League of Legends esports announces third international event

League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced an entirely new international tournament that will be included in the 2025 season.

The new event was announced alongside a revamped split system, proposed merged leagues and other additions.

The yet-unnamed new event will take place in March and will feature five teams, according to Riot Games. To accommodate the new tournament, all leagues will change to a three-split system.

The major new revamp of the League of Legends ecosystem is, according to Riot Games, a part of its new strategy to keep League of Legends esports sustainable. As a result, Riot Games has proposed plans to merge the LCS, LLA and CBLOL to create a united Americas league, similar to VALORANT. In addition, LCO, PCS, VCS and LJL will merge to create the APAC league.

The new major LAN event will feature five teams, from the three main regions (LEC, LPL and LCK) and the newly-formed Americas and APAC leagues. To accommodate the new tournament, all of League of Legends’ regions will adopt a three-split structure, previously used by the LEC. The new tournament will be smaller in scale and only feature the winners of the five main leagues, but will be an international LAN tournament.

The new event will take place after the first split, which the LEC has called the Winter Split. After the new event finishes, the second split will qualify teams for the Mid-Season Invitational as before. After MSI ends, teams will turn towards the World Championship.

The third split in every region will include a Regional Championship, similar to the ones featured by the LEC in 2023.

Each region will now have one slot at the unnamed first event of the season, two slots at MSI, and three slots at Worlds. In addition, the MSI champions and the second-best-performing region will get a Worlds slots.