Who won League of Legends Worlds in 2016?

In 2015, Riot Games crowned SK Telecom T1 as the only team to win two Worlds title and made them the greatest team League of Legends has ever known. A year later, the greatest competitive rendezvous of the year seemed once again promised to the Korean region.

Format remained the same as previous year with sixteen teams qualifying to Worlds and being divided into four groups of four. Only the two best teams qualify to the knockout stage where all matches become best of 5. But this year, Riot Games increased the stakes as cash prize has been more than doubled: $ 5,070,000 overall and $2,028,000 only for first place. The prize pool increased mainly due to 25% of sales from Championship Zed skins & Championship ward skins that were directly implemented, proving how engaging the community is to the game.

This year, the event came back to North America in well-known venue with group stage held in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (8.500 people capacity), quarters in The Chicago Theatre (3.500 people capacity), semis at the Madison Square Garden (20.000 people capacity) while the grand final once again has been played at the Staples Center in front of 20.000 people as in 2013, when SKT and Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok won their first Worlds title.

The group stages set a high bar with a balanced level of play across regions, except for the dominant South Korea. Teams from China, Europe, Taiwan, and North America competed fiercely. Wildcard teams like INTZ from Brazil and Albus NoX Luna (ANX) from Russia also made surprising impacts, adding to the unpredictability of the event. Despite having to play a tie-breaker, ROX Tigers was the only seed 1 to end at the first place of its group. Two other top seeds, Flash Wolves (FW) and Team Solomid (TSM), were eliminated before the playoffs. Additionally, no team exited the group stage with a perfect 6-0 record. This level of competition in the group stages made every match crucial, with teams having to bring their A-game to advance.

European teams, in particular, faced significant challenges. While H2K managed to qualify, G2 Esports and Splyce struggled to find their footing. G2's poor performance was particularly surprising, given their dominance in the EU LCS. For NA, only Cloud9 pulled it through with only three wins, thanks to SKT's domination on the other two teams of the group. On the other hand, wildcard teams like ANX defied expectations. Their victory over established teams like ROX Tigers and G2 Esports, as well as INTZ's victory over EDward Gaming (EDG) was a testament to the growing skill level in regions outside the traditional powerhouses. This unpredictability set the stage for an exciting and highly competitive playoffs phase.

Like the group stages, the playoffs were completely unpredictable. Only Europe received an undirect boost: H2K faced ANX in the quarterfinals. A blessing for Marcin "Jankos" Jankowski's teammates, who won easily with a score of 3-0, ending the Russian dream. Samsung Galaxy obliterated C9 with the same score in the quarterfinals to challenge the last survivor from the Old Continent in the semifinals. At the top of the bracket, two Korea-China matchups resulted in two brilliant victories for Korea. SKT and ROX both won 3-1, against Royal Never Give Up (RNG) and EDG, respectively. The three-time defending champions placed all three of their teams in the final four.

In this scenario, H2K was outmatched. SSG had watched the VODs and understood how to shut down Konstantinos-Napoleon "FORG1VEN" Tzortziou. The best-of-five was merely a rehearsal before the grand final. But on the other side of the bracket, the world witnessed what has long been considered the greatest best-of-five in Worlds history.

SKT won the first game without sweating. ROX seemed very far from having a shot at defeating the two-times world champions. And yet, they somehow showed a pick that seemed completely crazy at the time: they locked Miss Fortune support, and won the game in one of the most iconic plays done by Kim "PraY" Jong-in with Ashe at 33 minutes.

ROX tied the series and suddenly highly increased their chance to win this semi-final after making SKT bleed in the most spectacular way. And so they also won game 3 and get two chances to make it to the grand final. But suddenly, SKT reintroduced Seong-woong "Bengi" Bae as he had identified the problem: Han "Peanut" Wang-ho, ROX's jungler who was terrorizing the map and needed to be stopped. Bengi entered the Rift to first-pick Nidalee, Peanut's signature champion, for the first time of the entire year.

SKT took such a risk to ban Miss Fortune as they recognized the strength of the champion but found no answer to it. Bengi reminded everyone why and how he became a two-time world champion and gave Peanut a lesson. The young rookie couldn't match his opponent, and the latter took the upper hand. ROX defended magnificently, the game dragged on, and SKT took 42 minutes to bring down the Nexus. 2-2, which led us to game 5.

ROX Tigers had the first pick this time and so SKT had to face a dilemma right into the draft. They ended by banning both Miss Fortune and Nidalee, and to let Jayce open for Song "Smeb" Kyung-ho, his best champion. And this was the right choice as ROX was forced to play more traditionally against SKT who's always been the strongest team in games like this, and so they eventually qualified for their third Worlds grand final.

The final showdown between SKT and SSG was a fitting climax to an already thrilling tournament. SKT initially took a commanding lead, winning the first two games with relative ease. However, SSG demonstrated incredible resilience and tactical prowess in game 3 that is probably the longest game ever played in a Worlds final, lasting 1h18. SKT had a gold lead of 9.000 at 28 minutes until Park "Ruler" Jae-hyuk dashed in with Ezreal in the Nashor pit and slayed two opponents allowing his team to get the objective. SSG was back in the game, and the two teams neutralized each other with various miraculous plays with Orianna's shockwaves by Faker, Ezreal's kamikaze dash-in to save the fights by Ruler and Lee Sin's kick from Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong to suppress SKT's ADC and steal the Elder Dragon. Eventually SSG got the best out of it.

SKT exited Bengi in game 4 to bring back Kang "Blank" Sun-gu, and switched back again in game 5 after their loss. He played Lee Sin and, just like in the semi-finals, gave his rival, Ambition, a lesson. Faker also delivered his best performance of the final, and SKT became world champions for the third time in four years.

After their second World title in 2015, SKT won League of Legends Worlds in 2016 as well. They became the first team to win three Worlds and the first team to win Worlds back-to-back - still the only one to this day. They marked history once more with this roster:

As for the previous years, SKT got honored again by adding a new set of in-game skins to commemorate their achievement to the "SKT" skin line, featuring customized appearances for champions used by the team. These skins included SKT Ekko, SKT Olaf, SKT Zac, SKT Syndra, SKT Jhin, SKT Nami.