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New Formats for International League of Legends Tournaments

Riot announced new formats for the big international tournaments in 2023. We break it down for you.

In the early hours on the morning of January 10th, the LoL Esports’ YouTube Channel released a video announcing new formats for the two major international League of Legends tournaments, the World Championships, and the Mid Season Invitational. This comes after years of a vocal fanbase begging for a new format for the two events, and for a good reason, as the two events are the only times we truly get to see the best from each league battle it out. A critique of the old systems in place was that it was too easy for teams to be eliminated, which led to many of the smaller region teams getting eliminated early on. With both new tournaments adopting double-elimination brackets, fans around the world can all be excited to see teams from their home regions play more League of Legends.  

MSI 

The 2023 Mid-Season Invitational will be held in London this year and will welcome 13 teams which are more than any MSI to date. The LCK, LPL, LEC, and LCS will all be sending two teams, while the LLA, CBLOL, VCS, LJL, and PCS will all send one representative. MSI will take place in two stages. The first will see the LCS, LEC, and LPL 2nd seeds play in brackets with the representatives from the LLA, CBLOL, VCS, LJL, and PCS. The three teams that are able to get two victories before two defeats will move on to the next stage.

The three teams making it out of play-ins will be seeded into the Bracket Stage with all of the 1st seeds from the LCS, LEC, and LPL and both representatives from the LCK. This bracket is also a double elimination made up of 14 best-of-5 matches, which will allow for plenty of exciting League of Legends to tune into. 

Worlds

Worlds is also going to take a major redesign. The first is before Worlds even begins. The LCS and LEC will have a historic match between their 4th seeds in a new event being introduced this year named the Worlds Qualifying Series or WQS. This match will definitely be surrounded by a ton of hype, as the North American and European leagues already have a fierce rivalry. The winner of the WQS will be seeded into the Play in brackets.

Play Ins will also consist of two teams from the VCS and PCS and one team from CBLOL, LLA, and the LJL. The eight teams will fight in double-elimination brackets until there are two representatives to move on to the Swiss Stage.

The Swiss Stage will see the two winners of Play Ins compete against 14 other teams. Four from LCK, Four from LPL, three from LEC, and three from LCS. These 16 teams will compete in a swiss style tournament where teams will play opponents who have matching records until a team either has three losses or three defeats. The eight teams that are able to win three matches in swiss will move on to the Knock Out Stage.


The Knock Out stage will find the final eight teams in a single elimination bracket made up of seven best of 5 matches. The winner will be crowned World Champions. These new changes are definitely exciting as they should create more evenly-matched games throughout the whole tournament, and with so much riding on every minion kill, how could anyone turn away from their screen?