A brief guide to the LCK Cup 2025

With the LCK 2025 season officially starting on January 15th, here is everything you need to know about the LCK Cup 2025 and what it entails for the Korean League of Legends esports ecosystem.

The LCK Cup is the latest kickoff tournament added to League of Legends’ calendar and it serves as a gateway to the inaugural First Stand tournament. With all major regions across the League of Legends ecosystem expanding to a three-split structure, the LCK Cup is the first competition for South Korea’s 2025 LoL season.

Compared to previous years where teams played a double round-robin regular split, the LCK Cup will see teams split into two groups of five. Interestingly, teams will not face those in their own groups, but will compete against all opponents from the opposing group in a best-of-three (BO3) single round-robin format.

All matches will implement the newest Fearless Draft mode, which prevents teams from playing a champion that has already been used once during their series.

After the end of the round-robin, the group with more series wins will be the Winners Group, while the other one will be the Losers Group. The top three teams from the Winners Group will advance directly to playoffs. Meanwhile, the remaining two compete against the top four teams from the Losers Group in the play-in stage.

The play-in stage features a double-elimination bracket to determine the last three playoff teams. All matches will be BO3, aside from the deciding series which will be a best-of-five (BO5).

Once the top six teams are confirmed, they will once again play a double-elimination bracket in playoffs, similar to how LCK playoffs were the previous years. The winner will represent the LCK at the First Stand tournament.

You can catch all the LCK action on the official Twitch or YouTube channel, with both Korean and English commentary available. You can also watch the games on AfreecaTV.

The group stage will start on January 15th and end on February 2nd, with matches taking place from Wednesday through Sunday. The first match of the day will start at 8 AM GMT.

The play-ins stage will last three days from February 7th to February 9th, while playoffs will kick off on February 12th until the finals on February 23rd.

The LCK received major headlines during the off-season when former T1 top laner Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je left the organisation after winning back-to-back World Championships to join Hanwha Life Esports. The series of events saw Choi ‘Doran’ Hyeon-joon replace Zeus on T1.

While there have been other major roster changes, including the return of legendary ADC Park ‘Ruler’ Jae-hyuk to Gen.G, the LCK’s top teams should continue to dominate the competition. T1, Gen.G and HLE are expected to be the front runners, with the other squads competing in the mid-pack. The new Fearless Draft mode, however, might shake up teams’ value more than before as coaches and other strategic aspects of the game will gain more importance in 2025.