MPL Malaysia names the eight teams of its Partnership Programme

MPL Malaysia will start its 17th season with eight teams chosen by the publisher of the game, and five of them come from outside the country. Moonton Games, the Malaysia Esports Federation and Esports Integrated, which spoke on behalf of the Ministry of Youth and Sports, presented the list on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, at the MSN Esports Hub in Kuala Lumpur, according to Moonton's own release.

The eight teams form the league's new Partnership Programme, the name Moonton gives to the model that replaces the format the league had used until Season 16. MPL stands for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang Professional League, the national leagues Moonton runs for its mobile game, in which two teams of five players try to destroy each other's base. The Malaysian one is, in the publisher's words, the largest and longest-running esports league in the country.

Three Malaysian teams, five from abroad

Moonton's release lists the eight names and says they range from homegrown organizations to international ones. The Malaysian news agency Bernama, in a report carried by Malay Mail the same day, gives the origin of each.

Selangor Red Giants, Team Vamos and Team Rey are the three Malaysian organizations kept from Season 16, Bernama reported, and it describes Selangor Red Giants as the title holders. The other five did not play Season 16.

Two of them arrive from Indonesia. Rex Regum Qeon and Bigetron are organizations of MPL Indonesia that now own a second team in Malaysia, Esports Insider wrote on February 24. Invictus Gaming, a Chinese organization, also fields a second team here; it has competed in China's Mobile Legends scene since 2025, the outlet said. Bernama places All Combo in China as well.

The eighth team moves from one national league to another. Team Flash, based in Singapore, has played Mobile Legends since 2018, entered MPL Singapore in its second season and won it four times, according to Esports Insider. It announced its departure from that league on the day of the Malaysian announcement.

What a partnership changes

Under the new model, the teams of the league are selected, and the eight names were announced before the season as a single group.

Moonton's release describes what the program is meant to do in three areas: the development of talent, commercial collaboration and the link with fans. Bernama adds the two terms that matter most to a team owner. The partnership lasts four years, the agency reported, and the teams are evaluated every year so that the league keeps its standards. It also quoted Krystal Tan, Head of Business Development for Malaysia Esports at Moonton Games, as saying the teams were chosen through a careful process, with the future of Malaysian esports as the first priority.

Tan called the program a pioneering move that goes beyond MPL Malaysia, the release says. She presented it, according to Bernama, as a long-term commitment to lift the league and Malaysian esports as a whole, and not as a temporary initiative.

The other two bodies on stage gave their reasons. Muhammad Naim Al Amin, the president of the Malaysia Esports Federation, told Bernama that mixing domestic and international sides gives local players experience and knowledge from big teams abroad. Ahmed Faris Amir, the chief executive of Esports Integrated, welcomed the program on behalf of the ministry as the kind of private-sector ambition that complements the government's efforts, the release says.

Not quite a franchise

The word Moonton chose matters, because two of its leagues already work differently. MPL Philippines and MPL Indonesia are fully franchised, Esports Insider recalled: each has a fixed set of teams, and those teams paid a buy-in fee, a sum an organization pays the league for a permanent place. In such a league the same teams come back season after season.

Malaysia was heading the same way on paper. Moonton said in April 2025 that it intended to franchise the league, according to Esports Insider. On September 9, 2025, the publisher announced what it called an enhanced franchise format, which would borrow elements from the models of leagues such as the NFL and the NBA while aiming at a model of its own, built to grow the Malaysian esports industry. The same release declared Season 16 the final chapter of the old format.

In September, Tan said the move was meant to create a more sustainable ecosystem for teams, players and partners, with new paths for talent development, commercial growth and fan engagement. Five months later the vocabulary has shifted from franchise to partnership, and the term reported by Bernama, four years with a review each year, is a fixed period where a franchise place is permanent.

From ten teams to eight

The last season of the old format shows what has changed in the field. Season 16 began on September 13, 2025, with ten teams, Moonton announced at the time: Selangor Red Giants OG Esports, Homebois, Untitled, AERO Esports, Team Vamos, Monster Vicious, Todak, Team Rey, CG Esports and GamesMY Kelantan.

They played a regular season of six weeks, until October 19, at Sri Putra Hall in Bukit Jalil. It was a single round robin, in which every team meets each of the others once, and each match was a best-of-three, won by the first team to take two games. The top six advanced to the playoffs, and two places on the main stage of the M7 World Championship, the game's world championship, played in Indonesia in January, were at stake.

Three of those ten teams are among the eight partners. The other seven are not on the list published on February 24. With five arrivals, the league goes from ten teams to eight.

Selangor Red Giants are the reference point of the old league. In June 2025 they won Season 15 by beating Homebois 4-0 in the grand final at Stadium Juara, in front of more than 1,800 fans, Moonton reported on June 16, 2025. It was their third title in a row, which no team had achieved before. The final lasted 62 minutes and 53 seconds of play. The same release recalls that the team had already won at the inaugural Esports World Cup, in 2024, where the Mid Season Cup, Mobile Legends' mid-year international tournament, is played.

Tan pointed to that record when the change was announced. In the September release she cited the team's results at the Mid Season Cup in 2024 and 2025 and at the World Esports Championship of the International Esports Federation in 2024, and said its motto of never giving up had become a rallying cry for the Malaysian community.

What the league weighs

Moonton had numbers to show when it prepared the change. In its release of September 9, 2025, it wrote that the league's record audience stood at 870,000 viewers at the same moment, a peak reached in 2024 and measured by Esports Charts, a firm that tracks esports audiences. Malaysia also hosted the M6 World Championship in November and December 2024.

Sponsors were signed across the change of format. CelcomDigi, a telecom operator, became the league's presenting partner for Seasons 16 to 18, its first sponsorship of an esports league, according to the same release. The phone maker Infinix extended its partnership through Season 18, after a first deal of one year, and Yamaha is the league's motorcycle partner for Seasons 16 and 17, which Moonton presented as the manufacturer's first step into esports anywhere in the world. The first seasons of the partnership model are therefore already covered by those contracts, and the announcement of February 24 was itself presented with CelcomDigi, Moonton's release says.

The commercial argument was made in public before the format changed. Around the Season 15 final in June 2025, Fikri Rizal Mahruddin, Malaysia Esports Lead at Moonton Games, described the league as ready for a franchise in the eyes of large brands, and Adam Adli, Malaysia's Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, called on more sponsors to support the Mobile Legends scene, according to Moonton's release of June 16, 2025. The September release listed the public bodies standing behind the league: the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Esports Integrated, Rakan Muda, the Malaysia Esports Federation and Persatuan Stadium Malaysia.

When Season 17 starts

Moonton's release gives no calendar: it says more details on the season will be announced soon. The press does not agree on the date. Esports Insider wrote that Season 17 starts in March 2026, with the schedule and the format to come. The New Straits Times, a Malaysian daily, reported on the evening of February 24 that the season runs from April 3 to June 7.

The format is the other open point. Season 16 was built for ten teams, with six of them in the playoffs. Moonton has not said how a field of eight will be organized, how many matches each team plays or how many reach the playoffs.

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