First Stand 2025: schedule, format and players to watch

League of Legends has shaken up its esports calendar in 2025 by introducing a new international event called the First Stand Tournament.

Set to take place in LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea from March 10th -16th, the competition will feature the Split 1 winners of  League of Legends’ five major leagues — LCK, LPL, LTA, LEC and LCP.  

Ahead of First Stand 2025, Esports Insider has detailed everything you need to know about Riot Games’ new, and unique, international event.

To kick things off, the theme of the event is ‘Yours For The Taking’ and its goal is to spice up the early season of League of Legends esports. This will be the first major international event to utilise Fearless Draft — one of Riot Games’ latest competitive systems —  which will be analysed later in detail. 

Moreover, there’s not just prize money that awaits the winner. The team that lifts the trophy will earn a second bye for their region at MSI 2025, advancing directly to the Bracket Stage. 

With high-level competition spread over a week of live matches, the First Stand Tournament will be a hotbed for new top-tier strategies that could define the rest of 2025.

The First Stand Tournament will consist of two distinct stages. 

The first will be a BO3 Round Robin Stage, where the top teams from Korea, China, the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific battle each other in a single best-of-three (BO3) round-robin format. 

To ensure fairness, game one side selection for each series is randomly pre-determined. This guarantees that every team has a side selection advantage in exactly two series and doesn’t in the other two.

After every match is completed, the team at the bottom of the group will be eliminated from the event. 

The remaining four teams will then advance to a single-elimination BO5 Knockout Stage.

Placement in the bracket will be determined by the team’s placement in the previous stage. As a result, the first-placed team will face fourth and the second-placed team will compete against third.

The winners of these matchups progress through the bracket, culminating in a final to crown — for the first time in League of Legends history — a First Stand champion.

Monday, March 10th: Groups Day 1

Tuesday, March 11th: Groups Day 2

Wednesday, March 12th: Groups Day 3

Thursday, March 13th: Groups Day 4

Friday, March 14th: Groups Day 5

Saturday, March 15th: Semifinals

Sunday, March 16th: Finals

By tuning in to every match live on the League of Legends Esports website and logging in with their Riot ID, viewers will be able to unlock Drops throughout First Stand.

Every Pentakill and Baron steal throughout the week will reward viewers with a 2025 Esports Capsule. Additionally, any series that goes to five games during the knockout stage will also reward a 2025 Esports Capsule.

The Finals on March 16th will reward viewers with an exclusive First Stand Brand emote named ‘I Am FUMING’.

Fearless Draft is a big part of the competitive changes that have come into the League of Legends esports ecosystem. The system has a clear objective of introducing even more champion variety to games beyond the traditional ban system. Here’s how it works.

During every best-of series, all champions used in the series become unavailable for both teams until the end of the match, regardless of which team selected them. 

This results in an additional set of bans called ‘Fearless Bans’ which are progressively added alongside the standard 10 bans from the pick/ban phase which remain in place for every game.

If we’re doing our math correctly (a detailed chart is available below), at the beginning of the fifth game of a best-of-five match, there will be a total of 50 banned champions forcing players and coaches to delve deep into their champion pool to get results. 

This guarantees a lot of match variety and, so far, the system has been well-received by the community following its implementation in Split 1.

Korea: Hanwha Life Esports (LCK Cup 2025 Champion)

Asia-Pacific: CTBC Flying Oyster (LCP 2025 Split 1 Champion) 

Americas: Team Liquid (LTA Cross Conference Champion) 

EMEA: Karmine Corp (LEC 2025 Winter Champion)

China: Top Esports (LPL Split 1 Champion)

One player that fans are going to have their eyes on during First Stand is Choi ‘Zeus’ Woo-je.

The top laner made headlines last year when he opted to leave reigning world champions T1 in favour of Hanwha Life Esports. Not only that, he then proceeded to beat his former teammates in the early stages of the LCK Cup Playoffs to qualify for First Stand.

Perhaps unknown to most, Hsu ‘Rest’ Shih-chieh is the longest-running member of CTBC Flying Oyster, having joined the organisation in 2022.

First Stand is going to be his first time at a major international event and his leadership skills with the team have very effective so far. With a roster composed of mostly new hires, there’s a lot of mystery, and excitement, surrounding how this team will perform.

Hanwha Life Esports

Team Liquid

CTBC Flying Oyster

Karmine Corp

Top Esports