Faker at 30: Six World Titles and the Longest Peak in Esports

On April 6, 2013, a 16-year-old rookie for SK Telecom T1 walked into a televised match in Seoul and, within minutes, killed Kang "Ambition" Chan-yong one-on-one in the middle lane. Ambition was one of the most respected mid laners in Korea. The newcomer's name was Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, and that first solo kill turned out to be a preview of the next thirteen years.

Faker turned 30 in May 2026. In November 2025 he won his sixth World Championship, more than any other player in League of Legends history, and he is signed with T1 through 2029. This season his team fell one series short of a fifth straight Worlds final. Here is the career, the records and the year that just ended.

A kid from Gangseo and the first dynasty (2013-2017)

Faker was born on May 7, 1996, in Seoul and grew up in Gangseo District, in the west of the city. He first stood out in Korea's ranked solo queue, and in early 2013 SK Telecom signed him for the League team that competed as SK Telecom T1 K.

The team moved fast. That summer, in the domestic final against KT Rolster, Faker produced a one-on-one outplay of KT mid laner Yoo "Ryu" Sang-wook that is still replayed as one of the most famous moments in the game's history. SKT won the series 3-2. A few months later, it swept Royal Club 3-0 in Los Angeles to win Worlds 2013, Faker's first world title, in his first year as a professional.

Over the next four years SKT became the standard every team was measured against. It won Worlds again in 2015, losing only a single game in the whole tournament, and again in 2016, when it beat Samsung Galaxy 3-2 in the first five-game final in Worlds history. Faker was named MVP of that 2016 tournament, the first of his two Worlds MVP awards.

SKT also won the Mid-Season Invitational in 2016 and 2017, with Faker as MSI Finals MVP in 2016. In 2017 it reached a fourth Worlds final in five years, at the Beijing National Stadium, and lost 0-3 to Samsung Galaxy. For Faker it was a painful night, and the loss is still remembered as one of the great upsets in the game's history.

The wilderness years and the turn (2018-2022)

The next five years tested everyone's patience. Korea lost its grip on Worlds as China's Invictus Gaming and FunPlus Phoenix won in 2018 and 2019, and SKT missed several Worlds finals in a row. In 2019 the organisation dropped "SK Telecom" from its name and became T1, a joint venture between SK Telecom and US sports company Comcast Spectacor.

In February 2020, Faker signed a three-year extension that also made him a part-owner of T1 Entertainment & Sports, with a player-executive role, an unusual arrangement in any sport. T1 itself is majority-owned by SK Telecom, which holds 54%, with Comcast Spectacor on 34% and Highland Capital on 12%, so the club's most famous player now sits alongside a telecom giant and an American sports company on the cap table.

He also became a fixture for Korea's national team. At the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta, where esports was a demonstration event, Korea won silver after losing the final to China. At the Hangzhou Asian Games in 2023, where esports carried official medals for the first time, Korea won gold, although Faker caught the flu and missed the later knockout matches. The gold medal earned him an exemption from Korea's mandatory military service.

T1 reached the 2022 Worlds final in San Francisco and lost 2-3 to DRX, a Play-In team on a miracle run. It hurt, but the roster around Faker was young and very good, and it was about to get better.

The three-peat (2023-2025)

With Zeus, Oner, Gumayusi and Keria around him, Faker won Worlds 2023 in Seoul, sweeping Weibo Gaming 3-0 at Gocheok Sky Dome. In 2024, at The O2 in London, T1 came back from 1-2 down against Bilibili Gaming to win 3-2, and Faker was Finals MVP for a second time.

In 2025, T1 came through the Play-In stage, survived the Swiss stage at 3-2, beat Anyone's Legend 3-2 and Top Esports 3-0, then defeated KT Rolster 3-2 in Chengdu. T1 became the first team to win three Worlds in a row, and Faker the first player to win six.

The honours cabinet

In May 2024, Riot Games named Faker the first inductee of its new Hall of Legends, with a private ceremony at The Shilla Seoul on June 6. The induction came with in-game cosmetics for Ahri and LeBlanc, and inductees and their teams share in a portion of the revenue from those items.

Other honours include The Game Awards' Best Esports Athlete in 2017, 2023 and 2024, PC Player of the Decade at the 2025 Esports Awards, a place on Time's 2026 list of the 100 most influential people in sports, and the Cheongnyong Medal, the highest grade of Korea's Order of Sport Merit, in 2026. In 2025 T1 announced a four-year extension that keeps him at the club through 2029. He also added an Esports World Cup title with T1 in 2024, and he was inducted into the ESL Esports Hall of Fame as early as 2019.

2026: still at the top table

Before the 2026 LCK season began, T1 won a trophy: it beat Hanwha Life Esports 3-2 in the final of the KeSPA Cup. The season itself was bumpier. T1 lost 2-3 to Dplus KIA in the LCK Cup playoffs and missed the First Stand tournament, then beat Gen.G 3-2 in the Road to MSI qualifier to reach MSI in Daejeon, where it finished fifth to sixth.

In September he collected a second Asian Games gold in Aichi-Nagoya, where Korea swept Chinese Taipei 3-0 in the final and did not drop a game all tournament; coach Kang Dong-hoon started Zeka in mid for the final. T1 finished third in the LCK and went to Worlds chasing a fourth straight title. It beat Karmine Corp 3-1 in the quarterfinals, and in the semifinal on November 8 Faker went 4/0/13 on Syndra to win Game 2. But Bilibili Gaming took the series 3-1, ending T1's run of four straight Worlds finals and its streak of 13 consecutive series wins over LPL teams at Worlds.

By the numbers

• 6 World Championships: 2013, 2015, 2016, 2023, 2024, 2025
• 2 Worlds MVP awards (2016 tournament MVP, 2024 Finals MVP)
• 2 MSI titles (2016, 2017)
• 10 LCK titles, a league record
• 2 Asian Games gold medals (Hangzhou, Aichi-Nagoya) plus a 2018 silver
• 2029: the year his current T1 contract runs to

What to watch

The off-season is next. Faker is under contract, so the questions are about the players around him and how T1 rebuilds after its first missed final since 2021. The 2027 Worlds will be his fifteenth professional season. For the full story of the era that made him, read our history of the SKT T1 dynasty.