The October 2nd, Sheep Esports reported the news of the new LEC format for the 2026 Winter split, creating lots of reactions and discussions, as expected. Between hype, disappointment, questioning, and disapproval, the European esports scene did not fail to express its opinion on the matter.

As a reminder, Riot Games announced that the next Winter split will be a kickoff tournament with 12 teams, including the 10 LEC teams as well as Los Ratones and the EMEA Masters summer champion. The winner of this event will qualify for the First Stand 2026. For the first time, Riot is therefore offering an ERL team the possibility to compete in an international event by including them in the LEC.

Strong backlashes from team owners

If it has its fair share of hype, this announcement has strongly displeased a part of the League of Legends scene, especially the teams already present in the LEC. On the day of the report, Kamel "Kameto" Kebir expressed his opinion on this new format and shared his bitterness on the subject on stream: "Not a single person agreed with this idea. It's crazy to do something like that without anyone being able to say or do anything. What they wanted to do initially was even worse.” The CEO of Karmine Corp compares this situation to the difficulties he or other teams may have encountered in entering the LEC and points to a form of favoritism that would be made for Los Ratones. "It's not a stable decision and not well thought, focused on the short term because Los Ratones needs to be there."

He doesn't seem to be the only CEO against this new project. In an X post in response to the Sheep Esports article, Ibai "Ibai" Llanos, owner of Movistar KOI, mocked how Riot takes into consideration the money invested by Karmine Corp and Team Heretics for their arrival in the LEC. A few days earlier, he had teased in another post, "Drop the LEC 2026 format, I want to see the reactions haha."

A few positive feedbacks

Obviously, this announcement still caused some hype among certain fans and pros in the scene. The possibility of seeing a team like Los Ratones bring competitiveness and viewership to the league delighted many people. Among these people, Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski, a legend of the jungle in Europe, validates this decision by Riot Games: "LR vs LEC teams will be peak CINEMA no matter what. Finally, top EUM teams will be more included in the ecosystem."

Among the more contrasting reactions, Jakob "YamatoCannon" Mebdi expressed in a long post that "Keeping LR in the ecosystem and integrating them is a good thing" but that the fact that this decision is being made at the expense of other partner teams is a bad thing. The real problem, according to him, being that "Franchising for competition and entertainment drive is a bad thing, I wish it never happened."

A lot of questions raised

Like every new major decision, this one has raised its share of questions, particularly about bringing a team from ERL to the LEC for just one split. Many questions remain unanswered to this day. The biggest one concerns the academic teams. It makes everyone wonder what would happen if one of them (KCB, VitB, Los Heretics, or GXP) won the EMEA masters or reached the final against Los Ratones. It seems unlikely to imagine an LEC team and its academy playing in the same league, but no clear rules about which team would be chosen in that case has been shared yet.

If another ERL team were to move up, questions about the roster and the capacity of the structure may also arise. If an ERL team were unable to financially afford an entire split in Berlin, the consequences of that situation would need to be addressed. The team’s ability to keep the roster that won the competition would also be brought into question. If a player under 18 years old were part of this team, their participation during the winter split period would have to be determined. The issue would also need to be considered from the perspective of the concerned ERL leagues, as adjustments would have to be made if one of the teams were unable to participate both in the league and in LEC at the same time.

That's a lot of questions to answer. But nothing official has been announced yet by Riot Games. More details can be expected in the coming weeks to address this.