League of Legends fans finally have concrete information about the 2018 World Championships—though some of the details aren’t exactly locked in yet.
The event will kick off in Seoul, with the 12 teams participating in the play-in tournament beginning their matches on Oct. 1. The first round of the play-ins will continue until Oct. 4. There will be a one day break before the strongest play-in teams face off to conclude the first round of Worlds on Oct. 6 and Oct. 7. Four teams will advance to the group stage.
Once the final Worlds participants are locked in via the play-in stage teams will travel to Busan, the second most populated city in the country, for the group stage. Matches will be held from Oct. 10 to Oct. 17. Eight teams will advance to the quarterfinals, held from Oct. 20 to Oct. 21.
From there, the remaining teams will compete for a finals berth at Gwangju on Oct. 27 and Oct. 28, with the final two teams traveling to Incheon. The showdown between the best two League teams in the world will take place on Nov. 3.
Information about the World Championships has been scarce this year. In February, Riot announced the annual tournament would be held in South Korea, though no further information was released until today. Fans flocked to Reddit to complain, though Riot has an explanation for the tardy news.
The initial venue chosen for the finals in Incheon fell through at the last moment, according to a post on game’s esports site by Derrick Asiedu, Riot’s global events lead. As of now, Riot still doesn’t have a venue completely sewn up. In order to prevent this, Riot has plans to create a multi-year roadmap to plan out international tournaments further in advance.
The total length of the tournament is also being cut down, with the group stage lasting only eight days instead of two weeks. The quarterfinals will be complete in two days, not four. This was to lessen the amount of time professional players needed to be on the road, according to Riot.
October figures to be the busiest month of the year for League fanatics, so mark your calendars and start preparing for the inevitable hype that comes with every World Championship.
