Brace Yourself For The 2018 League of Legends World Championship Play-ins Coming Just Around The Corner

Annually at this end of the year, every League of Legends players and fans will all gather around to prepare for the biggest event of the game held in South Korea this year: the World Championship. After achieving their glorious victories through many matches in the regional league, 12 best teams from major and also emerging regions will continue to battle in the Worlds play-in stage starting in the next few days.

Participants

The 2018 League of Legends World Championship Play-in stage has the participation of 12 teams in total. The teams are divided into 4 groups, each including 3 teams chosen from the regional league champions and the third seeds of major region listed as Europe, North America, China, and Taiwan. Here is how the 4 groups are split:

Group A

Edward Gaming

Dire Wolves

Infinity Esports

Group B

Ascension Gaming

G2 Esports

Bahçeşehir SuperMassive

Group C

Cloud9

DetonatioN FocusMe

KaBuM! e-Sports

Group D

Gambit Esports

Kaos Latin Gamers

G-Rex

Format

Participating in the group stage, each of 12 teams will have BO1 (best-of-one) matches to play against all other opponents in turn. The two teams ranking first in each group will gain their chance coming to the next stage: the knockout. 1st place teams from the group stage will each meet a 2nd place team in BO5 matches, as long as they won’t be divided in the same previous group. The Worlds Main-stage will welcome winners from this Play-in knockout stage.

Schedule

The play-in stage starts at 5pm KST / 3am CT on October 1. Six days will be how long League of Legends fans can enjoy the 2018 Play-in stage. The teams will play in 4 days for the group stage then move to the knockout for the last 2 days. Different from the group stage, the knockout’s schedule is 1pm KST / 11pm CT.

Stream

As usual, Riot Games’ official Twitch channel will live stream throughout their biggest event of the year. The play-in stage, as well as the whole championship, also will be streamed on the YouTube channel of League of Legends Esports. In addition, Twitch and YouTube will be filled with broadcasts of the event from many sources in various languages. You can easily find the event to watch in several streaming services too. So keep yourself ready for the epic 2018 League of Legends World Championship coming in!