League of Legends Landscape in 2022

League of Legends sounds like a simple game in it’s most basic explanation, the team that breaks the structures of the other team first wins the game. In reality, it is far more complicated than that, and so many factors come into play like the champions, the item choices and the different types of drakes spawning in the game. The game is already too complicated to keep track of so we are going to make your life a little bit easier today if you are interested in following the League of Legends Esports scene this year.

There are domestic tournaments being conducted by Riot Games itself in eleven major regions. It will be great for you to first familiarise with what these regions are and where do they stand in the strongest to weakest hierarchy.

LoL Countries Overview

Korea (LCK):

If you ask any professional analyst around the scene that what is the strongest region in the world when it comes to League of Legends, they will always say Korea.

The region has won the most World Championships and are always the favourite heading into an international tournament.

They really like to play a very slow and methodical playstyle that revolves around map control rather than being really aggressive and that’s the perfect way to play the game according to them.

There are currently 10 teams competing in LCK.

China (LPL):

They are the closest region when it comes to challenging Korea for that top spot and actually performed better than them in the last two years.

China is a region that is actually getting more attention by players due to the high salaries they can provide compared to Korea and many young Korean prodigies are signing their first professional contract with Chinese organizations since the last couple of years.

Chinese teams are known for their aggressive approach towards the game and they really like to get into the face of their opponents and force them into making bad decisions and historically this playstyle has worked great for them against everyone except Korea.

There are currently 17 teams playing in the LPL.

Europe (LEC):

Europe is such a huge continent and it might sound weird at first that the countries aren’t given their own domestic leagues but on a closer look you will find out why.

Every country in Europe that is interested in playing League of Legends have their own domestic league but it isn’t directly conducted by Riot Games. They are more like scouting grounds for the best European teams that are playing at the highest level of competition in LEC, which is the tournament conducted by Riot Games.

LEC is the region that is just below Korea and China and is actually getting stronger every year. There is no distinct playstyle on display here as every team is playing completely differently.

There are currently 10 teams playing in LEC.

North America (LCS)

This is the last of the four major regions but North America is actually the weakest of them all. NA has consistently underperformed at the international tournaments and look inferior to their competition from the other three major regions.

North America has been talked about by many analysts as a region that really doesn’t utilize it’s side lanes in game and look to roam together on the map with all five members. This is a really bad thing if you know how the game works and there needs to be a lot of improvement from the teams in North America to justify the major region title given to them by Riot Games.

There are currently 10 teams participating in North American LCS.

Other Regions:

There are seven other regions recognized by Riot Games that are allowed to compete at the international tournaments: Latin America, Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Vietnam, Taiwan and Japan. These regions aren’t exactly given direct qualification to the group stages of the international tournaments and are placed in the play ins stage which is conducted prior to the start of the tournaments to find the remaining teams to place into the groups.

Vietnam and Taiwan are the only regions from these seven that get one team directly into the group stages of the international tournaments.

The Road to LoL World Championship

Since we are up to date with the regions now let’s discuss how the season works. The end goal of every team playing in these regions is to qualify for the World Championship in Shenzhen China at the end of the year but only three teams qualify from the four major regions while either one or two teams qualify from the other regions.

The qualification is based on how well they performed throughout the year and the season is divided into two halves. You can think of two tournaments in a single year, the spring split and the summer split and teams get points on the basis of their standings in the leaderboard at the end of the season which results in the top teams qualifying for the World Championship.

There is another international tournament apart from the World Championship and it is called the Mid Seasonal Invitational. The champions from the spring split of every region go head to head and the top four teams are placed in a single elimination bracket after that. The winner doesn’t get anything related to World’s Qualification but it is still one of the most prestigious tournaments in the scene for bragging rights against other regions.

This was a brief rundown of how the League of Legends Esports scene work like and what you should be knowing before you get into this vast and exciting world of the game. We hope this will help you and make your LoL Esports experience easier than ever!