First Stand, League of Legends’ first international event of 2025, unveils format

Hosted at LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea, First Stand is the first of three international events that will occur across League of Legends’ 2025 calendar.

With the game’s esports ecosystem kicking off this month, further details surrounding First Stand’s format have now been revealed.

First Stand consists of the best teams across League of Legends’ international leagues: LCK (South Korea), LPL (China), LTA (Americas), LEC (EMEA) and LCP (Pacific). These five teams will enter First Stands’ best-of-three (BO3) round-robin stage. 

Game one side selection for each series of this stage will be randomly pre-determined. According to Riot Games, this is to guarantee that every team has a side selection advantage in two series.

Once every team has faced each other, the bottom-placed team will be eliminated from the competition. Following that, First Stand will move onto a best-of-five (B05) knockout stage.

The knockout stage will feature a seeded single-elimination bracket with the victor becoming the first-ever First Stand champion. 

Alongside the accolade, the winning team will also earn a second bye for their region at MSI 2025. As a result, this means the winning region will see its second representative advance directly to the MSI 2025 Bracket Stage.

One of the main additions to League of Legends’ esports ecosystem is the introduction of Fearless Draft. The new champion pick system will be utilised throughout League of Legends’ first split, which concludes with First Stand. 

Riot Games explained that Fearless Draft is a system in which champions used in previous games of a best-of-series become unavailable for both teams in subsequent games. The standard pick and ban phase will still take place at the beginning of every match.  

For example, after the first game of a BO5 series, the 10 champions that were selected by players in that game will be no longer available for the remainder of the series. These will be known as ‘Fearless Bans’. 

This means that under this new format, if a series goes to a fifth game there will be a total of 50 champions banned (10 Standard Bans and 40 Fearless Bans). 

According to Riot Games, the format aims to challenge teams to adapt by bringing new strategies and champion picks.