LEC vs. LCS: Who leads League of Legends’ oldest regional rivalry?

Europe vs. North America has been one of the game’s defining regional rivalries since the inaugural League of Legends World Championship in 2011. It has survived years of trash talk, Rift Rivals, international upsets, and one-sided stomps.

For much of the last 15 years, though, Europe had the stronger argument. The region produced deeper international runs, won major trophies, and generally looked like the clear third-best region behind Korea and China. However, that is becoming much harder to say now.

North America is leading the recent head-to-head, while Europe continues to perform significantly better against the regions actually competing for international titles. So who really has the upper hand in League’s oldest regional rivalry today?

Methodology: This analysis counts individual games played at Worlds, MSI, and First Stand through MSI 2026, including play-on matches. Teams are classified by the league or conference through which they qualified, with LTA North teams grouped with North America and LYON counted as an LCS representative in 2026. Rift Rivals and other competitions outside Riot’s three global tournaments are excluded. Global Power Rankings (GPR) scores are accurate as of Sep. 1, 2026. 

Since First Stand 2025, LCS and LTA North teams have a 12–3 record against LEC teams at Riot’s international events.

That’s four series wins for North America and one for Europe. The sample remains relatively small, but the direction of travel is difficult to ignore.

MSI 2026 was especially ugly for the LEC. Team Liquid swept Karmine Corp before LYON did the same to G2 Esports, leaving Europe with a 0–6 record against the LCS in a single tournament.

If your definition of third-best is simply, ‘When LEC and LCS play each other, who wins?’, the answer right now is North America.

This is where the argument completely flips.

Across First Stand, MSI, and Worlds in 2025, as well as First Stand and MSI in 2026, the LEC, LCS, and LCP produced the following game records against LCK and LPL teams:

Those numbers come from every matchup at the last five international tournaments. The final column is particularly brutal for North America.

Since the beginning of 2025, no LCS or LTA North team has won a single best-of-three or best-of-five series against an LCK or LPL team at an international event.

Now, that’s not to say there haven’t been any good performances — there definitely have.

For example, FlyQuest took Bilibili Gaming to five games at MSI 2025, while 100 Thieves even upset the Chinese titan in a best-of-one at Worlds. However, there have been no series wins, while the LEC has five and the LCP has two.

Europe’s advantage against Korea and China comes with one major caveat: most of it belongs to G2 Esports.

MSI 2026 might be the perfect example of how strange the wider regional debate has become. G2’s main-stage results were:

This means G2 went 6–6 against Korea and China before being swept by LYON. By contrast, the LCS champions’ results against Eastern teams were:

Team Liquid also lost 0–3 to T1 twice during the play-in stage. Put everything together, and MSI 2026 looked like this:

North America destroyed Europe in the head-to-head, while the LEC was vastly more competitive against the tournament’s Korean and Chinese teams.

However, G2 accounted for 16 of the LEC’s 21 game wins against LCK and LPL opposition across the five tournaments analyzed. It also produced four of Europe’s five series victories. Without G2, the rest of the LEC went 5–15 against Korea and China and won only a single series.

This does not necessarily erase Europe’s advantage. Still, it suggests the region has only one team capable of consistently challenging the East rather than significantly greater depth across the entire league.

Riot’s GPR offers another way to compare the regions. As of Sep. 1, the regional scores are:

The GPR isn’t a traditional opinion-based power ranking. Riot’s Elo-based system combines individual team Elo and regional Elo using an 80/20 weighting.

The current ranking has LYON fifth in the world with a Power Score of 1458, just ahead of G2 in sixth at 1444. Karmine Corp sits eighth at 1409, Team Liquid is 13th at 1346, and FlyQuest is 15th at 1340.

Take the top three teams from each region, and it gets almost comical:

I wouldn’t treat a one-point difference as definitive statistical evidence, especially since every team’s Power Score already includes a regional component. It does, however, show just how closely matched the top of the two leagues currently is.

If we zoom out from the last two seasons, Europe’s historical advantage becomes much easier to see. The two regions have been competing since the first World Championship in 2011, but their international résumés are very different.

Officially, there is no debate over Fnatic’s 2011 title. Riot recognizes the team as the Season 1 World Champions, and the players even have their own World Championship skins. However, plenty of fans still place an asterisk next to that victory for an understandable reason.

Season 1 Worlds looked nothing like today’s tournament. Korea and China were not represented, and the competition was held as part of DreamHack rather than as the enormous standalone event that Worlds later became.

Regardless of how much weight fans give that tournament, Europe has won major international trophies. Fnatic won Season 1 Worlds, while G2 won MSI 2019 after sweeping Team Liquid 3–0 in the final.

Europe has also produced far more deep runs at Worlds. Moscow Five and CLG Europe reached the semifinals in 2012, with Fnatic following in 2013. Fnatic and Origen both reached the final four in 2015 before H2K did the same in 2016.

The region’s strongest period in the modern era occurred between 2018 and 2020. Fnatic reached the Worlds final in 2018, G2 reached the final in 2019 after winning MSI earlier that year, and G2 reached another Worlds semifinal in 2020.

CLG reached the MSI 2016 final, Cloud9 became the first North American team since Season 1 to reach a Worlds semifinal in 2018, and Team Liquid produced one of the biggest upsets in League history when they beat reigning World Champions Invictus Gaming at MSI 2019.

Unfortunately for North America, that run ended with G2 sweeping Team Liquid in the final.

Historically, Europe clearly has the stronger trophy cabinet and a much longer record of deep international runs. The direct EU vs. NA record, however, is much closer.

If we count individual games at Riot’s three international competitions — Worlds, MSI, and First Stand — from Season 1 through MSI 2026, Europe leads all-time head-to-head: EU 66–59 NA.

That is only a seven-game difference across 125 games, and most of Europe’s advantage was established years ago.

It’s worth noting that Rift Rivals is not included in that total. Although it was an official Riot competition built specifically around regional rivalries, it was not a global tournament like Worlds, MSI, or First Stand.

Through the end of 2020, Europe led the matchup 45–30. Since 2021, North America has led 29–21. Since the beginning of 2023, that advantage has grown to 20–9, including North America’s current 12–3 run against Europe since First Stand 2025.

That tells the story of the rivalry better than almost anything else.

Historically, Europe had both arguments: it performed better against the rest of the world and usually had the upper hand against North America. Today, only the first part is still clearly true.

If this is strictly about the LEC vs. LCS rivalry, North America has the upper hand. It has won four of the last five international series between the regions and leads the matchup 20–9 since 2023.

But if the question is which region remains stronger internationally, Europe still has the better case. It owns the superior historical résumé and continues to produce much better results against Korea and China, although most of that recent resistance has come from G2.

Europe remains the more accomplished region, but North America is currently winning the rivalry itself. For the first time in years, those are no longer the same argument.