Riot Games’ League of Legends esports circuit saw a notable addition announced last weekend, with the introduction of its first-ever Season Kickoff event.
The event, set to take place from January 10th – 11th, will feature multiple League of Legends competitive regions such as the LCS, LEC, LCK, PLP, LJL, CBLOL, LLA, PCS and VCS. Moreover, the Season Kickoff includes a full day’s worth of League of Legends show matches that will be played with special rules in place.
Riot announced that the event, called simply the Season Kickoff, will include all pro teams in each of the nine leagues. Each league will decide how players are drafted for the event, with the end result seeing the creation of two sides that include a player representing every organisation. This will result in a best-of-three match between two rosters of players from different teams.
The LPL will have multiple best-of-one matches due to the size of the league. Ultimately, the winning teams will get the chance to create their own custom emotes.
The general format will be as follows: each region will have its teams compete against each other in a best-of-three series, with a different draft policy in place that sees previously picked champions become unavailable in the same series. There will also be no bans. Riot confirmed in its LEC-focused release that there is also the rule that every player needs to swap his role after a victory.
The LEC match, for example, will see a roster of well-known and veteran players in the league. Vitality’s Perkz and EXCEL’s Odoamne face off against players such as Fnatic’s Rekkles. The winning teams will get the chance to work with Riot Games to create a custom emote, which will then be available in the in-game store for players to acquire.
The Season Kickoff is the first time ever that Riot Games has made an event to commemorate the start of a new season in League of Legends. The event is intended as a celebration of the start of the new season and will see every region have around three hours of content broadcasted.
The new event replaces the All-Star event which last took place in 2020. According to Riot, the All-Star event left players with less time to recover and rest before the new season and has thus been scrapped for an event that starts later in January.
The Season Kickoff will start with the LCK on 1:30 AM PT, and conclude with the LLA at 11AM to 2PM PT on January 11th.
