Riot announces larger competition and future changes for collegiate League of Legends

The Riot Scholastic Association of America has announced their fall preview and future changes for Riot Games’ collegiate League of Legends and Valorant leagues. The announcement includes plans for larger fall competition with easier access and important dates for the 2022 season, and some big changes for 2023 and beyond. All this looks to keep the collegiate esports scene thriving within the games Riot owns, even mentioning Valorant in the update.

School's out for summer, but we're hard at work on the future of college esports. Here's an update on nearly everything we're working on, including Fall 2021 competition, CLOL 2022 dates, big CLOL changes for 2023, and an open request for your feedback. https://t.co/gkJiU5WrKm pic.twitter.com/A6IjNoras6

— Riot Scholastic Association of America (@RSAAOfficial) July 28, 2021

New updates for 2021 and 2022

The first big change from this Riot update is a new fall League of Legends collegiate competition with no limits on participation or the size of the competition. This isn’t connected to the main collegiate season but has many new additions to help new players join the system as they play online. The list is open to all schools with no limit on how many join. The competition is free to enter and offers more flexible scheduling. The details released on this competition are just the beginning, according to the update. This event starts in late October and stretches to November.

Registration starts in November of 2021, with the season starting in January. Team will play until April 10 as the playoffs and college championship start in mid-May to early June.

In addition, club registration is up for the 2021-22 season, offering support for clubs that play Riot’s games.

Updates for 2023 onwards

Riot mentions in this update how they want to keep up with the times, changing when needed. On the path to this, they announced that they have plans for 2023 and onwards. They include lower matchup disparity and more reliable scheduling. More direct changes for fans include making the competitions easier to follow and more support for the players. The Riot team is looking for potential operations partners for that time as well.

In terms of potential Valorant competitions, the update states that the team doesn’t have any current plans for the 2021-22 season. However, Riot is supporting any potential competitions involving collegiate Valorant.