Riot Games has recently canceled the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), leaving teams to only prepare for the Summer Split and the 2020 League of Legends World Championship. The absence of MSI is leading to plenty of changes, especially with regional seed allocation. Each year, Riot releases information on how many teams from each region will participate, but this year will be a little different.
The official statement on the League of Legends blog explains the upcoming regional seed allocations. Originally, MSI determined many factors on who would participate in the world championships, including which region’s top seed would be in Pool 1 and which region would receive an additional seed.
“To account for the absence of MSI, as well as the merger between the LMS and the LST,” the post stated, “we will implement several changes to the quantity of teams each region will field at the World Championship.”
The post reveals that both the League of Legends Pro League (LPL) and League of Legends European Championship (LEC) will have four teams for Worlds. This is because they are highly ranked due to their historically good performance. VCS (Vietnam) will meanwhile receive a second seed to the event. For the past two years, they have received this additional seed due to their performance in previous Mid-Season Invitationals.
The 2020 Worlds regional seed allocation
- LPL (China), LEC (Europe): 4 Teams each
- LCK (Korea), LCS (North America): 3 Teams each
- PCS (Southeast Asia), VCS (Vietnam): 2 Teams each
- CBLOL (Brazil), TCL (Turkey), LJL (Japan), LLA (Latin America), OPL (Oceania), LCL (Commonwealth of Independent States) : 1 Team each
For the 2019 World Championship, Riot released a video on its LoL Esports YouTube channel explaining the seeds and participating regions. The recent distribution of seeds is a surprise to many LCK fans, considering the LCK won Worlds five times between 2013 to 2017. Others are excited that the LEC and LPL are receiving a huge opportunity to have four teams this years.
Riot will share more information regarding pool placement for all seeds in the near future. Stay tuned with Daily Esports for more updates regarding the 2020 League of Legends World Championship.
