How the ENC Point System decides the 16 Invited Nations for League of Legends

The qualification process for the Esports Nations Cup 2026 is becoming clearer. The official ENC National Ranking rulebook provides all the necessary details regarding how squads will be selected to determine which 16 teams will receive a direct invitation to the main event for the League of Legends tournament.

As a reminder, the ENC is a nation-based competition set to take place in Saudi Arabia in November 2026, featuring 16 different titles and thousands of athletes from around a hundred countries.

For League of Legends, the tournament will run from November 22 to 29, with 32 nations competing. Half of them will qualify directly for the event based on the ranking established by the Esports Foundation, which organizes the competition, while the remaining teams will have to go through continental qualifiers.

The national ranking is not simply about fielding a star-studded lineup; it relies on an aggregate model. For League of Legends, each nation’s standing is determined by the combined points of its five highest-scoring players. However, there is a strategic limitation: to encourage a broader representation of talent, a maximum of three players from the same professional club can count toward a country's total point pool.

Points are harvested from official competitions spanning the current cycle, which runs from October 14, 2025, to June 14, 2026. These events are categorized into three distinct tiers:

To shed more light on this ranking grid, it is essential to understand that not every split from every region is included. If you look at the list below, you will notice that for Tier B, only the first split of the year is accounted for across all leagues. This means that we can already estimate the point totals for many players coming from those specific leagues.

Since both Tier S international tournaments have already concluded, only the Tier A leagues remain active, as this category accounts for both the first and second splits of each major league. Consequently, we will have a definitive picture of each nation's invitations as soon as these splits conclude in June, just before the MSI.