A Preview to LoL 2021 World Championship

The 2021 World Championship is the most important League of Legends event of 2021. The tournament is scheduled to take place between October 5^th – November 6^th and features 22 teams.

LoL 2021 World Championship Details

The League of Legends 2021 World Championship will take place in Reykjavik, Iceland. Its prize pool is $2.2 million plus community contributions. If you’re also familiar with Dota 2, you probably noticed the huge difference between Riot’s philosophy and Valve’s. Arguably, Riot’s is better and more sustainable. But it’s less spectacular for the spectators.

In LoL, the winner of 2021 World Championship will receive $490,000. In Dota 2, the 13^th – 16^th place teams receive $600,000, while the winner gets $18 million. It’s a big difference, but in truth, the teams receive a lot more money behind the scenes, just for being part of the professional circuit.

Competitive Format

The competitive format of Worlds 2021 is similar to the one used at previous editions of the tournament. 12 of the 22 teams are already qualified for the Group Stage while the remaining 10 will need to go through two rounds of Play-Ins. After the first round, which consists of two groups of 5 (round-robin) the winner of each group advances to the Group Stage while the 2^nd – 4^th place teams advance to round 2.

In the 2^nd round, the 3^rd and 4^th place teams of the same group face each other, and the winner competes against the 2^nd place team for a spot in the Group Stage.

The Group Stage has 16 participants and 8 of them advance to the Quarterfinals. These 8 teams are decided via double round-robins with Bo1 matches. The top 2 teams from each group qualify for the Playoffs Stage, which in turn is a single-elimination tournament with Bo5 matches.

Worlds 2021 Participants

The teams that will attend Worlds 2021 can be divided into 2 groups: the Play-In teams and the Group Stage teams.

Play-In Teams

Group A:

• Hanwha Life Esports
• LNG Esports
• Infinity
• PEACE
• RED Canids

Group B:

• Beyond Gaming
• Cloud9
• Unicorns of Love
• Galatasaray Esports
• DetonatioN FocusMe

Group Stage Teams

Group A:

• DAMWON Gaming
• FunPlus Phoenix
• Rogue

Group B:

• EDward Gaming
• 100 Thieves
• T1

Group C:

• PSG Talon
• Fnatic
• Royal Never Give Up

Group D:

• MAD Lions
• Gen.G Esports
• Team Liquid

Tournament Favorites

The most likely teams to win Worlds 2021 are EDward Gaming, RNG, and DAMWON Gaming. The first 2 of these competitors are from China while the 3^rd is from South Korea. All 3 of them have proved to have exceptional skills throughout the season and the difference between them is small.

Just take for instance the result from MSI 2021. In the Grand Final of the tournament, RNG defeated DAMWON with a score of 3 – 2. The match could have easily gone the other way, so it’s hard to say that one of the teams is better than the other.

One thing to keep in mind when considering the favorites to win the 2021 World Championship is that Worlds 2020 was won by DAMWON Gaming. The team is just as strong as last year, so anyone looking to challenge it will need to perform exceptionally well.