- The LEC’s rigid format will be changed starting in January
- There will also be three matches per week, with “Super weeks” hosting four matches total
- These changes are an attempt to make LEC matches longer and more interesting
After months of deliberation, the League EMEA Championship has decided on its new format for the 2023 competitive season.
LEC Will Be Changed
This year saw another great League of Legends competitive season, however, preparations and changes for 2023 are already being implemented. There have been speculations about changes to Europe’s top league, the League EMEA Championship, or LEC for short, since before the start of the World Championship.
Back in September, Riot discussed potential format changes with LEC teams. These changes were aimed at making the otherwise very rigid best-of-one matches into longer and more interesting games. It appears that Riot has finally decided to not only have a new format for the 2023 LEC but also change the days it plays its matches.
Next year, the LEC will be moving to three days of matches a week and will be running on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. These changes will be implemented with the start of the new competitive season in January.
More Matches Incoming Each Week
The LEC’s new format means we will see more matches weekly next year compared to previous years. In previous seasons, the LEC played their games only two days a week, usually on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes we had extra matches on Fridays on what was dubbed “Super weeks”. The future format will also have such weeks, but the matches will extend past the weekend into Monday, bringing the total number of matches per “Super week” to four.
The format change is part of Riot’s broader attempt to change the European League of Legends ecosystem. The region will also see a new way in which teams qualify for higher competitions. Next year will see the LEC have three smaller splits instead of the two larger splits that are commonly seen throughout the world and historically in the LEC itself. With this change, Riot aims to have more important games in the same time span as the regular season tends to not matter as much, especially in the Spring splits.
All of these changes will start with the 2023 LEC Winter Split which will feature a best-of-one round-robin format. This means that each team in the 10-team league will play each other once with the top eight teams moving onto a double-elimination group stage. This will then reduce the number of participating teams to four, all of which will proceed to a single elimination bracket to decide who will be each splits champion.
Teams that win a split are automatically granted a spot at the LEC season finals which will determine which teams from the region will represent the LEC at Worlds 2023.
