Eleven teams confirmed for MSI 2026 in Daejeon, T1 and G2 among them

The field of the Mid-Season Invitational is complete. Riot Games published the primer of MSI 2026 on its esports site on Monday, June 15, 2026, thirteen days before the first match, with the eleven teams that have qualified, the two stages of the tournament and the hour of every match day. The event is played in Daejeon, South Korea, from Sunday, June 28 to the grand final on Sunday, July 12.

MSI is the mid-year international tournament of League of Legends, the one that brings together the best teams of each regional league between the two halves of the season. The primer says what is at stake in one line: the MSI title, and additional places at the World Championship, the tournament that ends the year in the United States from October 15.

Riot Games, MSI 2026 primer of June 15, 2026, and update on MSI and Worlds of March 22, 2026.

The eleven teams, league by league

Five leagues send two teams and one league sends a single team, the distribution Riot Games announced on March 22. The primer now puts names on those places.

The primer lists the teams by league and gives no seeds. A seed is the rank a team carries out of its own league, first or second, and it decides where the team enters the tournament.

What changed since First Stand

Three of the eleven teams were already at the year's first international event. First Stand, played from March 16 to 22 at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, had eight places in Riot's primer for that tournament, published on March 2. It listed G2 Esports for the LEC, LYON for the LCS and Team Secret Whales for the LCP, and all three are back for MSI. Two places for China were still open on that date.

The other leagues send different names. Korea was represented in São Paulo by Gen.G and BNK FearX; its two teams in Daejeon are Hanwha Life Esports and T1. Brazil's place at First Stand belonged to LOUD, and FURIA carry the CBLOL this time.

The weeks before the primer gave some hints of the outcome. Esports Insider, in a review of the leagues published on May 19, described the race as open, with only two places per league. It called Bilibili Gaming the 2026 First Stand champions and the best candidate to represent China, after a regular season finished with twelve wins and two defeats. Hanwha Life Esports led the LCK at that date with the same record. In Europe, G2 Esports had beaten Karmine Corp 3-0 in a series of the qualifier for the Esports World Cup. In North America, the outlet noted that LYON had lost the last match of their regular season, to FlyQuest. LYON are in the field all the same.

Four teams for one place in the Play-In

MSI is played in two parts. The Play-In Stage is a preliminary round of four teams, and the primer describes it as a double-elimination bracket that sends a single team to the main tournament. In double elimination, a team is out after its second defeat: a first loss moves it to a lower bracket, where it keeps playing.

Riot presents the format as similar to that of MSI 2025, with changes only in the Play-In. The primer of last year's tournament, held in Vancouver with ten teams, shows what the change is. Four teams played the Play-In then as well, but two of them advanced. This year three of the four go home before the main tournament begins. The count of teams placed directly in the Bracket Stage moves the other way: six in Vancouver, seven in Daejeon, in a field that grows from ten teams to eleven with the arrival of the CBLOL's own place.

Who plays that round follows from a rule Riot published on March 22. Seven teams skip the Play-In: the first seed of each of the six regions, and the second seed of the two-team region that ranked highest at First Stand. The four remaining teams, all second seeds, start on June 28.

Applied to the field, the rule says this much. FURIA, the only team of the CBLOL, are that league's first seed and enter directly in the main tournament. In each of the five other leagues, one of the two teams is certain to skip the Play-In, and the second does so in a single league. The primer does not say which four teams are concerned.

The Bracket Stage

The main tournament, which Riot calls the Bracket Stage, has eight teams: the seven placed directly and the winner of the Play-In. It is a double-elimination bracket too. Teams that keep winning stay in the upper bracket, and its last two meet in the upper final. The loser of that match gets a second chance in the lower final, against the team that survived the lower bracket. The grand final brings the two winners together.

The shape of the bracket fixes its length. With eight teams and two defeats needed to eliminate each of them, a double-elimination bracket ending in a single final is played over 14 series. Riot spreads them across nine match days.

Fifteen days, thirteen with matches

The event lasts 15 days. The Play-In takes the first four, the Bracket Stage nine of the last ten, and two days have no matches: Thursday, July 2, between the stages, and Tuesday, July 7.

The start times change with the stages. The first two days of the Play-In, June 28 and 29, begin at noon in Korea, which is 5 a.m. in Central European summer time and 8 p.m. the evening before on the Pacific coast of the United States. The two days that follow begin at 5 p.m. Korean time, or 10 a.m. in Central Europe and 1 a.m. Pacific time.

The Bracket Stage repeats the pattern. Its first five days, from July 3 to 8, start at noon in Korea. The upper final, the match day of July 10 and the lower final start at 5 p.m. The grand final is set for 3 p.m. Korean time on July 12, which is 11 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, on the Pacific coast.

The venue and the fan festival

The primer names the city only. The hall was given in March: the Daejeon Convention Center II hosts the whole tournament, in what Riot called the first League of Legends esports event held in the city. Tickets were sold in waves through the ticketing service NOL World, the same update said, with a global sale from April 23 and a sale for buyers in South Korea from May 21.

Next to the matches, Riot holds a Fan Festa during the Bracket Stage. It opens from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Korean time from July 3 to 9, except on July 7, and from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. from July 10 to 12. The primer lists team booths, an arcade area with mini-games, an artist alley, appearances by creators and cosplayers and a store run by the publisher.

Co-streamers, predictions and the teams' revenue

The tournament is also shown outside Riot's own broadcast. According to the primer, more than 100 co-streamers, creators allowed to show the matches on their own channels with their own commentary, take part through an invitation-only program. All the qualified teams are invited to co-stream. The list of creators working remotely is announced on June 22, and those present in Daejeon are named closer to the final week.

Two prediction games run with the event. Pick'Ems asks viewers to predict the result of each series, with rewards for taking part, for finishing in the top 50% or the top 25% of participants and for a perfect card. Crystal Ball is a set of 20 predictions on the tournament as a whole, to be locked before the first match on June 28: four are settled after the Play-In and 16 at the end of MSI.

The primer also describes how the event feeds the teams. A skin, a cosmetic appearance for a character of the game, is sold for the occasion: Broken Covenant Jhin, priced at 1,350 RP, the game's paid currency. Riot says a portion of the proceeds of the skin and of the MSI winner items goes to the teams competing in its leagues in 2026. After the final, an icon and an emote of the winning team go on sale, at 250 RP and 350 RP. From July 13 to 20, the skins the champions used in the grand final are discounted by 33%. A collection of MSI clothing goes on sale online from June 22.

The results in Daejeon carry over to the autumn in one more way. For Worlds, which has 19 places this year, Riot said in March that seeding will take regional results into account, those of MSI included, with details to be announced later.

The Play-In opens at noon, Korean time, on Sunday, June 28.

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