Riot Games has confirmed it has cancelled the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This confirms an earlier report by LCS journalist Travis Gafford. As a result, most of the regional leagues will revert to their original second split schedules, and the number of seeds for this year’s World Championship will be increased.
“The Global League of Legends Esports team has been working hard over the past few months to react to these changes, support our regional leagues as they have successfully pivoted to online competition, and try to preserve our next big international competition, Mid-Season Invitational,” Riot Games says in its statement. “One outcome of this hard work was the decision to delay MSI from May to July with the hope that the crisis would be waning, travel restrictions would come down, and we could deliver an exceptional MSI.
“Based on the modelling of our external risk advisors, however, it appears highly unlikely that either the global spread/impact of COVID-19 or the restrictive travel and public gathering policies responding to the crisis will abate significantly by the time of MSI’s current planned dates . With this model plus input from health authorities, local governments, regional leagues and teams, travel experts, and other stakeholders, we have made the difficult decision to not hold MSI in 2020.”
Since MSI has been cancelled, regional leagues will return to their original Summer Split schedules without the disruption MSI brings. Riot has also changed the seeding for this years Worlds.
Four teams from the LPL and the LEC will qualify for Worlds this year, as they are currently ranked first and second in the world based on their performance in international competitions over the past two years. The Vietnamese Championship Series will also be getting a second seed to the event.
Here’s how the seeding looks for Worlds 2020:
- Four teams each: LPL (China), LEC (Europe)
- Three teams each: LCK (Korea), LCS (North America)
- Two teams each: PCS (Southeast Asia), VCS (Vietnam)
- One team each: CBLOL (Brazil), TCL (Turkey), LJL (Japan), LLA (Latin America), OPL (Oceania), LCL (Commonwealth of Independent States)
Additional information about LoL Worlds 2020 will be shared closer to the event. We’ll be updating our guide as we go, so keep an eye on that as more develops.
