League of Legends Reveals Plans For S1 2026

Article Summary

• League of Legends S1 2026 launches with a Demacia theme, new skins, and a fresh cinematic in January.
• Major Summoner's Rift updates include faster game starts, item changes, and the new Crystalline Overgrowth.
• Role Quests arrive for all lanes, boosting XP, gold, and adding unique benefits for each position.
• Autofill improvements, Swiftplay changes, and Duo queue returns for Apex-tier ranked matches.

Next year kicks off with unity, hope, and justice. The Season 1 2026 theme will be Demacia.

• Summoner's Rift will be Demacia-themed with petricite, gold and blue accents, and more.
• The annual cinematic in January will also feature Demacian champions.
• The Battle Pass skins for Act 1 will feature some non-Demacian champions with Demacia-themed skins, and a Prestige skin for Morgana.
• Content will be focused on old school Demacia, at a time when they're in their golden age.

Changes to Summoner's Rift (Ranked and Normal Draft)

• Summoner's Rift games will start 35 seconds faster than they do now.
• Faelights will: locations that grant temporary bonus vision to wards.
• Atakhan, his Bloody Roses, and Feats of Strength are removed.
• A new mechanic called Crystalline Overgrowth will act as a universal demolish effect (three-hit passive) to turrets.
• Plates will remain on turrets and have been added to inner and inhibitor towers (with no increased gold added to the map).
• There are a bunch of new, and returning, items.
• Crit damage is going back to 200%.

Role Quests are being introduced to top, mid, and bot, which will act similar to support and jungle quests. You'll progress by CSing, fighting, and getting towers in your lane, and helping to get objectives.

• Top laners will get an increased level cap, more XP from all sources, and access to Teleport (which will get upgraded if you took it in Champ Select).
• Mid laners will get free tier 3 boots and a faster recall.
• Bot laners will get a lump sum of gold, increased gold for the rest of the game, and a seventh item slot.
• Junglers will see Smite deal more damage, get more gold and XP from jungle camps, and bonus move speed in the jungle.
• Supports will get discounts on control wards, more gold over time, and a new control ward slot.

Autofill Improvements and Changes

• We're improving autofill to better match autofilled players by role.
• If it can't match by role, it'll match the number of autofilled players.
• A new mechanic, Aegis of Valor, will reward you for getting a mastery score of C or higher in autofilled games with either double LP for a win or a mitigation on a loss.
  • You'll also receive the Aegis benefit if you play less-popular roles.
• You'll no longer be able to dodge to avoid being autofilled, and at Master+ it'll count as a full loss.

Swiftplay Improvements and Changes

• Swiftplay is inheriting most of the changes from Summoner's Rift, except Role Quests.
• A variety of changes will be made to make Swiftplay faster.
• Players start at level 3 with increased gold, similar to ARAM.
• Grubs and Rift Herald will be removed from Swiftplay, and dragons and the Elemental Rift will happen sooner.
• Sudden Death will start sooner.

Miscellaneous

• For Ranked, we're adding a climb indicator to the loading screen to show if someone's MMR is higher than their visible rank.
• We're bringing Flex MMR closer to Solo/Duo MMR to make Flex games more fair.
• Champ Select time has been lowered to get you into game faster.
• Duoing is back at Apex-tier games.
• WASD is live tomorrow, December 2 PT, on live servers.