This Saturday, the first edition of the
Demacia Cup Global Invitational will take start, featuring teams from around the world. Since last weekend, all twelve participating teams have been known, with the competition bringing together some of the best teams in the world that failed to qualify for Worlds: the 5th, 6th, and 7th seeds from the LPL and LCK, the 4th and 5th seeds from the LEC and LCS, and the 4th seed from the LCP and CBLOL. We now know the first six matchups of the competition following Tuesday's Swiss Stage draw.
The most anticipated matchup among the six is probably the clash between
KT Rolster and
Shopify Rebellion. It will see
face his former organization after spending two years with its academy team, while also facing
for the first time. Both teams fell at the final hurdle in their bids to qualify for Worlds and will now turn their attention to this competition.
Balanced matchups
As for the other matches, they will feature some unusual matchups,
with teams that rarely appear at international events facing one another.
HANJIN BRION will compete at an international event for the first time in their history and will open against
JD Gaming, who will add
and
to their roster for the tournament. After another disappointing LEC playoff run,
Team Vitality will face
BNK FEARX, which will compete in their second global tournament in 2026 after First Stand.
LGD Gaming will make their first international appearance since the 2020 World Championship when they face FlyQuest, who have failed to qualify for Worlds for the first time since 2023. Fourth in the most recent LCP split, GAM Esports will face Team WE, marking Wang "Monki" Mengqi's first international appearance. Finally, fourth-place CBLOL team RED Canids have been given the opportunity to compete at an international event, unlike the region's third-place team. The Brazilians will face Natus Vincere in the opening match.
An usual format
The competition’s Swiss Stage is slightly different from the format used in recent tournaments, notably at Worlds. While two wins are enough to qualify for the playoffs, the elimination rounds do not follow the usual format. The three teams sitting at 0-2 after the first two rounds will instead face each other in a single round robin, with all matches played in a BO3.
At the end of this three-way round robin, two teams will be eliminated, while the third will advance to Round 4, where it will face one of the three teams that dropped to 1-2 after losing in Round 3, having entered that round with a 1-1 record.
