League of Legends 2026 S1 Gameplay Changes: Atakhan Removed, New Plates on T2 & T3, Nashor Back at 20

On Monday, Riot Games announced changes coming to League of Legends in Season 1 of 2026. Beyond new quests for each role and changes to ranked, almost every core system is being upgraded, including vision, turrets, minions, and items. Riot says the goal is to make games feel faster, clearer, and more strategic for both new and veteran players. Announced in the latest dev blog video, changes to League’s gameplay in 2026 will arrive on PBE on December 3rd 2025, and go live on January 7th, 2026.

For the past year, most games came down to teamfights and objective stacking, but starting 2026, players will have to rethink their strategies. Now, Riot wants players to feel more rewarded for split-pushing, smart rotations, and more aggressive turrets’ sieges. Summoner’s Rift Product Lead Chris Roberts explained that the changes coming in 2026 should make split pushing a “relatively more attractive” strategy for teams—and the vision changes also support that.

Faelights are one of the biggest features coming to the Rift in 2026. These are special spots on the Rift where players can place a ward to make it stronger. A ward placed on a Faelight spot gains a bigger vision radius and creates a 45-second reveal zone around it. Some Faelights appear only after Elemental Rift, so players will have to adapt how they control the vision on the map throughout the game. The new feature is meant to help all players — not just supports — set up vision for safer split pushes.

“You can think of them as super ward spots,” said Roberts. He explained that when designing Faelights, Riot had two primary goals in mind. First was to make warding more accessible and intuitive for players, and second to make vision control more accessible for pushing, especially in side lanes.

The wards themselves will also get improvements:

As the shift in gameplay strategies focuses more on lanes, Riot is giving turrets and minions an upgrade. The biggest update is Crystalline Overgrowth, which lets turrets gather “crystal energy” over time and, when a champion hits the turret three times, the energy releases extra damage.

Turret plating is also being reworked. Tier 1 turret plates no longer disappear after 14 minutes. Tier 2 and 3 turrets gain three plates each, with gold granted plate-by-plate instead of only on tower kills, which rewards incremental progress. Nexus turrets now respawn at 40% health, giving losing teams a better chance to defend.

“The combination of these two changes should make it that shorter pushes are more rewarding in both progress and gold even if you only get one or two turret plates,” said Roberts. In addition to turrets’ changes, minion waves are now faster, creating more lane pressure and making split-pushing more impactful. The first minion wave will spawn at 0:30 for a faster game start. Later in the game, after 14 minutes, waves will spawn every 25 seconds and every 20 seconds after 30 minutes, but each wave will have fewer minions to avoid overwhelming the map.

And to let players focus more on lanes, Riot is also balancing jungle objectives and adjusting Smite's damage. First and foremost, as League said goodbye to Atakhan in the lore, Blood Roses, Feats of Strength, and the demon itself have been removed from the Rift. Baron’s spawn will go back to 20 minutes.

Epic monsters are also receiving several changes to make them harder to kill and more rewarding to contest. They now have 15% more HP, higher armor, and magic resistance. But Dragon Vengeance has been adjusted so that consecutive dragon reduction per stack increases from 7% to 15%.

Jungle pets have been tuned to deal 10% more damage instead of the current 25%. Smite’s damage scaling changed from 600/900/1200 to 600/1000/1400, giving junglers stronger clearing power.

Riot is adding nine new items and bringing several older ones back. As items are still being tweaked, there isn’t a full list of all ones coming out yet. However, League’s design team says the upcoming items update fills gaps for many subclasses — especially AP casters, bruisers, and scaling carries who lacked good item paths.

Crit damage returns to 200%, restoring the classic crit feel for marksmen and other AD carries. Some of the new items focus on niche playstyles, like mana-scaling mages or continuous-damage battlemages, while others bring back older mechanics players have surely missed.

Riot says the main goal is to improve class satisfaction. Damage dealers should feel strong, tanks should feel reliable, and each archetype should have the right tools at the right time.