Riot Games announces new international tournament for League of Legends in 2025: First Stand

As the League of Legends World Championship League of Legends 2024 comes to an end, Riot has begun outlining its plans for the upcoming season. As part of its strategy for the upcoming year, the developer has announced a new flagship tournament that will bring together the best teams from around the world: First Stand.

The tournament First Stand will be markedly different from anything that players of League of Legends have seen to date. As the opening of the international calendar, each region will take one team as a representative to the tournament, with a total of five teams competing.

With the format change, these five regions will be the LCK, LPL, LEC, LTA (the best team between the North and South conferences) and LCP (League of Legends Championship Pacific).

First Stand is designed to enliven regional rivalries and test innovations. We will see the best teams from each of our five regions face off at the start of the season, setting the pace of competition for the rest of the year. This event will take place at the end of the first division, over the course of seven days.

Chris Greeley, Riot’s Global Strategy Director

Each team will be guaranteed to face each other. The most significant change from the traditional tournaments of League of Legends is the introduction of the Fearless Draft. This new selection system only allows teams to select a champion once during each series.. This elimination system applies to both teams, so once a team selects a champion, that choice is discarded for the remainder of the matchup.

With another big tournament on the calendar, Greeley confirmed that hosting minor regions of the game is being considered. Especially now that they are no longer really considered minor regions.

LTA South and most of the teams in the LCP would not have been considered for tournaments of this type in the past, but based on the performance of these now defunct regions at Worlds 2024, these teams deserve a place in the tournament.

It remains to be seen if this tournament will have any connection to Worlds qualification, as is currently the case with the Mid-Season Invitational. The development team has confirmed that more details on the exact format will be released early next year.

The tournament will be held March 10-16, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea.