Riot Games reveals Worlds 2021 dates, location, and format

William Davis Published 09/09/2021

The last important details of the 2021 League of Legends World Championship are finally here. 

In a recent announcement by Riot Games, it was revealed that Worlds 2021 will be held from October 5 to November 6. The event will take place in Reykjavik, Iceland, following the recent relocation of the event from China due to travel issues. This will be the second international LoL event in Iceland this year after the 2021 Mid-Season Invitational, which was won by the LPL’s Royal Never Give Up. 

For Worlds 2021, the final will be hosted in the refurbished Hall A at the Laugardalshöll, which is an indoor sporting arena in Reykjavik. MSI 2021 was hosted in Hall B, so the location will be pretty much the exact same. This also means that there won’t be any live audience for this year’s championship. 

“While maintaining our focus on ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved in hosting, producing, and competing at the event, Worlds 2021 will not host a live audience,” Riot said.   

Worlds 2021 format revealed

With the Worlds 2021 location and teams in place, Riot also revealed the format for the tournament which is similar to last year’s format. 

Originally, Worlds 2021 was supposed to have a total of 24 teams but this has been cut down to 22 due to the fact that the VCS teams can’t participate, just like last year. This is once again due to travel restrictions, which will have Riot removing the two Vietnamese teams. 

As per usual, there will be a play-in stage where the lowest seeds of the major regions and wildcard regions get to clash for a shot at qualifying for the group stage of the tournament. The play-ins will run from October 5 to 9 and will feature 10 teams. 

These 10 teams will be drawn into two groups of five, which will be played out in a single round-robin format. The top team from each group will move on to the group stage automatically while seeds three and four will play out a best-of-five, with the winners challenging the second seed from the opposing group for the last two spots.

Moving onto the group stage, there will be 16 teams just like in previous years. These teams will be drawn into four groups with the top two advancing to the knockout stage. The knockout stage will be an eight-team, single-elimination playoffs with the grand finals taking place on November 6. 

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