100 Thieves Announce 2023 LCS Roster

100 Thieves unveiled its new-look roster for the 2023 League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) season. And as rumored, 100T will enter the next season fielding one of the greatest duos in the North American League of Legends history.

100 Thieves announced its 2023 League of Legends roster on Friday, December 9, which will feature just one returning player in Can “Closer” Çelik. The 24-year-old, who has been with the team since 2020, will team up with top laner Milan “Tenacity” Oleksij, mid laner Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg, ADC Yiliang “Peter” “Doublelift” Peng, and support Alan “Busio” Cwalina.

100 Thieves’ roster sees legendary mid laner Bjergsen reunite with his former teammate and the most successful LCS player, Doublelift. It marks the third time that the legendary duo will have joined forces and the first time in two years.

The two LCS superstars have spent the last two years apart, with Doublelift announcing his retirement in 2020 to focus on a streaming career, while Bjergsen served as a coach for TSM before moving back to the Rift as a mid laner for Team Liquid in 2022.

Bjergsen and Doublelift last played together in 2020 as members of TSM; however, the roster struggled to find any consistency. Although the roster led the organization to its seventh LCS trophy, the 2020 TSM was mostly remembered for its humiliating performance at LoL World Championship, where the NA squad failed to win a single game during the group stage.

This ushered in major roster changes in the organization, with Doublelift announcing his retirement and Bjergsen switching to the head coach position for the next season. While Doublelift has since been focusing on his streaming career, Bjergsen returned to play with Team Liquid, who formed a superteam for the 2022 season.

But despite fielding Bjergsen, Gabriël “Bwipo” Rau, Lucas “Santorin” Tao Kilmer Larsen, Steven “Hans sama” Liv, and Jo “CoreJJ” Yong-in, Liquid would not live up to the expectations. The roster would fail to make finals in either splits and missed out on LoL Worlds.

100 Thieves, on the other side, have not made a single roster change for three seasons, as the organization decided to stick with the same five players that won the organization’s first LCS trophy in 2021.

The decision made a lot of sense given 100 Thieves’ streak of strong performances, which started in 2021.

That year, 100 Thieves placed top four in LCS 2021 Lock-In, and added a fourth-place finish in LCS 2021 Spring and LCS 2021 Mid-Season Showdown. Then, the team found serious traction in summer, finishing the regular season in second place and won the LCS 2021 Championship by beating Team Liquid 3-0.

Unfortunately, success was hard to come by for 100 Thieves at LoL Worlds 2021, where the NA squad placed ninth-11th. But despite their relatively poor run, 100T decided to stick with the same lineup for 2022 and again found domestic success.

100 Thieves kicked off the season with a fifth-eight place finish in the LCS 2022 Lock-In, but then added a bronze medal from LCS 2022 Spring and made it all the way to the finals of the LCS 2022 Spring Playoffs.

In the summer season, 100T finished second in the regular season and made another final, but got outmatched by Cloud9 and ended the year with a silver medal. Then, at LoL Worlds 2022, 100 Thieves could only manage one win in the group stage, thus ending the year with a 11th-14th place finish.

100 T’s lack of success on the international stage likely led to the complete roster overhaul, including the departure of head coach Bok “Reapered” Han-gyu. Whether 100T will manage to improve with a new lineup remains a mystery, but this lineup will be exciting to follow as it sees an iconic LCS duo return to compete under the same banner.