The Mullet Arena in Tempe, Arizona, witnessed
’s first victory against
in the 2026
League of Legends Championship Series (
LCS) season. The series was a one-sided affair that TL dominated from beginning to end, and the victory helped them
clinch the second ticket from North America to the 2026 Mid-Season Invitational in Daejeon, South Korea.
Unfortunately for the Cloud9 faithful, this defeat against Team Liquid adds to their negative track record. C9 will have to go back to the drawing board to identify and correct the mistakes that have plagued them in their qualifying matches for international events over the past couple of years.
The 5-time LCS Champions had beaten C9 during the Esports World Cup (
EWC) North American Qualifiers, but had lost both of their past LCS encounters 0-2 each. This win confirms that TL will meet
in the
Spring Split Finals on Sunday for a spot in MSI’s Main Event and the last spot at the
2026 EWC Main Event.
The winner of the LCS Finals will be seeded directly into the Main Event of MSI, but the loser will have to battle it out against the Korean second seed
, EMEA’s second seed
, and Asia Pacific’s
. The 2026 MSI is set to kick off the Play-In stage on June 28th. Meanwhile, the Main Stage is set to start on July 2nd.
Pedal to the metal
Coming into the series, Cloud9 had a chip on its shoulder after falling to the Loser’s Bracket, and a negative track record when playing International Event qualifying matches. Philippe “
Vulcan" Laflamme became the third support to be
crowned as the Most Valuable Player during the week leading to their match against Team Liquid.
Team Liquid was searching for its first victory against Cloud9, and knew exactly when to put the pedal to the metal to find this crucial win. After their loss in the Winner’s Bracket Round 1 match against LYON, something seemed to click in the team searching for their sixth championship. If TL were to win this Loser’s Finals series, they would break the tie with Team Solo Mid and become the team with the second-most international appearances in LCS history.
However, the series was dictated by only one team: Team Liquid. Lim “
" Hyeon-seung kept his impressive form, one resembling his last split with 100 Thieves in 2025. Brandon “
" Villegas, the MVP runner-up, kept his impressive performance across the season, Park “
" Ru-han being the stable laner, and an impressive series from Sean “
" Sung and Jo “
" Yong-in, Team Liquid cruised to a dominant and decisive
3-0 victory against Cloud9.
The first game featured TL’s jungler on his signature Lee Sin pick. The game started slowly with a couple of Team Liquid kills, a dragon for Cloud9, but barely any difference in gold. However, everything changed when Josedeodo made the crowd roar with an electric Lee Sin play. This culminated in a slow-cooked 32-minute win to TL.
C9 weren’t playing around, and drafted the feared, 60% WR Ziggs for their mid laner Eain “
" Stearns. C9’s proactivity landed them first blood, but Quid had other plans. A beautiful engage from Quid’s Yone kept Josedeodo from falling during a Grub fight, and turned the game on its head. TL allowed only 3 more kills for C9, and jumped to a decisive match point.
Game 3 was the slowest of all the games in the series. Most of the action happened early, but no team was able to capitalize on the mistakes and create a significant lead. However, TL stacked Dragons thanks to great team coordination, but everything changed when TL caught C9 lacking and sneaked an early Baron. This was transformed into a bot lane Tier 2 turret dive, and one push to close the series.
This victory meant that Josedeodo became the first player from Latin America to represent an LCS organization at an international event since the LCS’s inception in 2013.
