On the morning of October 29, LCK updated a lot of remarkable information about the tournament in 2025. First, the schedule will change completely when previously, the teams will play LCK Spring, Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), Summer LCK and World Finals (Worlds).
However, with the new format from 2025 onwards, the first tournament of the year will not be a spring LCK but a new LCK Cup. The tournament will deploy a very new form of “Group Battle”. LCK has not revealed much about how the teams confront each other, only know the two teams and runner -up last season (Hanwha Life Esports and Geng) will turn the remaining teams in turn.
Besides, the LCK tournament will only have 1 prize/year and are divided into two stages. In the first phase, the teams will continue to compete in the two rounds and the top 6 teams will enter the “LCK Road to MSI” phase to find the team attending MSI 2025.
Then, by the second phase, the teams will be divided into groups based on the previous period (for example in the picture, the Legend and Rise groups). Each team will turn each other in turn, the top two teams of Legends will go straight to the semi-finals, the two teams ranked 3rd and 4 will wait in the first round of the play-off.
Next, the 5th team in the Legend table and the top 3 teams of Rise will go to the play-in to select the last two teams to play-off. The last two teams of Rise will be officially eliminated from the tournament. The play -off round is still likely to take place in the usual form with a direct type combining the winning branch – the losing branch (starting from the semi -finals).
In addition, the new LCK Cup and the new international tournament will apply Fearless Draft format, with the champions selected in the previous game will not be used in the next game. Thus, if the match extends to games 5, 50 generals will be banned (10 ordinary banned generals and 40 generals from previous games).
Due to a new international tournament, the competition time of the tournaments will also change. The LCK Cup is scheduled to take place from the middle of January – at the end of February, phase 1 LCK took place in April and May, phase 2 from the end of July – at the end of September. Regarding international tournaments, the new tournament will take place in early March, MSI is the end of June – between July and Worlds will be mid -October – mid -November.
With this new formula from Riot Games, LCK will completely change in 2025. Along with having to play many small stages, teams as well as players participating in the international tournament will take more effort than 4 tournaments as before.
In addition, the application of Fearless Draft will make the banned phase completely change when the players will need a very wide champion to meet a series of tactical needs as well as different squads. The next updated information about the official schedule as well as the video introduction video will be updated by Riot Games and LCK in the near future.
