League of Legends Championship Pacific

League of Legends Championship Pacific
Most recent season or competition:
2025 LCP season
GameLeague of Legends
Founded29 September 2024 (2024-09-29)
First seasonSplit 1 2025
Organising body
No. of teams8 (regular season)
TBD (playoffs)
Relegation to
International cup(s)World Championship
Mid-Season Invitational
First Stand

The League of Legends Championship Pacific (LCP) is an upcoming professional esports league for League of Legends teams competing in the Asia-Pacific region.[a] Riot Games, the game's developer, and tournament organizer Carry International created the league on 29 September 2024. This followed an announcement in June by Riot in which they planned to form a single tournament to replace the Pacific Championship Series (PCS) and Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) as a tier-one league. Both leagues, along side the League of Legends Japan League (LJL), which was integrated into the PCS for the 2024 season, became tier-two leagues.

The LCP will utilize a hybrid franchise and promotion and relegation model, similar to the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) in Riot's tactical shooter Valorant. Four teams will be "partners" in the league and can't be relegated, while another four are "guest teams" that can be relegated to the PCS, VCS, LJL or other sub-regional leagues based on their location.

The LCP is made up of three organizations from Vietnam, two organizations each from Japan and Taiwan[b] and one organization from Oceania. All teams will play from a studio in Taipei.

History

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Prior to the LCP

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The first professional esports league for League of Legends players in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asia was the Garena Premier League (GPL), which ran from 2012 to mid-2018 and ran by Garena, who distributed the game in those regions. Teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau were given their own league, the League of Legends Master Series (LMS), in late 2014.[1] Three years later, the Vietnam Championship Series (VCS) was upgraded to a Tier 1 tournament and Vietnam became its own competitive region, separate from the rest of Southeast Asia.[2][3] The GPL was rebranded as the League of Legends SEA Tour (LST) in mid-2018.[4]

On 25 September 2019, Garena announced its intention to merge the LMS and LST into a single league. This was fully announced by Riot Games as the Pacific Championship Series (PCS) on 19 December for a 2020 start.[5][6][7][8] The league, whilst originally franchised to feature 10 teams, would shrink to 8 teams for Spring 2024 (following a relegation series demoting Impunity Esports and Dewish Team whilst the promoted teams, Nate9527 and PSG Talon Academy, did not secure sponsors in time) and 7 for Summer 2024 (when Beyond Gaming closed operations). The PCS would "merge" with Oceania's league, the League of Legends Circuit Oceania (LCO), in time for the 2023 season, giving the two best LCO teams spots in the PCS playoffs instead of the league qualifying for international tournaments on their own.[9]

Japan's professional esports league for League of Legends, the League of Legends Japan League (LJL), was formed in 2014. Throughout the course of the league's history, DetonatioN FocusMe (DFM) dominated the competition, scoring 16 LJL titles and representing the region several times in international competition. On 26 November 2023, Riot announced that the league would become part of the PCS, much like Oceania, for the 2024 season.[10] During the season, DFM's dominance would be replaced by that of Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks Gaming (owned by the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) team of the same name), who won both LJL splits and finished as PCS runners-up in Spring and Summer, qualifying for the 2024 World Championship in the process.

Formation

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On 11 June 2024, Riot Games released a blog post titled "LoL Esports: Building Towards a Brighter Future", in which they would overhaul the competitive scene for 2025. Among these changes were the announcement of an 8-team pan-Asia-Pacific tournament that would take the place of the PCS and VCS as a tier-1 league. This league was announced to feature a hybrid promotion and relegation system, with some teams being franchise partners of the league while others were "guests" that would be relegated.[11] On 19 July Riot publicly announced that the league would consist of four partners and four guest teams. The league would officially launch as the League of Legends Championship Pacific on 29 September,[12] with the format for the inaugural season announced on 1 November and the teams revealed on 3 November.

Despite being part of the larger Asia-Pacific region, it was announced on 20 September 2024 that the LCO had folded. It is currently unknown what would replace the competition as a domestic league that promotes teams to the LCP.[13]

Format

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Split 1

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  • 8 teams compete in a single round robin best-of-3 group
  • The top 6 teams advance to the Qualifying Series, a yet-unknown playoff bracket
    • All series during this split utilize Fearless Draft, where picked Champions cannot be picked again in later games during a series

Split 2

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  • 8 teams compete in a double round robin best-of-1 group
  • The top 6 teams advance to the Qualifying Series
    • First round is single elimination between the 3rd to 6th seeds, the rest is double elimination
      • The first two rounds are best-of-3, all later rounds are best-of-5

Season Finals

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To be announced

Qualifications

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  • The winner of the first split qualifies for the First Stand Tournament
  • The winner and runner-up of the second split qualify for the Mid-Season Invitational as the LCP's first and second seeds respectively
  • The winner and runner-up and third place team of the Season Finals qualify for the World Championship as the LCP's first, second and third seeds respectively
    • If the LCP secures an additional Worlds spot via MSI, the fourth place team in the Season Finals qualifies as the LCP's fourth seed

Promotion Tournament

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Teams

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Eight teams will make up the league. This will consist of four partner teams that can't be relegated and four guest slots that can be relegated to the domestic leagues below the LCP (currently consisting of the PCS, VCS and LJL) based on their location. These initial four guest teams will consist of two merit slots consisting of the best non-partnered teams in the 2024 PCS and VCS Summer splits and two additional teams.

3 teams from Vietnam, 2 teams each from Japan and Taiwan[b], and 1 team from Oceania make up the LCP as of the 2025 season.

Partner teams

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Team Joined
CTBC Flying Oyster 3 November 2024
GAM Esports[c] 18 August 2024
PSG Talon[d] 1 September 2024
SoftBank Hawks[e] 3 November 2024

Guest teams

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Team Joined

Chiefs Esports Club

3 November 2024
DetonatioN FocusMe[f] 3 November 2024
Team Whales 3 November 2024
Vikings Esports[g] 3 November 2024

Results

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Year Split Champions Runners-up Third-place
2025 Split 1
Split 2
Season Finals

Notes

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  1. ^ Riot Games also uses the term "LCP region", which includes competitors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Southeast Asia and Oceania.
  2. ^ a b The LCP refers to Taiwan as "Taipei" in its official publications.
  3. ^ GAM Esports were guaranteed a guest spot in the LCP by winning the VCS Summer 2024 season, but were announced as a partnered team on 3 November 2024.
  4. ^ PSG Talon were guaranteed a guest spot in the LCP by winning the PCS Summer 2024 season, but were announced as a partnered team on 3 November 2024.
  5. ^ The official name of SoftBank Hawks is Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks Gaming, as they are owned by Japanese baseball club Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks.
  6. ^ DetonatioN FocusMe qualified via the PCS merit spot as the 5th place team in the 2024 Summer season; 1st place PSG Talon, 2nd place SoftBank Hawks and 4th place CTBC Flying Oyster were all selected as partnered teams, while 3rd place Frank Esports wasn't selected.
  7. ^ Vikings Esports qualified via the VCS merit spot as the runners-up of the 2024 Summer season; GAM Esports, the winners of the season, were selected as a partnered team.

References

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  1. ^ Kulasingham, Nilu (1 October 2014). "Garena to separate Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau from South East Asia for the 2015 GPL Season". Yahoo News. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  2. ^ Wolf, Jacob (21 February 2018). "Vietnam promoted to independent region in League of Legends". ESPN. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  3. ^ Goslin, Austen (21 February 2018). "Vietnam is now its own independent competitive league". The Rift Herald. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
  4. ^ "A New Beginning for Esports in Southeast Asia". LoL Garena. Retrieved 20 April 2018.
  5. ^ "全新聯賽將於 2020 年啟動，聯合LMS及LST全面提高戰區戰力". 《英雄聯盟 LoL》官方網站 – 全球第一多人連線遊戲，挑戰你的電子競技夢想！ (in Chinese (Taiwan)). LoL Esports; Garena TW. 25 September 2019. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  6. ^ Hao, Dexter Tan Guan (19 December 2019). "Pacific Championship Series created as combination of League's LMS and LST". Dot Esports. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  7. ^ Nicholson, Jonno (19 December 2019). "Riot Games announces Pacific Championship Series". Esports Insider. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  8. ^ Matthiesen, Tom (20 December 2019). "League of Legends: Riot merges the LMS and the LST to form one large Pacific Championship Series in 2020". Inven Global. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
  9. ^ Mclaughlin, Declan (18 November 2022). "Riot Games announces PCS will expand into Oceania". Dexerto. Retrieved 30 December 2022.
  10. ^ Ho, Liam (27 November 2023). "LoL esports announces Japan's LJL will join Oceania in PCS playoffs for Worlds entry". Dexerto.
  11. ^ Wilson, Jason (11 June 2024). "Riot Games rolls out consolidation plan, new spring event for League of Legends esports". Sports Business Journal. Retrieved 11 June 2024.
  12. ^ "Introducing League of Legends Championship Pacific!". LoL Esports. 29 September 2024. Retrieved 30 October 2024.
  13. ^ Taifalos, Nicholas (20 September 2024). "Riot 'exploring solutions' for new LoL circuit in Oceania just 4 years after last revamp". Dot Esports. Retrieved 1 October 2024.
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