Invictus Gaming face JD Gaming in the LPL 2026 Regional Finals lower bracket final, with the last Worlds spot on the line.
Invictus Gaming and JD Gaming will battle it out for the final ticket leading to the League of Legends World Championship in the lower bracket final of LPL 2026 Regional Finals on Saturday, September 19.
JD Gaming enter the match off a 3-1 win against Team WE, while Invictus Gaming dropped down to the lower bracket following a tough 1-3 loss against Top Esports in the upper bracket final.
IG’s performance in their last match was underwhelming, as they entered the game against Top Esports as favourites.
Considering the form Invictus Gaming showed in Split 3 Playoffs, that tag was more than justifiable, but they looked like an entirely different team on Thursday.
Invictus Gaming’s game against Top Esports was a bit of a fiesta, with numerous questionable decisions and significant throws.
Besides map three, on which TES produced a clean performance, the series as a whole was not the most flattering either for IG or Top Esports.
JD Gaming kicked off LPL Regional Finals with a 3-1 victory against Team WE, securing a revenge win for their loss in the Split 3 Playoffs.
It was a promising performance from JDG, who opted more for early-game aggression, an approach that has worked for them before this split.
JDG have had a tendency to swap out their playstyles throughout the summer split.
They often defaulted to scaling and over-indexing into late-game composition, despite it rarely working out for them.
There is always a concern that JD Gaming will do the same thing on Saturday, for which they will be punished by Invictus Gaming, who have demonstrated they are capable of snowballing early leads.
On the other side, Invictus Gaming’s performance against Top Esports raises some concerns as well.
Notably, their macro was all over the place, and it seemed like IG lost their focus after an extremely promising run in the Split 3 Playoffs.
JD Gaming have some clear weaknesses, which makes them very predictable, while Invictus Gaming showed they can bleed and turn into a pumpkin.
But it is not fair to put too much weight on one bad game from IG, especially after what they have shown over the last week.
Priced at -144.93 on the top-rated esports bookmakers, JD Gaming are overrated, mainly due to their evident flaws.
At plus money, Invictus Gaming are hard to pass on.
Invictus Gaming to win
Mark Prezelj
Esports Betting Analyst
Mark Prezelj is a Slovenian esports betting analyst with over 3,500 articles at EsportBet and the founder of Lines64.com — someone who has been reading odds longer than most readers have been watching esports.
