Riot builds a second stage in its Berlin arena for the LEC and VCT EMEA

The Riot Games Arena in Berlin now holds two stages instead of one. Riot Games, the publisher of League of Legends and Valorant, said on Friday, May 29, 2026 that it has built a second stage inside the building, called the Studio Stage, so that its two European leagues can be produced and broadcast at the same time from the same venue.

The new space is for television and streaming only. No tickets are sold for matches played there. The stage that fans already know keeps its seats and its audience under a new name, the Arena Stage, and tickets remain on sale for the matches of both leagues played on it.

The two leagues concerned are the LEC, the League of Legends league for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and VCT EMEA, the Valorant league for the same region. Both have made the Berlin building their weekly home. The first competition to use the new layout is VCT EMEA Stage 2, which starts on the Studio Stage on Wednesday, July 15.

Riot Games, announcement of May 29, 2026 on the LEC and VCT EMEA studio setup.

Two stages in one building

Riot's announcement describes the Studio Stage as a broadcast-first environment: a space made for the shows on screen rather than for a crowd. Matches played there have no tickets.

The publisher gives three things the new stage does for the people who make the shows. It is set up for the expanded Valorant schedule of Stage 2. It allows more changes to the stage design from one product to the other, a product here meaning one of the two leagues, each with its own look on screen. And it gives the broadcast teams more room to shape each show to its league.

The existing stage changes only its name. As the Arena Stage, it remains the room with an audience, and Riot says tickets for LEC and VCT EMEA matches held there are still available. In practice, the building now runs as two production spaces side by side: one where a crowd can watch in person, and one that exists only for the screen.

Sheep Esports, which reported the change the same day, put it in plain terms: fans in Berlin can attend only the matches played on the Arena Stage.

From the LEC Studio to the Riot Games Arena

The building had already been reworked two years earlier. The venue was long known as the LEC Studio, the home of the League of Legends league in Berlin. According to Sheep Esports, Riot relaunched it in 2024 under its current name, the Riot Games Arena, and the renovation of that year increased the number of seats, redesigned the layout of the audience area, added co-streaming booths and updated the media facilities.

Co-streaming is the practice of content creators showing an official broadcast on their own channels, with their own commentary on top. Booths inside the venue let those creators work from the building itself, next to the matches, rather than from home.

The 2024 work was about the room in front of the stage: more seats, a better view, more space for creators. The 2026 work is about the production side of the building. Riot's January plan for the LEC already described the weekly Berlin broadcasts as studio shows. The new layout gives the building one stage for shows with a crowd and one for shows without.

Why Riot needed a second stage

The publisher ties the change to the growth of its Valorant league. From Stage 2, teams from Challengers, the regional circuit below VCT EMEA, join the competition. More teams mean more match days, Riot says, and producing both leagues from Berlin on that schedule required a new approach.

The second reason is the calendar of the week. Fans had asked for VCT EMEA matches at weekends, Riot says, and Stage 2 will have them throughout. In Stage 1, Riot's format placed the group-stage matches from Wednesday to Friday each week, from April 1 to May 1.

Weekends are also when the LEC plays. Riot's guide to the LEC Spring Split, published on March 6, set its regular season from Saturday to Monday, with two best-of-three series on most days, a best-of-three being a series won by the first team to take two games. From Stage 2, both leagues play at weekends. Sheep Esports reported Riot's explanation in those terms: the extra stage adds production capacity in Berlin and avoids clashes between the Valorant and League of Legends broadcasts.

The last reason Riot gives is online. With a dedicated broadcast space, every match of both leagues can be shown, and the publisher says viewers watching online will not miss any of the action.

What a ticket in Berlin still buys

The Arena Stage keeps the ticketed side of the building. The prices Riot printed for the first half of 2026 were the same for both leagues: €15 for a regular match day, and €20 to €30 for finals, according to the LEC Spring guide of March 6 and the VCT EMEA Stage 1 page of March 20.

What changes is which days reach that stage. The table sets out the matches the May 29 announcement and the Sheep Esports report place on each side.

The LEC had already cut some of its crowd days before this. For the Spring Split, Riot announced that Monday matches of the regular season would be played without a live audience. Its guide gave two reasons: Monday shows had drawn lower attendance in the arena, and production costs stay the same whatever the number of tickets sold. Riot said it preferred to spend on the experiences fans value most, naming more matches in the new Summer format and five Roadtrips.

The biggest nights leave Berlin

Riot presents the new layout as a way to spend more where crowds are largest. The setup, its announcement says, supports greater investment in high-impact moments and in live events across both leagues, and Riot names two of them: the VCT EMEA Stage 2 Finals and the LEC Roadtrips, which it says will bring the leagues to more fans in person across the region.

The Valorant finals were announced on February 12. They are set for August 28 to 30 at the Olimpic Arena in Badalona, part of greater Barcelona, a hall built for the 1992 Olympic Games. Riot called the event the first major arena event in the history of VCT EMEA and the biggest event on its calendar, and said the league was leaving Berlin to hold it. The May 29 page describes it as taking the Finals on the road for the first time.

The LEC's Roadtrips are weekends played away from Berlin in a venue chosen by one of the league's teams, around its own community. Riot's plan of January 15 set five of them in 2026, three days each, fifteen event days in all, hosted by Movistar KOI and Karmine Corp. The Olimpic Arena appears in that plan too: the LEC booked it for the Finals of LEC Versus, its first competition of the year, from February 27 to March 1. With the Summer Finals, the January plan counted six arena events for the LEC in 2026.

Berlin keeps the weekly shows of both leagues, on two stages, while the finals of the Valorant league and five LEC weekends are played in arenas elsewhere in the region.

Fans who lose a live crowd

Riot does not hide the cost of the change. Its announcement says that live audiences matter and acknowledges that some fans will be disappointed not to watch Studio Stage matches in person. Sheep Esports made the same point: part of the VCT EMEA group stage and Play-In, and one week of the LEC, will now be played without a crowd.

For fans of the Valorant league, the change brings the weekend matches they asked for, while part of the group stage and the Play-In move to the room without seats. For LEC fans, it adds one week without an audience to the Monday matches that Spring had already taken off the ticketed calendar.

Riot's answer to that cost is in the same announcement: every match of both leagues remains on screen, and the new setup, by its account, supports more spending on the arena events of the Finals and the Roadtrips.

What comes next

VCT EMEA Stage 2 starts on the Studio Stage on July 15. Riot has said that it will publish the full details of the stage, its format and its schedule, once Masters London, an international Valorant event, has ended.

The weekend matches, the Challengers teams and the week of playoffs on the Arena Stage are the parts of that schedule already announced. The finals in Badalona close the season from August 28.

The layout is not a summer arrangement. Riot says the two-stage setup is expected to continue into 2027, which makes the Studio Stage a lasting part of the building rather than a temporary set for one busy season.

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