Why is 2025 perhaps the biggest year for League of Legends?
League of Legends is the world’s biggest game, there is absolutely no question about it. But, we must all be aware that it has become a bit stale and “safe” in recent times, which is something even Riot realised. So, for 2025, they went all-out and changed a lot: from merging leagues, changing the draft and adding a big new event, just to keep LoL fresh.
Fresh LoL is also coming your way during the A1 Adria League Weekly tournaments, so make sure you apply!
Merging regions
In the last couple of years, some of the main regions for League of Legends were not performing as well as they needed to in terms of viewership and overall popularity, with one of them being the LCS, one of the most famous esports leagues (which even had documentaries filmed about it). To try and boost its popularity, Riot has merged the LCS with CBLOL, a league that is steadily growing in popularity, and called it LTA.
This is a similar move as the VCT Americas in VALORANT, and was seen as a good thing after its first split. Of course, it turned out that the NA teams are stronger than the Brazilian ones which is a bummer for the Brazilians, but the metrics are okay so Riot is probably happy, too.
On the other side of the world, Riot merged VCS (Vietnam) and PCS (Pacific) leagues into one to also make one larger league. The region is also in its first year, and the viewership is also doing okay. Truth be told, the eyes of the world were focused much more on the LTA than the LCP, but the merger will probably be a good thing for the region.
A new tournament
For the first time in around 10 years, Riot has created a new tournament in 2025, called the First Stand. This was also done to echo the structure of the VALORANT scene, with its three big international events laid out in a season. The First Stand took place in March and featured only a single best team from each region, contrary to MSI or Worlds, events that are much bigger in scale. The event went well, and it gave teams one more chance for a trophy, as well as more time to train and practice for the teams that did not manage to enter the big event.
Viewership-wise, it had 1.1m peak viewers, a good number for a relatively small tournament with the likes of Hanwha Life Esports, Top Esports and Team Liquid competing.
Fearless Draft
The last major thing, introduced for the First Stand, is the new draft concept for pro play, where players can only play one champion per series. This means that there is much more strategy (and creativity) involved because if you choose a champion in the first match, you are locking both your and the opposing team from using it during the entire game.
This led to some interesting picks during First Stand, and the usage of some champions out of the 170-strong pool that are not that famous outside of solo queue. Interestingly, this might result in Riot taking more time with balancing champions because they can’t know which ones will be picked, and some of them were not reworked or updated in a very long time.
If you are a League of Legends player from the region, you probably do not care about the LTA or the First Stand too much – but you might care about the application process for the Weekly A1AL tournaments. There is still time to sign up and apply for the events, so make sure you organise a team before it’s too late.
