Heist Complete: 100 Thieves’ League of Legends esports story

100 Thieves will be stepping away from LTA after the 2025 season, concluding a special chapter in North American League of Legends esports.

While this isn’t entirely surprising, given the organisation sold its permanent franchise slot in the LCS back to Riot in 2024, the announcement has still shocked its fanbase.

As fans say goodbye to one of NA’s most recognisable teams, here’s a look at 100 Thieves’ journey in League of Legends, capturing its highs and lows to build an unforgettable legacy.

100 Thieves announced its entry into League of Legends in 2017 and secured an LCS franchise slot to make its debut in the 2018 NA LCS Spring Split.

To many, it seemed like a questionable decision to enter the highly competitive League of Legends scene, especially given it was a new organisation founded by former Call of Duty player Matthew ‘Nadeshot’ Haag.

However, its roster — featuring Kim ‘Ssumday’ Chan-ho, William ‘Meteos’ Hartman, Ryu ‘Ryu’ Sang-wook, Cody ‘Cody Sun’ Sun, and Zaqueri ‘aphromoo’ Black — immediately silenced doubters by achieving a runner-up place in its first tournament. 

100 Thieves entered the playoffs as first seed, but eventually fell to Team Liquid in the Grand Final. Still, it was a remarkable achievement for a newly formed team. 

A mix of experience and hungry talent put the organisation into the list of must-watch teams, and the players gathered greater reputations worldwide. 

In 2018, 100 Thieves made its first appearance at the League of Legends World Championship; however, it exposed a harsh reality of the skill gap between North America and the rest of the world.

The team struggled on the international stage, resulting in an early exit, which was a tough lesson for the players and staff. 

After a promising 2018 season, 100 Thieves hit a rough patch in 2019 and 2020. Despite investing in new talent and coaching staff, the team failed to achieve desired results.

100 Thieves was at the bottom of the group leaderboard in the Spring Split (10th) and barely improved in Summer (8th).

While the performance improved marginally in 2020, it was still a year full of frustrating results for the organisation. Can ‘Closer’ Çelik and Victor ‘FBI’ Huang joining later in the year gave fans a glimpse of potential; however, the team couldn’t break into the top five, placing 7th-8th in the Summer regular season.

For an organisation that had a triumphant debut, back-to-back disappointing seasons forced 100 Thieves to re-evaluate its structure and gameplay approach.

After two underwhelming seasons and multiple roster shuffles, 100 Thieves finally reached its ultimate target in 2021. 

With Ssumday, Closer, Abbedagge, FBI and huhi in the line-up, the team dominated the Summer Split and took revenge against Team Liquid in the Grand Final to lift its first-ever LCS trophy. From placing in the middle of the pack in 2020, the team turned 2021 into a year that fans would never forget.

This victory also finalised the team’s participation in Worlds 2021, though once again it failed to match the international standards of competition.

Over the years, 100 Thieves represented North America at Worlds a total of four times, proving to be one of the best organisations for the region in the franchise era. 

However, the team couldn’t crack the secret to defeat giants from other leagues, and even though it formed a superteam featuring legends Søren ‘Bjergsen’ Bjerg and Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng in 2023, it failed to live up to expectations.

That said, nothing could take away from the fact that 100 Thieves, despite all odds, was more consistent than most teams in the region and continuously kept hope alive for the North American League of Legends scene. Whilst it failed to reach the same international heights as the likes of Team Liquid and Cloud9, its consistency in qualifying for Worlds should be recognised.

As Riot Games shifted to the LTA model for League of Legends, 100 Thieves sold its slot back to Riot and continued competing as a Provisional Guest Team. 

While the organisation believed this would be a temporary arrangement, Riot has decided to partner with another long-term organisation starting in 2026.

As a result, 100 Thieves will exit League of Legends esports at the end of the 2025 LTA season, with everyone on the roster set to become a free agent.

From its electrifying debut to four World Championship runs, 100 Thieves may not have been the best team in NA, but it certainly built one of the biggest fanbases and received massive attention from the community.

The organisation kicked off 2025 by winning LTA North Split 1 league stage in a dominating fashion and finished second in the LTA Cross-Conference, making it another successful season for the team so far.

Its departure from League of Legends is the end of an era and a turning point that will go down in the history of esports.