ptkovsky
Riot Games, one of the biggest North American video game developers, publishers, esports organizers, and content providers in the world, revealed play-in groups for the upcoming Worlds event.
The US developer organizes two major esports events or world championships on the League of Legends esports scene during the year — the MSI and Worlds events.
The official location of the Worlds 2021 championship is the Laugardalsholl Sport Center, located in Reykjavik, Iceland.
The European venue already successfully hosted two big esports events previously organized by Riot, such as MSI-series championship, the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational, and also their VCT event, first LAN competition of Valorant, their FPS title — the VCT 2021 Stage 2 Masters.
Play-in groups (first round):
Group A
- Hanwha Life Esports (Korea)
- Infinity Esports (Costa Rica)
- LNG Esports (China)
- PEACE (Australia)
- RED Canids (Brazil)
Group B
- Beyond Gaming (Taiwan)
- Cloud9 (United States)
- DetonatioN FocusMe (Japan)
- Galatasaray Esports (Turkey)
- Unicorns of Love (Russia)
Main group stage:
Group A
- DWG KIA (Korea)
- FunPlus Phoenix (China)
- Rogue (EU)
- TBD (the team from play-ins)
Group B
- 100 Thieves (United States)
- EDward Gaming (China)
- T1 (Korea)
- TBD (the team from play-ins)
Group C
- Fnatic (EU)
- PSG Talon (Hong Kong)
- Royal Never Give Up (China)
- TBD (the team from play-ins)
Group D
- Gen.G (Korea)
- MAD Lions (EU)
- Team Liquid (United States)
- TBD (the team from play-ins)
Worlds
The 2021 World Championship is the main League of Legends tournament of the year, where 22 teams from all over the world compete for the Summoners cup.
It was initially planned that the event will host 24 teams and will be held in China, where the title is extremely popular. But due to the global pandemic, the US organizer had to change the initial plan.
The tournament in China was entirely canceled. The Vietnamese teams could not participate due to the COVID-19 issues, and because their local VCS Summer 2021 tournament was indefinitely delayed or even canceled.
It was later announced that the League of Legends world championship moved to Europe and will take place from October 5 to November 6 in Reykjavik.
The total prize pool of the tournament is equal to $2,225,000.
Play-in stage format
The Worlds 2021 championship will start from the play-in stage, where 10 teams will compete in the group stage format.
First play-in round
The first phase of the play-in event will last for two days.
Four teams qualify from each group of the first play-in phase. The top teams of their groups at this stage qualify directly to the Worlds 2021 group stage.
Organizations, who finished second, third, and fourth, qualify for the next group stage — the second play-in round.
The exact placement of the teams in this phase will be measured by their head-to-head result, if needed. The remaining teams are eliminated from the tournament.
Knockouts
Then, on the next two days, six remaining teams, who placed 2nd-4th in the first play-in round, will play Bo5 matches in the second play-in round, or knockout stage of the Worlds 2021 event.
Third and fourth teams from the same group in the first play-in round will compete against each other, to decide the winner, who will face the previously second placed teams.
Only two organizations from this stage advance to the next round. These matches conclude the play-in knockouts.
Group stage
Group stage has 4 slots for the play-in teams. The 4 winning teams from the two play-in stages join the other 12 directly qualified teams from regional leagues and play in the next phase of the event — the Worlds 2021 group stage.
16 teams in the group stage face each other in a Bo1 series, using a double round-robin system. The 8 teams with the most wins advance to the playoffs, where the quarterfinal matches will be played.