Since the first edition of Worlds Championship in 2011, one rivalry has always existed and one question has remained : is EU better than NA or NA better than EU? With the answer to this question being changed at every international event, the EU v NA rivalry has a rich history that has seen the two regions recently as close as they've ever been.
A Global European domination over NA in the first years
Taking the whole Worlds and MSI History, EU has clearly stood above NA. After the first edition that saw Europe having two of its teams being 1st and 2nd (FNC and aAa), it seemed like not knowing what a kilometer was would prevent you from reaching semifinals. While a lot of European teams have reached top 4 in the first years, NA has had only top 4 appearances : in 2011 with TSM and in 2018 with Cloud9. Problem is, Korean and Chinese teams didn't played 2011 Worlds and 2018 Worlds were also the ones where Europe had two teams in the top 4 including one reaching finals". Still, there was one year where NA had a better performance than EU: 2014, as TSM and C9 reached the quarter finals, being the only western teams in the top 8.
However, after season 4, 2015 World Championship - located in Europe - shifted the tides. Fnatic and Origen qualified to semis, eliminating an NA seed in group stage in their path. In 2016, with the first seeds from both regions underperformed, H2K's top 4 run allowed Europe to still stand as the third region globally. 2017 was similar, with two EU teams eliminating their NA counterparts in group stage - including a MSF victory over NA number 1 seed TSM. C9 once again tried to save their region by being the only ones qualified in top 8, but fell short to World Elite while EU had two representatives in quarterfinals.
The domination of EU remained clear in the following year, with 2018 being even more favoured towards the old continent and 2019 being... 2019.
MSI 2019 and the peak of Europe
2019 MSI, Team Liquid surprisingly beat IG 3-1 in semifinals, finally giving NA an international final appearance. Soon after, G2 overcome SKT 3-2, all was set for a peak NA v EU moment. There was never a match, G2 barely needed 70 minutes to win 3 games over Team Liquid in one of the stompiest international finals ever, there was no doubt that EU's best were by far stronger than NA's best. During a period where Asia was struggling, it was clear that EU was the contesting region, not NA.
3-0, Team Liquid didn't exist at all in the MSI Finals, allowing Europe to once more take over
Worlds 2019 were all the same, with the 3 EU teams qualifying to playoffs and no NA team, although G2's run ended the same way they ended NA's hope in MSI, EU > NA was as true as it's ever been. When Europe starter to lose its momentum, NA didn't catch up instantly with no top 8 teams in 2020 (2 for EU, including G2 in Semis).
And then things evened out
2021 and 2022 saw Europe completely lose the track of China and Korea in the international level. This lead to a 2021 edition with one team from NA and one from Europe making it to top 8 with similar results. In 2022, although Rogue made it to quarterfinals, it was clear that Europe was much closer to NA than it was to LPL or LCK.
The two last international tournaments indicate that the current head-to-head between EU and NA is very close, with NA finally beating Europe in Worlds in 2023 - for the first time since 2014 - but then slightly losing in MSI 2024. The picture that MSI has drawn is the following : it is tough to decide which region is the best, but G2 on their own seem to be better than NA. However, such a statement was considered as true last year as this year, and still G2 lost 2-0 to NRG in the swiss stage of 2023. All of this sends us back to a very even situation where one region overperforming the other would re-establish the hierarchy.
NRG made history with their win over G2 in Swiss stage and top 8 qualification
A rivalry for third place ?
While EU and NA constitute the two first major regions of LoL, their rivalry quickly wasn't the one to decide whichever was the best league region among all of them. After the initial two seasons, South-Korea took over, it took a little more time for China to have consistent stronger results than Europe, but after 2019, it was clear that the top 2 was asian.
2018 and 2019 were indeed years where EU and NA were no longer fighting for the top 3 region title, but top 2 if not top 1, and in this fight, NA couldn't live up very long to the skill needed to be a top international region, such as 2011 and 2012. NA can be close to EU when EU is distant from Asia, but if EU catches up to the asian teams, the tornado shooters are sent far back in the international hierarchy - they even lost their #4 international seed to LMS in 2018. This year, PSG's presence as well as Vietnam's resurgence need to be considered as possible contenders if NA and EU don't perform well, as proven by Taiwan years ago, regions can very quickly fall to irrelevancy.
