League of Legends Worlds 2020: All News and Participants

League of Legends World Championship 1 — Soon the League of Legends Worlds will finally return. (Image credit: Riot Games)

The League of Legends World Championship 2020 in Shanghai will take place with only 22 of the originally planned 24 participants. Riot confirmed that the two teams from Vietnam will not participate in Worlds but the remaining participants will be present.

The reason for missing out on the event is the handling of the COVID-19 virus in Vietnam. The teams are theoretically allowed to go to China and participate in the tournament, but they are not allowed to return to their home country in Vietnam. The two spots will remain free and will not be occupied by teams moving up.

Worlds 2020 Format

The change in the number of participants influences the format of the play-in phase and thus the distribution of the seeds.

Worlds Format — This is how the Play-In-Stage will be played. (Image credit: Riot Games)

According to this, 10 teams will compete against each other in the play-in phase. They will be divided into two seeded groups of five teams each and will play a best-of-one against each opponent in their own group. The two group winners will qualify for the Main Event, the two last in the group will be eliminated.

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The third and fourth-placed teams in each group will play a best-of-five series, eliminating the loser, with the winner playing a best-of-five series against the second-placed team in the other group. The winners of these games also qualify for the group stage.

To maintain an even number of teams in the Play-In, we also needed to automatically advance one team that was initially expected to start in the Play-In to the Group Stage. After evaluation of past regional performance at international events, we determined that it would be fairest to advance the third seed from the LCK.

This means that the LCK, which came in third place, moves from the play-in stage directly into the group phase of the playoffs.

Gruppenphase — The pools for the group phase. (Image credit: Riot Games)

These Teams Have Already Earned Their Spot!

In contrast to previous LoL Worlds, the two leading regions will have four seeds based on the latest world ranking results. This year these are the LPL and the LEC. The LCK and LCS will have three seeds as before.