Asian Games 2026: South Korea take LoL gold, unbeaten in eight games

Eight games played, eight won. South Korea kept its Asian Games title in League of Legends on Friday, October 2, 2026, beating Chinese Taipei 3-0 in the final at Aichi Sky Expo, the exhibition center in Tokoname that hosts the tournament of the Aichi-Nagoya Games in Japan. Sheep Esports and the South Korean news agency News1 both reported the result that day.

The gold is the country's second in a row in the game, after Hangzhou in 2023, and its second of these Games in esports. With it, South Korea's line in the esports results published by Sheep Esports stands at five medals: two gold, one silver and two bronze.

News1 and Sheep Esports, October 2, 2026.

Eight games, start to finish

The tournament lasted four days, from September 29 to October 2, and brought together eight national teams, Sheep Esports reported. They were drawn into two groups of four, and the top two of each group moved to a four-team playoff.

South Korea was placed in Group B with Chinese Taipei, India and Hong Kong. News1 reports that it won all three of its group games, then beat Saudi Arabia 2-0 in the semifinal and Chinese Taipei 3-0 in the final, for eight games in all without a loss: three in the group, two in the semifinal, three in the final.

The final was closer than its score. Sheep Esports wrote that Chinese Taipei came with a plan built on early pressure and put its resources into the bottom lane, one of the three lanes of the map, which upset South Korea's rhythm at the start of the games. It held advantages in two games and could not turn them into wins, the outlet wrote; News1 describes the first two games as comebacks by South Korea.

The third game was the shortest story. News1 gives its length as 30 minutes and 33 seconds: South Korea took control of the early objectives, the neutral monsters and structures that give a team lasting advantages, won a team fight in the middle of the game, and then took Baron and the Elder Dragon, two of the most powerful of those monsters, before destroying the opposing nexus, the base structure whose fall ends a game of League of Legends.

The other teams on the podium

Chinese Taipei takes the silver medal. Sheep Esports' results page for the Games lists two bronze medals behind it, for Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, the two teams that went out in the four-team playoff before the final.

Group B held more of the past than a draw usually allows. When the groups were published on September 17, Sheep Esports noted that the organizers did not appear to have seeded the teams and that the winner and the runner-up of the previous edition had been placed together. South Korea won the 2023 final in Hangzhou against the same opponent, 2-0 in a best-of-three, a series won by the first team to take two games, the Associated Press reported at the time. Three years later the two teams shared a group and a final within four days, and Chinese Taipei reached the playoff from the place behind South Korea.

The runner-up came with a squad of six as well. Sheep Esports' roster table of August 27 lists 1Jiang, JunJia, hongQ, Doggo, Woody and ShiauC for Chinese Taipei, with WarHorse as coach, and shows two of them, JunJia and hongQ, as players of the club JD Gaming. The four others are each listed with a different club.

Group A was made up of Vietnam, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia, coached by Edward Abgaryan according to Sheep Esports, came out of it to face South Korea in the semifinal, and leaves with one of the two bronze medals.

A field of eight, without four of the region's programs

The eight teams reached Japan by two routes. South Korea and Chinese Taipei were invited directly. The other six, Vietnam, Hong Kong, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia, are listed as qualified teams in Sheep Esports' presentation of the rosters on August 27, which reports a qualifier played in Kuala Lumpur from June 12 to 14.

The same article listed who was missing. Japan, the host, China, Thailand and Indonesia had confirmed that they would not take part in the League of Legends event. Participation in the Asian Games is limited to the 45 members of the Olympic Council of Asia, the body that owns the Games, the outlet recalled in September.

The squads were built in different ways. South Korea drew its six players from three clubs of its own league. India's six, in the same roster table, all come from one organization, S8UL Esports. Vietnam registered two junglers for a single position, as South Korea did with two middle laners, and Malaysia listed a substitute able to play two roles.

Esports is on the program of the Games for the third time, after 2018 and the Hangzhou edition, this time with eleven medal events. The tournament was played on patch 26.18 of the game, according to Sheep Esports' results page; a patch is the numbered version of the game's rules and character balance in force for a competition.

From a candidate list to a gold medal

The six players who won in Aichi are the six named in May: Zeus, Canyon, Zeka, Faker, Gumayusi and Keria, under head coach Kang "Hirai" Dong-hoon. League of Legends is played five against five, so the squad carried one player more than a starting line-up; Sheep Esports' roster table lists both Zeka and Faker in the middle lane.

The team was assembled in three stages between February and September. The Korea e-Sports Association, known as KeSPA, appointed Hirai on February 12, 2026. On May 18, the association announced its list of six candidates, drawn, according to the South Korean outlet Xportsnews, from a review of results from 2024 onward, of position-by-position statistics and of interviews with the candidates. In September the squad went into camp: Sheep Esports reported that the League of Legends team, after two preliminary sessions, would hold its last major camp in Busan from September 16 to 25, with two preparation series planned there before a live audience, against a selection from the United States on September 19 and a selection from Taiwan on September 20, both as best-of-five series, which are won by the first team to take three games.

The way the squad was chosen set League of Legends apart inside the delegation. Digital Daily, a South Korean technology daily, reported in February that KeSPA planned to select 37 players across its esports titles, and that for League of Legends and PUBG Mobile they would be called up from their clubs, while the other titles held selection competitions in which candidates played for their place. The six League of Legends players were therefore named on their records, without a qualifying match between them.

For three of the six, the medal is a second one. Zeus, Faker and Keria were part of the team that won in Hangzhou, and Sheep Esports notes that they now hold two Asian Games golds in a row. Canyon, Zeka and Gumayusi won gold on their first appearance for the national team.

The medal also has a consequence outside the game. Sheep Esports wrote that medal results at the Asian Games are directly tied to alternative military service in South Korea. The Associated Press explained the rule after the Hangzhou final: South Korean law exempts from regular service athletes who win top prizes in certain competitions.

Five medals for South Korea

League of Legends was the last of the esports events to finish, and South Korea's second title. Sheep Esports' results page gives the podium of each of the eleven events.

The first gold came in the fighting games event, held from September 23 to 26, which plays a single medal event across Tekken 8, The King of Fighters XV and Street Fighter 6; Japan took the silver. The racing game Gran Turismo 7, held on September 22 and 23 with its medals decided over three races, brought a bronze. The puzzle game Puyo Puyo Champions added a silver behind Japan, and Pokemon UNITE, which ended on September 27, a second bronze.

South Korea entered nine of the eleven events. Digital Daily reported in May that the country would compete in nine titles, and Sheep Esports wrote in September that all nine of its squads would gather in Busan before leaving for Japan. Five medals therefore came from nine entries. The four other titles named in Digital Daily's reports on the delegation, PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, Identity V and eFootball, have podiums without South Korea.

Japan, the host, stood beside South Korea on three podiums: behind it in the fighting games, ahead of it in Puyo Puyo Champions and in Pokemon UNITE.

Counted by country from those eleven podiums, China has three gold medals and one silver, the only total of three titles. Japan has two gold, two silver and one bronze, and South Korea two gold, one silver and two bronze. The program counts eleven medal events played over 13 games, the fighting games event grouping three of them.

What comes next

The esports events are over: League of Legends was the last on the schedule, and the Asian Games themselves close on October 4.

For the six players, the calendar returns to their clubs. Zeus, Zeka and Gumayusi are listed with Hanwha Life Esports, Faker and Keria with T1, and Canyon with Gen.G, all three of them teams of the LCK, the South Korean professional league, in Sheep Esports' roster table of August 27.

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