League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational 2026 Breakdown

Beginning on June 28^th, the second largest esports event of the year is set to take place in Daejeon, South Korea. Out of the video games and esports tournaments, the League of Legends (LOL) Mid-Season Invitation (MSI) is second only to the League of Legends World Championship at the end of year. The entire event will be held at the Daejeon Convention Center II and will host 11 of the best teams from across the globe. In past years, MSI has been held a month earlier in May, but is being pushed back a month in recent years after regional leagues have changed their formats to work toward better competition. Historically, the eastern regions (i.e. China and South Korea) have almost always dominated international competitions in LOL, but will 2026 be different? Let’s find out in this brief breakdown.

Since the beginning of the year, dozens of teams across the globe have been competing in their regional leagues with the sole goal of making it to MSI. The major regions (China, South Korea, Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America) send the top two teams from their region to MSI, while South America only send their top team. This year is slightly different than past MSI because the tournament format has remained the same, the odd number of teams has thrown a wrench into the mix. This odd number is due to the Asia Pacific league effectively being promoted to a “major region” for the first time in 2026, but this only because their runner-up team had the most Championship points out of any other team in any other region by this point in the year. However, their teams have performed well above expectations in recent years, proving that the region has the talent to become a major region. So, how will the tournament format deal with this odd number of teams?

MSI will be played in two stages, first is the play-in stage. In this stage, four of the 11 bottom seated teams will compete in double elimination best-of-five format. In past, the top two teams made it into the next stage of the tournament, but this year only the top team will make out to make the next stage an even eight teams. Surprisingly, the winningest player and team in all LOL esports is in the play-in stage and are the clear favorites to make it into the next stage.

The second stage is the bracket stage. Again, it will double elimination best-of-fives but this time with eight teams. The starting matchups will be randomly drawn from two piles – the first seed teams will be randomly drawn from the second seed. There placements will not be drawn until the play-stage is over on July 1^st. Here are the teams:

• China (LPL) Regional Champion: Bilibili Gaming
• China (LPL) Runner-up: Top Esports
• South Korea (LCK) Champion: Hanwha Life Esports
• South Korea (LCK) Road to MSI Match 2 Winner: T1
• Europe (LEC) Regional Champion: G2 Esports
• Europe (LEC) Runner-up: Karmine Corp
• North America (LCS) Champion: LYON
• North America (LCS) Runner-up: Team Liquid Alienware
• Asia-Pacific (LCP) Champion: Team Secret Whales
• Asia-Pacific (LCP) Championship point qualifier: Relove Deep Cross Gaming
• South America (CBLOL) Champion: FURIA

These 11 teams will play over a two-week period until July 12^th . Given the short duration of the tournament, and the fact that it is being held in South Korea, it is very like that this year will be a repeat of history with an Eastern team winning it all. That being said, anything can happen and with LOL’s current game balance, there is likely going to be some very competitive series and potential upsets. If nothing else, it will be exciting to watch!