and Carry, the disbanding of the section opens the same search in the middle of the season.

For the league, the count since January 6 stands at four departures. One of the four left a door open in writing: Beşiktaş Esports, which said it would like to come back. MISA's statement, as relayed, says nothing of a return.

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