TL;DR: League of Legends’ first season of 2026 brings players to Demacia, introduces assorted gameplay and systems updates; LoL Esports competitive format detailed for the 2026 season

Season 1 Overview

• League of Legends recently released a brand-new cinematic to kick off Season 1: For Demacia, featuring an original musical track, Salvation (ft. Forts).
• The first season of 2026 officially kicks off on January 8, introducing players to the kingdom of Demacia through a wide range of thematic updates across gameplay, skins, and more.

Gameplay Updates

• Updates to various gameplay systems will be implemented on January 8 with Patch 26.01, with the overarching goals of making more strategies, like splitting and sieging, viable, balancing role agency, reducing objective fatigue, getting players into the action faster, and improving class satisfaction. 
• Among the changes to the game is the update to role quests. These quests, which can be progressed through specific conditions, differ depending on role. Upon completion, players will receive unique in-game rewards based on their role, such as free tier three boots and a faster recall for mid laners and increased gold accumulation and a seventh item slot for bot laners.
• Across Ranked, Norms, and Swiftplay, the overall pace of the game will be adjusted, with increased speeds within Champ Select before the game begins and earlier first minion wave and jungle monster spawn times. 
• New map features will be added, including Faelights and Crystalline Overgrowth.
• Full details about these mechanics and more gameplay updates can be found in the 2026 Season One Gameplay Preview developer blog. 
• Updates to Swiftplay and Ranked will also go live, the details of which can be found in the respective A Swifter Swiftplay and Ranked 2026 developer blogs.
• In response to positive feedback from players, ARAM: Mayhem will be available for a while longer, with a larger update to the game mode set to arrive in Patch 26.03 later this season.

Additional Seasonal Content

• Season 1 centers around Demacia, a military kingdom in the world of Runeterra that holds fast to the ideals of unity, justice, and righteousness. 
• The influence of Demacia extends to Summoner’s Rift, with the map featuring updated visuals including petricite towers and gold-winged accents.
• The highly-anticipated update to Shyvana will release in Act 2 of this season. The update brings all-new visuals for both Shyvana’s base human form and her dragon form. While her abilities remain similar to before the update, her kit features some minor changes. Shyvana’s full kit will be revealed at her release in Act 2. Stay tuned for more details.
• A brand-new meta-game will be released alongside the start of the season: Demacia Rising. In Demacia Rising, players will experience the rise of the kingdom of Demacia, taking Demacia from its humble beginnings as a single small settlement to a beautiful, shining nation. The meta-game will evolve over the course of the season, with updates released at regular intervals throughout. 
• Players can look forward to a handful of motion comics that will be published throughout the season, shedding light on the season’s narrative beyond what was shown in the season start cinematic.

Player Behavior 

• Later this season, a handful of improvements will be implemented as a part of the development team’s continued efforts to improve game quality, including lobby hostage intervention. Lobby hostage intervention is a new system that will terminate lobbies that are suspected to involve a bad actor, defined as someone threatening to ruin the game experience for other players. This feature will begin rolling out across regions slowly to ensure that its accuracy remains high. 
• Additionally, the ability to ban an ally’s hovered champion during Champ Select is being removed and the autofill status will now persist through dodging. 

Skins

• A variety of new skins will release this season, both within and outside of the Demacian theme.
  • Starting in Patch 26.02, Briar and Samira will receive Battle Academia skins and Galio and Ornn will receive mecha anime-inspired skins. 
  • In celebration of Lunar Revel this year, the Firecracker skinline will make its return alongside the debut of a new thematic, Petals of Spring, made in collaboration with Wild Rift.
  • New April Fools’ skins are set to release later this season, being standalone skins rather than fitting under a single theme. 
  • A new set of skins will release during Act 2, exhibiting a darker side of Demacia. 
  • A brand-new skin thematic will make its debut during the First Stand time frame. 
• Prestige Veiled Lady Morgana will release at the start of the season, followed by Prestige skins for Sona and Mordekaiser later in the season.
• Revenant Reign Viego, a new Exalted skin, will be available through The Sanctum this season.
• A Victorious skin is available this season for Braum, which players at any rank can earn by playing Ranked during Season 1. 

Esports

• In 2026, LoL Esports will release various format changes aimed at continuing to celebrate the global community and push LoL Esports forward.
  • The first global event of the year, First Stand, will take place from March 16 to 22 in São Paulo, Brazil, at the Riot Games Arena. With the LCS and CBLOL returning as independent leagues, the competition will now feature eight teams—two from the LCK, two from the LPL, and one each from the LEC, LCS, CBLOL, and LCP—competing for early-season dominance and regional pride. Every match will be a best-of-five, giving teams more opportunities to show their skills, adaptability, and creativity under pressure.
  • The Mid-Season Invitational will be hosted in Daejeon, South Korea. More details about the venue will be released soon.
  • Worlds 2026 will return to North America with stops in Texas and New York. More information will be shared at a later date. 
• The team is continuing to refine how League of Legends is played at the highest level. In response to match analysis and feedback from pro teams worldwide, side selection and draft order will be decoupled through a new approach, known as First Selection, giving teams the option to either select a side or choose whether they would like to pick their champions first or second during the draft phase. More details can be found in a newly released blog.
• Hall of Legends will return later than usual this year, but players can still expect its comeback ahead of Worlds 2026. More details, including the reveal of the third inductee, will be shared in the coming months.

Long-term Vision

• The development team remains committed to constantly improving and updating League of Legends, from new game modes and champion updates to balancing the game every other week, and sharing regular updates with players through Dev Updates.
• Beyond these regular updates, the team has begun efforts to release a larger bundle of changes to League of Legends after 2026, with the goals of continuously improving the experience for players around the world and driving League forward into the future. These updates include:
  • A brand-new game client that is fully integrated with the in-game experience
  • Revamped Summoner’s Rift map with entirely new visuals and some new gameplay elements
  • Changes to runes and other pre-game choices
  • An overhaul to the new player experience
• The team will share more about these larger-scale changes between MSI and Worlds this year.

Official website: https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-ph/