League of Legends developer Riot Games has announced that its dedicated, high-elo practice environment – Champions Queue – will soon begin operating in EMEA. EMEA Champions Queue is set to launch on January 24, 2023.
According to the developer, the EMEA iteration of the system, originally launched in North America at the beginning of 2022, was a cross-regional collaboration between the transatlantic neighbours. The scope of EMEA’s version is to “deliver an experience as good as the original.”
As per the LoL Esports primer on EMEA CQ, invites to the server will initially only go out to players operating in the LEC and Accredited ERLs (starting line-up only), alongside “a few select professionals who might not be currently on a starting line-up and former professional players who still play at a high-competitive level.”
From there, access to the server will, similarly to its NA brother, be presided over by the EMEA CQ Player Council – a select group of players charged with ensuring “a wide representation of players with a common interest of keeping EMEA CQ both high-skilled and a healthy place to practice.”
Here are the EMEA CQ Split dates that have been announced so far:
- Split 1: January 24 – February 23
- Split 2: February 28 – March 31
- MSI Split: TBD
- Split 3: May 30 – June 30
- Split 4: July 4 – August 11
Having reached out to Riot, competitive operations specialist Alex van Schoonhoven has confirmed to The Loadout via Twitter that “EMEA CQ will be aligning with NA CQ’s prizing structure.” For 2023, NA CQ has shifted to physical prizing, which you can read more about here.
For more information, be sure to check out the aforementioned LoL Esports primer on EMEA CQ.