LES Kickoff 2026 opens a new chapter for Spanish League of Legends

The Spanish League of Legends League, the official national LoL competition in Spain, kicked off this weekend. The LES replaced the previous Superliga in 2026 and is now organized by Lastlap and CABAL esports, with Riot Games’ support as part of the European Regional League (ERL) structure.

As Sheep Esports previously indicated, the league would consist of five partner teams (Barça Esports, UCAM Esports, Movistar KOI, Team Heretics and GIANTX), which would form an active part of the league itself but would not be exempt from relegation. After opening the application process for the remaining three teams, the league, together with the partner teams, decided after a selection process lasting several months to incorporate LUA Gaming, Alma Mater, and Falke Esports as the final representatives for 2026.

Once the members had been decided, all that remained was for the winter tournament to begin. This year, Riot has given the ERLs more flexibility to adapt it to their style, as long as it has been previously approved by Riot Games itself. The LES Winter Cup 2026 was a short three-day tournament held from 13 to 15 February 2026, where all the Spanish teams competed for the title in person in Madrid, Spain, as the opening event of the new league.

The bracket started in a peculiar way. Fans could vote for each group leader, who would go to groups A and B, respectively. MKOI and GX won these votes, each placing themselves in a group. To decide the rest of the rivals, LES organized an in-person draft at the studio, inviting a representative from each team to choose matchups and explain part of the rival selection process, resulting in the bracket we saw above.

The bracket was structured into two groups with a double-elimination system: the winners of the opening best-of-one advanced to the qualification match, while the losers dropped to an elimination best-of-three. From there, the final semifinal spot was decided between the winner of the loser’s bracket and the loser of the qualification match. The semifinals featured cross-group matchups, and the entire final stage was played as a best-of-three series, with two spots at EMEA Masters on the line (finalists).

Competitively, the tournament unfolded in a very dynamic way across three days. On Friday, the four opening BO1 matches were played, with Movistar KOI Fénix and UCAM Esports securing wins in Group A, while Barça Esports and Heretics Academy did the same in Group B. The first qualification matches were also played that day: UCAM Esports edged out Movistar KOI in a close series, while Heretics Academy convincingly defeated Barça Esports to secure first place in their group.

Saturday was reserved for the loser’s bracket, where Alma Mater UB and GIANTX iTero managed to stay alive in their respective elimination series over Falke Esports and LUA Gaming respectively, although their runs ended shortly after as they fell to Movistar KOI Fénix and Barça Esports in the decisive matches for a semifinal spot.

Finally, Sunday decided the tournament: Barça Esports pulled off the upset against UCAM Esports, winning 2-1 in a very close semifinal, while Movistar KOI Fénix defeated Team Heretics Academy convincingly 2-0. The two pre-tournament favorites were eliminated in the semifinals. In the Grand Final, Movistar KOI Fénix closed out the event with, again, a dominant 2-0 win over Barça Esports.

Both finalists of the LES Kickoff Tournament qualified for EMEA Masters, meaning we will see them again soon on the European stage, although there is still limited information about the competition. In total, 9 maps were played on Friday, another 9 on Saturday, and 7 on Sunday—25 games across three days.

After a successful weekend and a promising start to this new adventure, one of the biggest questions is when the fans will be able to enjoy LES again. Three days were enough to reignite the passion of the Spanish League of Legends audience with an event that was very well received, reaching a peak of around 21,000 viewers across all channels during the final between Movistar KOI Fénix and Barça esports. The LES will return in the spring split. The format and start date of the league are yet to be confirmed.