LEC unveils expanded 2025 format

LEC 2025 format
Image credit: Riot Games

The League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC), EMEA’s top-flight League of Legends league, has unveiled a new format for the 2025 season.

The LEC’s 2025 season will maintain a three-split format, however, championship points and the Season Finals have been removed. 

Next year, every split — Winter, Spring and Summer — will crown an LEC champion as well as qualification to its relevant international tournament. Each split will also be played under a different format. 

For the LEC Winter Split, which will kick off January 17th, the event will have a similar format than its previous editions, with a best-of-one Group Stage followed by best-of-three and best-of-five Playoffs. The main change for this split will be the introduction of ‘Fearless Draft’. Fearless draft sees champions played at any point in a best-of-series be unable to be picked through the rest of the series.

Moreover, the Winter Split will also qualify for League of Legends’ new third international event

LEC’s Spring and Summer Splits have undergone the most change with the formats shifting from best-of-one to a best-of-three format. 

Spring will include a seven-week best-of-three single round-robin regular season leading up to a best-of-five playoffs stage. Summer Split, on the other hand, will see LEC teams be drafted into two groups, playing against each other to qualify for an expanded playoffs system. 

The top two teams in Spring will qualify for MSI, whereas the top three teams in Summer will qualify for the World Championships, the latter of which will take place in China.

Some other additional details that the LEC has revealed notably include the LEC roadshow, an activation in which the LEC is taken to other venues and countries. The LEC has confirmed that the roadshow will happen ‘at the end of’ the Summer Split. The exact locations have yet to be revealed.

Moreover, the LEC will look to partner with teams to pilot bringing competition to fans locally during Spring Split. Further information about what those partnerships will look like hasn’t been revealed.

Summer will also play host to the LEC roadshow, which will now take place at the end of the Summer Split, with the location and venue set to be revealed early next year. 

LEC’s format reveal comes shortly after the LCK, League of Legends’ Korean league, unveiled its new structure

Tom Daniels
Tom has been part of Esports Insider's team since October 2020 and is currently the platform's Editor. When not playing Football Manager, he enjoys reporting on the mobile esports scene as well as the betting sector.