All gameplay changes coming to League of Legends Season 2 of 2026

Pandemonium is the second season of 2026 — also known as season 16 — and will bring in major updates to the game on patch 26.9 that goes live on April 29th. In particular, role quests and expanding build diversity for all champions with the help of runes and item adjustments. Additionally, Riot Games is adding a new mechanic for in-game behavior, looking to make the League of Legends experience better by dealing with toxic and game-ruining players.

Riot is doing some follow-up on the new role quests, particularly for midlane and toplane, where the most common feedback that Riot got was that players aren’t sure which areas of the lane count toward progression. Champions who prefer to proxy or roam were struggling to complete the role quests.

Riot will be adjusting where you get progress for your role quest in lane, as well as how forgiving it is when looking to roam or proxy. You will still need to play in your lane to progress your role quest, but you won’t be penalized for playing towards your champions’ strength.

The toplane quest reward will provide more experience for teamfighting compared to currently, where it’s a flat 12.5% bonus experience from all sources.

Midlane will have the biggest role quest change with the empowered recall being removed, and instead, midlaners will get a 6% bonus AD and AP when the role quest is completed.

The goal for Riot with these changes is to better reward a variety of classes and champions in these roles, rather than mainly rewarding split pushers in toplane, or non-roaming champions in mid, and to give mids some more scaling as well.

Riot Games is investing in some longer-term changes to expand build diversity for all champions by adjusting items, adding new keystones, and making better alt-builds to increase strategy, creativity, and expression in item builds. A variety of items and runes will be changed, which could have a big impact on the game.

Trailblazer and Opportunity will be removed, Dusk and Dawn will be adjusted, two new starting items and new omnivamp-focused boots will be added to the game.

Two old runes will return—Deathfire Touch and Stormraider’s Surge. Stormraider’s will be replacing Phase Rush as the alternative movement speed rune. Both returning runes will be in the Sorcery tree.

The next new champion coming to League will be coming out in Season Two Act 2, and will be a midlane AP Assassin. We will be hearing more about him in the next Dev Update, Riot confirmed in the Dev Vlog.

The new AP Assassin will be the only new champion we get in 2026 and will be the 173rd champion to join the League of Legends roster. The last AP assassin released was Aurora, who has become a lot of players’ favourite champion, as well as being seen a lot in professional play.

The new changes will help the new champion, as if he is an assassin, he will want to look for a lot of roam plays and catches in other lanes outside of just midlane, and the returning rune Stormraider’s Surge could be an optional rune on him.

Starting in a few patches, players will be given an option to vote to end the game early when game-ruining behavior is detected. It will function the same way as if there’s and AFK teammate. Once the new system detects that a player is inting the other players (not including the inting player), the team will be able to surrender early. If the vote goes through, the game will end.

The players on the allied team will be LP neutral, players on the enemy team will receive full LP for the win, and the inting player and their premade will all lose LP. The inting player will also receive a punishment. Riot has gotten feedback on this for years and is looking forward to bringing this to life and reducing the impact that inting players can have on players' games.