Riot finally expands LoL competitive calendar with third international event
League of Legends players and fans are getting their wish fulfilled: A third international tournament will be officially added to the calendar for 2025.
The news comes via a Riot Games dev update on June 11, with the League esports calendar set to look drastically different following the 2024 World Championship and heading into next year. Regional play will kick off earlier in the year, culminating in an event currently penciled for March. This tournament isn’t expected to be as grand as the likes of Worlds, but it fills out the calendar year a little more and gives another opportunity for League’s best and brightest to prove themselves on the world stage.
All major regions are expected to send a squad to this new event. Photo by Liu Yi-Cun via Riot Games
This confirms rumors of an expanded international calendar for 2025 back in April, which would likely mean the Mid-Season Invitational and even the World Championship will be pushed back slightly to accommodate the new event. Not much else is known about the tournament apart from April’s rumors suggesting a single team from each major region will be invited.
While it wasn’t a whole new tournament, it was clear Riot had planned mass changes to international League events after a major adjustment to the formats for MSI and Worlds. With today’s announcement seeing the merger of the American sub-regions into a two-conference league, the continued consolidation of the Southeast Asian and Oceanic regions, and a unified split schedule, space has certainly opened up for League to slot in another major tournament—something the scene has been begging for over the years.
This year features another international event in the form of the Esports World Cup. But it’s run by a third-party organizer and doesn’t have the same level of regional integration as Riot’s official events. Instead, all eyes will be on how Riot handles the 2025 season and what the new event will entail.
As it stands, League’s competitive calendar begins in late January and ends in early November, but with a planned and unified schedule, it should be easy to fit in this third tournament. More details about this new event will be shared in the coming months.
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