Invictus Gaming unveils major roster changes for 2026

Davide Xu
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Invictus Gaming unveils major roster shakeup for 2026
Image Credit: Invictus Gaming

Chinese esports organisation Invictus Gaming (IG) has officially announced its full line-up for the upcoming 2026 League of Legends LPL season.

The new players were announced through individual posts on the team’s official Weibo account, with four new players joining the team, as well as a new member of the coaching staff.

The organisation has picked up Korean top laner Lim ‘Soboro‘ Seong-min, mid laner Zhang ‘Renard‘ Xing-Che, ADC Ying ‘Photic‘ Qi-Shen, and Sun ‘Jwei‘ Jun-Wei. On the staff side, IG promoted Won ‘Mafa‘ Sang-yeon to the head coach position and brought in coach Lee ‘KaKAO‘ Byung-kwon.

For KaKAO, this marks a return to Invictus Gaming, 10 years after his last appearance on Invictus Gaming’s starting line-up as a jungler. Mafa, who served on the coaching staff in 2025, has been promoted to the head coach role following Yang ‘Daeny‘ Dae-in’s transfer to rivals BiliBili Gaming.

Invictus Gaming’s Seven-man Roster?

The new roster announcement comes shortly after Korean player Kang ‘TheShy‘ Seung-lok announced his plan to take a break from competitive play. His absence prompted IG to sign Soboro, formerly from BNK FearX’s academy. The other departure was ADC Chen ‘GALA’ Wei, who went on to join JD Gaming. His vacancy has been filled by Photic, who last played for LNG Esports.

Jwei comes from a strong 2025 campaign with FunPlus Phoenix, while Renard has been promoted to the tier-one scene after his last stint on Anyone’s Legend academy team.

While those two roster moves were needed, Invictus Gaming still brought in two additional players in the mid lane and support. According to the Global Contract Database (GCD), the organisation recently extended the contracts for mid laner Song ‘Rookie‘ Eun-jin, jungler Yan ‘Wei‘ Yang-Wei, and support Tian ‘Meiko‘ Ye, resulting in IG essentially having a seven-man roster.

On paper, the roster is not supposed to be highly competitive, although it will likely depend on which players IG is going to choose as the starting five. Given TheShy’s temporary absence, the team might rotate mid and support players to give new talents some on-stage experience at the start of the season

Invictus Gaming will have its first set of matches during the Demacia Cup, which kicks off on December 15th. The starting date of the 2026 LPL Split 1 has yet to be announced.

Davide Xu

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Davide Xu is a freelance writer at Esports Insider focused on League of Legends esports. He covers everything inside and outside the Rift—especially when it comes to European and Asian competitive scenes. With a finance background and a multicultural lens, he loves talking about business as much as macro.
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