MSI 2026 gets its Daejeon dates as Worlds grows to 19 teams

The League of Legends World Championship will have 19 teams this year, and its first matches will be played in Los Angeles instead of Texas. Riot Games published both changes on Sunday, March 22, 2026, in an update on its esports site that also fixed the calendar of the Mid-Season Invitational: MSI 2026 runs from June 28 to July 12 at the Daejeon Convention Center II, in South Korea.

The page appeared on the last day of First Stand, the eight-team international tournament Riot scheduled from March 16 to 22 at the Riot Games Arena in São Paulo. It sets out the two events that follow it: MSI, the mid-year tournament between the best teams of each regional league, and Worlds, the championship that ends the season, from October 15 to November 14 in the United States. For both, Riot gave the dates of every stage, the venues, the number of places per league and what changes in the format.

Fifteen days in Daejeon

Riot had named the city in January, in its presentation of the 2026 season, adding then that the venue and the details would follow. They are now known. The Daejeon Convention Center II hosts the whole tournament, and Riot notes that it is the first League of Legends esports event held in the city.

MSI is played in two parts. The Play-In Stage, a preliminary round of four teams, runs for four days, from June 28 to July 1. The Bracket Stage, the main tournament, follows from July 3 to July 6 and from July 8 to July 12, with a day without matches before it and another on July 7.

The last four days are laid out as follows. The upper final is played on July 9 and the lower final on July 11. The grand final closes the event on Sunday, July 12. The names come from the double-elimination bracket, the format Riot's primer gave for the eight-team Bracket Stage of 2025.

Eleven teams take part. Five leagues, Korea's LCK, China's LPL, Europe's LEC, North America's LCS and the Asia-Pacific LCP, send two teams each, ten in all. Brazil's CBLOL sends one.

A smaller door out of the Play-In

The structure of MSI stays largely what it was last year, Riot wrote. The one change concerns the Play-In Stage. It becomes a double-elimination bracket of four teams from which a single team advances to the Bracket Stage.

The primer Riot published for MSI 2025, held in Vancouver, shows the difference. That tournament, played at the Pacific Coliseum, had ten teams, two from each of five leagues. Four of them played the Play-In, and two went through to join six teams placed directly in the Bracket Stage: the first seeds of the LCK, the LEC, the LCP, the LPL and the LTA, and the second seed of the LCK.

The Bracket Stage keeps eight teams, then, but the way in has shifted. Seven teams now skip the Play-In, one more than in 2025, and only one of the four teams that start on June 28 will still be playing on July 3.

Riot named the seven by rule, not by name. They are the first seed of each region, the seed being a team's rank coming out of its own league, and one second seed: that of the highest-ranking two-seed region from First Stand, in Riot's wording. With six regions, that makes six first seeds and one second seed. The four remaining teams, all second seeds, contest the single place left.

This is where First Stand reaches into the summer. In January, Riot had said that placement at First Stand would directly affect MSI seeding and that the winning region would earn a bye from the Play-In Stage, meaning the right to skip it. The March update turns that promise into a precise rule.

Worlds across three American cities

Worlds 2026 lasts a month, from Thursday, October 15 to Saturday, November 14, and travels from the west coast to the east. Riot attached a venue to each stage.

Most of the tournament therefore sits in one building. The Credit Union of Texas Event Center, which Riot shortens to CUTX, is in Allen, just north of Dallas, and holds everything from the Swiss Stage to the semifinals: eight days of Swiss play, four of quarterfinals and two of semifinals. Riot presents the central position of the city as a way to make the event reachable for fans from all over North America.

The grand final is played six days after the second semifinal, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. In January, Riot had only said that the final would be in New York.

The format largely mirrors that of Worlds 2025, according to the update, with changes limited to the Play-In and to regional seeding. The primer of that edition, published on September 30, 2025, describes the frame that is kept. The Swiss Stage has 16 teams. From the second round a team meets an opponent with the same record and never the same opponent twice; three wins send it to the next stage, and eight teams get there, two with three wins and no defeat, three with one defeat and three with two. In 2025 that stage was played in Beijing, and the Knockout Stage in Shanghai and Chengdu. The Knockout Stage that follows, quarterfinals, semifinals and final, is played in best-of-five series, each won by the first team to take three games.

Why the Play-In moves to Los Angeles

One line of the update corrects the plan announced in January. At the start of the season, Riot placed every stage from the Play-In to the semifinals at the arena in Allen. The Play-In is now played from October 15 to 18 at the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles. Riot gave logistical challenges as the reason, without further detail.

The move leaves four days without matches between the end of the Play-In on October 18 and the start of the Swiss Stage on October 23, in another city and another state.

The Play-In itself changes shape, in the same way as at MSI. It is a double-elimination bracket of four teams, every series a best-of-five, and one team advances. The 2025 primer already described a best-of-five Play-In whose winner joined the draw of the Swiss Stage.

A second place for the CBLOL

The field grows to 19 teams, and the extra place goes to Brazil. Riot's update gives the CBLOL two places at Worlds. When the publisher announced on September 29, 2025, that the LCS and the CBLOL would return as independent leagues in 2026, it had listed three Worlds places for the LCS and one for the CBLOL.

The arithmetic of the stages follows from those numbers. Four of the 19 teams start in the Play-In and one of them advances, which leaves a Swiss Stage of 16: the 15 teams placed directly and the Play-In winner.

For comparison, the primer of Worlds 2025 listed 17 teams: four from the LPL, four from the LCK and three each from the LEC, the LCP and the LTA, the league that then covered the Americas.

Which teams start where is not settled. Riot said seeding at Worlds will be based on regional performance, results at MSI 2026 included, and that the details will be announced later.

What MSI is worth in October

Two of the 19 places are decided in Daejeon. One belongs to the MSI champion, with a condition attached: the team must qualify for the playoffs of its home league to keep the invitation. The other goes to the region that finishes second at MSI, which sends one more team to Worlds.

MSI therefore weighs on Worlds twice, once through these two places and once through the seeding, which takes its results into account. The idea is not new. The MSI 2025 primer already said that the winning team and the next best-performing region earned extra places at the World Championship.

Tickets and next dates

Tickets for MSI are sold in waves through the ticketing service NOL World, Riot wrote. The global sale, which requires a passport, opens on April 23, two days after a presale reserved for Mastercard cardholders on April 21. The sale for buyers in South Korea opens on May 21.

For Worlds, Riot gave a window, not a date: tickets are released in mid-to-late July.

Before that, the regional leagues decide who goes to Daejeon, with two places each for five of them and one for the CBLOL. The Play-In starts on June 28, and the seeding rules of Worlds are still to come.

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