How to get better at League of Legends in 2026: 5 tips to play like a pro

It’s true, folks: League of Legends was released in 2009 and is still arguably one of the best PC games available. In fact, it still maintains a huge global following, along with a thriving esports scene. Of course, if you’re reading this article, you likely already play LoL, and are looking to improve, or have recently found it and want the best tips.

To help you, we’ve absorbed pro player knowledge and tips. We have also considered the best (useful) things to focus on for maximum gains. With so much to master in LoL, even watching the best League of Legends teams isn’t necessarily helpful.

While succeeding in climbing the ranks feels simple, because… well, just win more matches, each match has many turning points. So, before you consider mastery of a role in your climb up the ranks (and some of the 170 League of Legends champions and their various skill ceilings), let’s look at how you can get better at League of Legends. 

There’s no magic solution to improving at LoL, because it’s a multi-dimensional, multi-phase game with a good amount to pick up. But knowing that is part of your path to improvement. In fact, if you can just improve one aspect of your play per match, eg, farming more efficiently, it can have a large effect across multiple matches.

Think of LoL like a gaming PC, where if one part isn’t working as it should, it can undermine your whole system’s performance. As Legends requires you to be on top of several priorities at once for maximum performance, the same is true. You need to know what’s not working or what you’re not doing. So, let’s break down LoL matches into five areas:

If there are any areas where you feel you lack knowledge in or don’t engage in during a match, then these are prime targets for improvement. For example, you may be a great laner, know your champ well, and understand how to utilise and farm minion waves. However, if your map awareness is patchy, check your minimap more.

Similarly, if you’re not helping your team in fights as much as you could, this is an area for major improvement. Ultimately, adding what you’re not doing will deliver improvements quicker than continuing to upgrade what you already do well. Otherwise, you may only improve minimally on things you are already doing well.

The flip side to this, with champions specifically, is that attempting to add a new champion to your roster may take away from what you are best at. If you prefer to play as a jungler and are good at jungler champs, you’ll do better sticking to optimising existing champions, or at least optimising in that role.

Deciding to understand…let’s say, top lane champions, is good for game knowledge. However, learning to play top lane champions from scratch means avoiding your best role,   and handicapping your ability to impact matches. Naturally, it’s up to you to balance enjoyment (and perhaps variety) with working your way up the ranks. 

Farming is such a big part of the LoL meta that it’s impossible to ignore here. Farming smart is a huge part of your potential for success in LoL, and if you’re not already doing it as much as possible, then you should. It’s why you’ll see professional LoL players focus on it to a point where their CS (creep score) is far beyond what most amateurs can achieve.

For team experience and gold, CS is fuel for you and your team, and so last-hitting well is critical if you want to climb the League of Legends ranks. Farming smart doesn’t just mean dominating a lane and beating down on the opposing player, though. It means staying alive while optimising your CS, a more gradual path to pain for the enemy team. 

Smart farming may mean allowing your minion wave to deplete the enemy’s before last-hitting several minions with a spell. Or it could be that you’re under pressure and let the enemy minion wave deplete to your towers before getting the last hit. What you don’t want to do when farming is to die.

But you do want to do whatever you can to farm CS and gold: including spotting jungle camps that you can solo for a boost if the opportunity exists.There’s plenty here to look at, and Skill Capped Challenger LoL Guides has an excellent video on improving farming skills. Don’t underestimate how important this is, and how much this can make you a better player. 

It’s an obvious but often overlooked fact that the LoL practice tool is in the launcher waiting to be used. First arriving with the V7.3 League of Legends Update, it is a powerful option for getting better at LoL. You can play around in a sandbox with full control over what happens, including bot difficulty and solo-champ practice.

Beyond this, you can auto-refresh cooldowns, teleport to any place on the map, instantly level up, and just play around with all the elements that come together in a regular LoL match. There is the Co-op vs AI option if you want a no-risk match against AI with other human players.

Ultimately, the Practice Tool is well worth spending time on if you’re committed to getting better at League of Legends. Getting familiar with the tool, while knowing what you need to focus on for practice, will help you bolster your gameplay. This video from Strike Gaming gives a helpful introduction to the Tool.

It’s important to address the social element of LoL here. Because, honestly, toxicity or just distracting and unhelpful messages sadly do exist in online gaming. How you deal with those can have a massive influence on your ability to focus on your own game, let alone win a competitive match. 

You won’t see professional LoL players engaging in unnecessary text chat or voice comms when focusing in-game, and with good reason. If you choose to have voice and text chat active, your best bet to improve your performance is to avoid getting dragged into messaging or typing battles, which can happen all too often.

Better yet, just disable voice and text chat in the settings menu. This tip may feel counterproductive, because teamwork and communication can be a big help while playing LoL. However, trying to learn and enjoy anything while constantly hearing or seeing messages, especially if they’re not constructive, is a huge drain on your energy.

League of Legends has changed considerably, in many ways. Naturally, a game that has been around for so long will have had content updates, including new champions being added to the roster, new game elements, and dynamics to deal with – and Twitch streamer Exil has an interesting video on this very subject. 

The most obvious change for LoL to date has been its visuals. If you compare 2009 LoL to today, you will see that the game looks a lot different and much better visually. Crucially, The Summoners Rift (otherwise known as the League of Legends map) received a technical update in May 2012, was redesigned for 2015, and tweaked in 2019. 

More recently, Summoner’s Rift was rejigged in 2024 with some changes to solve apparent issues. But the biggest changes may be yet to come: the “League Next” update, scheduled for 2027, may be the biggest in LoL’s history, focusing on reworked technical pillars and aesthetics.

Before we get to some of the best players of LoL, for improving at LoL it’s important to note that if you play League of Legends competitively, you’re often known by your role (Jungle, ADC, mid, etc). This reflects our earlier view about specialising and why it’s important if you want to focus on progress over variety.

That being noted, some of the biggest LoL players right now are: T1’s Faker, widely regarded as the best LoL player in the game’s history; Elyoya, a powerful jungler for Movistar KOI; Bin, one of the best top-laners in the world, and part of BiliBili Gaming; and Chovy of Gen.G.

Getting better at LoL isn’t a quick fix, but analysing what you’re not good at (or what you don’t do) is a great way to start to improve and add other elements to your game. Improving your farming skills, practising and refining your preferred role/champ pool, and ignoring useless distractions will all help you to find the improvements you need.

Furthermore, one of the biggest missed opportunities to improve is using League of Legends’ own Practice Tool. If you really want to understand every permutation of a match, a hero, the impact of farming, and of progression, this tool will help you. Whether you’re a new or experienced player, focus on what you’re not doing, or are worst at, for your preferred role.