Lol Worlds 2026 heads to New York and Texas

On Friday, Riot Games announced its plans for the 2026 League of Legends international events, including that the LoL World Championship 2026 will take place in New York City and Texas.

The announcement confirms the return of League of Legends’ premier event to the United States, for the fifth time and the first time since 2022, when it was hosted across San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, and Mexico City, Mexico.

For the 16th iteration of LoL Worlds, Allen, Texas, will host the Play-In, the Swiss Stage, and the playoffs. Meanwhile, New York City, New York, will host the grand finals.

While the host cities are known, Riot has refrained from sharing the exact details on the location for each phase of the event. LoL Worlds 2026 will be the first world championship to take place across just two cities – excluding 2023, when the event was held in Seoul and Busan, and 2020-21, when the tournament was hosted in Shanghai and Reykjavik due to COVID-19 restrictions.

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In addition to revealing LoL Worlds 2026 locations, Riot Games also unveiled São Paulo, Brazil, as the host city of the season’s first international event, First Stand.

Introduced this season, First Stand will continue to be involved in Riot’s competitive circuit, but with slight modifications.
Instead of six teams, First Stand 2026 will feature eight, including two from LCK and LPL, and one from LCS, CBLOL, LEC, and LCP apiece.

Moreover, the tournament will include best-of-five games throughout, stepping away from the best-of-three format used in
2025. As the final announcement, Riot revealed that next year’s Mid-Season Invitational will visit Daejeon, marking the second time in history that MSI will be hosted in South Korea.

The news regarding next year’s international events comes just days before the LoL Worlds 2025 grand finals, on Sunday,
November 9.

Featuring the exciting Telecom War clash between T1 and KT Rolster, the grand finals seem heavily skewed in favour of the
defending champions, T1. The top LoL betting sites have Faker and his crew priced at $1.44, giving them a 69.4% chance to secure a historic sixth title and third consecutive.

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