Team Heretics appoint Nukeduck head coach for LEC Summer

Team Heretics will go into the second half of its League of Legends year with a new person in charge of the team. The organization announced on Monday, May 11, 2026, that Erlend "Nukeduck" Våtevik Holm joins as head coach for the 2026 LEC Summer season, Sheep Esports reported the same day. He takes the post held until now by Jonas "Hidon" Vraa.

The announcement follows the team's worst result to date in the LEC, the top League of Legends league for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, run by the game's publisher, Riot Games. Heretics finished last in the 2026 Spring Split, according to Sheep Esports. The Summer season that follows is the one that sends teams to the World Championship.

What Team Heretics announced

Three things are in the team's announcement, as Sheep Esports reports it. Nukeduck, who is Norwegian, becomes head coach. The appointment applies from the Summer season, the third and last competition of the LEC year. And it carries a condition, in the team's words: it is pending Riot approval.

The organization also said that more details on the structure of its coaching staff before the Summer Split would follow in the coming days. The announcement does not say how the rest of the staff is arranged around the new head coach, and that staff is a large one: Sheep Esports described it as extensive as early as January.

In League of Legends, the head coach is responsible for how a team prepares and plays: the practice schedule, the review of matches and the draft, the phase before each game in which the two teams choose and ban the characters they will play.

A staff built in layers since January

The post Nukeduck takes sits on top of a staff that Heretics has kept adding to all year. Hidon described it himself in an interview with Sheep Esports published on March 30, at the start of the Spring Split.

His own part, he said, was the culture of the team and its people, including leadership work with the players. The draft was led by assistant coach Emre "Arkhe" Akpınarlı, whose lead Hidon said he followed in that area. Around them worked positional coaches, specialists who each follow the players of one role. Alfonso "Mithy" Aguirre Rodríguez, whose arrival as assistant coach Heretics had announced in January, worked remotely with the bottom lane, the pair of players who start the game together on the lower side of the map. Fabian "FEBIVEN" Diepstraten had signed a few days before the interview as a remote coach for the middle lane.

Two places were still open at that date. Andrei "Odoamne" Pascu had worked remotely with the team during the previous split and Heretics was looking to replace him, Hidon said, and a coach for the top lane was planned without being named.

Hidon explained the logic in the same interview. One or two people cannot cover as much ground as a larger group, he said, and he wanted more positional coaches able to challenge the players. He added that he preferred to build coaches rather than buy well-known names, and that the direction of the team counted for more than his own position.

The change of May 11 touches the top of that structure. A coach who described his own part as culture and people gives way to one who has already worked with a member of the staff.

A Spring Split that went wrong

The change comes after a run of low finishes. Heretics has not finished in the top half of the league since Spring 2024, when it placed fifth in the playoffs, according to Sheep Esports. The 2026 season had started in the same zone: the team was seventh in the regular phase of LEC Versus, the competition that opened the year with 12 teams.

Spring began better. Heretics won its opening series 2-1 against SK Gaming, with a new support player, Han "Way" Gil, in place of Paul "Stend" Lardin. A series in the Spring Split is a best-of-three, won by the first team to take two games. Then the losses came. By April 16, Sheep Esports counted one win and five defeats, with three series left to play.

The second change of player came in the middle of that run. On Wednesday, April 15, Heretics announced that Théo "Sheo" Borile had expressed the wish to step down from the roster for the coming weeks. Sheo was the team's jungler, the player who moves between the lanes rather than holding one. He told Sheep Esports that results since the first roster change had been disappointing and that the team's progress had not matched what was expected. A player from the organization's academy team replaced him in the jungle.

Neither move turned the split around. Heretics ended the regular season in tenth and last place, the lowest finish in its time in the league.

Two coaches who already know each other

One fact in the report links the new head coach to the staff already in place. Nukeduck and Mithy have coached together before. Both were at FlyQuest, in North America, where Mithy was assistant coach to Nukeduck. In that period the team won three North American titles and reached the World Championship twice, according to Sheep Esports. At the 2024 edition, it took Gen.G to a fifth game in the quarterfinal.

Mithy's place in Heretics' staff was already notable before this week. When he joined in January, Sheep Esports wrote that he would be the most experienced coach of the group, with six years in the job behind him, including spells as head coach of Fnatic and Cloud9. He had been the assistant of the man who now becomes his head coach.

The new head coach therefore finds a former colleague on the staff he joins. Which roles the other coaches keep is the part of the picture the organization has left for its next announcement.

What Summer is worth

The LEC year has three competitions, and they do not weigh the same. Riot Games set out the structure in October 2025, and each one sends teams to a different international tournament.

Summer is the split that leads to Worlds, the World Championship that closes the season. Under the format Riot announced, the champion, the runner-up and the third-placed team of the Summer Split qualify. A poor Spring therefore costs a team its chance at MSI, the Mid-Season Invitational, but leaves the main target of the year intact.

Hidon had made the same point while Spring was still going badly. Speaking on the LEC broadcast on April 12, he said a successful split should leave the team something to build on, and added that Summer is what really matters, because it is where a team gets the chance to play for Worlds. Sheep Esports reported his words four days later.

Three places for ten teams means finishing on the podium, and Heretics has not ended a split in the top five since 2024. The Summer regular season was announced as a single round robin, in which each team plays every other once, followed by playoffs in best-of-five series. In its Spring primer of March 6, Riot also mentioned a new Summer format with more matches, without giving the details at that point.

What comes next

The next steps belong to others before they belong to Heretics. Riot Games has to approve the appointment. The organization has promised the details of its staff in the coming days.

The Spring Split, meanwhile, continues without the team. Six of the ten teams reach the playoffs, which start on May 23 and are played as best-of-five series, won by the first team to take three games. The finals are set for June 7, and the two finalists qualify for MSI, held this year in Daejeon, South Korea. Heretics, last of the regular season, is not among the six.

One other competition fills the same weeks. The EMEA qualifier for the Esports World Cup brings together the ten LEC organizations and the two finalists of EMEA Masters Winter, twelve teams for two places, Sheep Esports reported on April 27. It is played online, in best-of-three series with best-of-five deciders. Its first rounds were scheduled from April 28 to 30, with Heretics drawn against SK Gaming, and its last ones from May 14 to 17.

The Summer Split comes after all of that. The playoffs alone last more than two weeks, and neither of the two Riot announcements that describe the 2026 season gives the dates of the Summer Split. Heretics has the time between now and then to settle a staff whose head has changed and a roster that has changed twice since March.

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