The Greatest Worlds Finals Ever, Ranked: Five Games, Upsets and a Stadium

Most World Championship finals are not close. Of the 15 played from 2011 to 2025, five ended in a 3-0 sweep and only five went the full distance. That is exactly why the close ones are remembered for so long: when two teams take a Worlds final to a fifth game, the result stays in the conversation for years.

With the 2026 final between Gen.G and Bilibili Gaming on November 14 in Brooklyn, we ranked the finals that matter most. This is WGC's list, so argue with it freely; every score and record in it is real.

How we picked them

We looked for three things: drama (how close it was and how it swung), stakes (what a win or loss meant for players, teams and regions) and legacy (whether the final changed how people think about the game). Five-game finals have an advantage, but one sweep made our list because of what it meant.

The five-game classics

1. London 2024: T1 3-2 Bilibili Gaming. On November 2, 2024, at The O2, T1 faced elimination after BLG won Game 3 with a 17-3 kill score to lead 2-1. T1 won Game 4 and then Game 5 in 32 minutes, and Faker was named Finals MVP for the second time, collecting his fifth world title. It was the first successful title defence by a Worlds champion since 2016, and the peak audience of 6.9 million, excluding China, was an esports record. We rank it first because it had everything: a dynasty under pressure, a hungry challenger and a genuine comeback.

2. San Francisco 2022: DRX 3-2 T1. DRX was Korea's last seed. It started in the Play-In stage in Mexico City, beat defending champions EDward Gaming 3-2 and Gen.G 3-1 on the way, and met T1 at Chase Center in front of 18,000 fans on November 5. T1 won Game 1 behind Faker's Azir, and Oner kept T1 alive with Baron steals in Games 2 and 3. DRX won Game 4 in under 30 minutes, the fastest of the final, and then took Game 5 with better teamfight decisions. Top laner Kingen was named MVP, and Deft, after ten years without a world title, said winning "felt like a dream". No Play-In team had ever won Worlds before. The story had an unusual ending, too: within weeks, four of the five champions had left for other teams, and only support BeryL stayed at DRX for 2023.

3. Chengdu 2025: T1 3-2 KT Rolster. The first all-Korean final since 2022 gave T1 the chance to become the first team to win three in a row. KT came close to stopping it. After T1 won Game 1, KT's mid laner Bdd dominated Game 2 on Mel and ADC deokdam starred on Corki in Game 3 to put KT 2-1 up. T1 answered with a classic composition in Game 4, where Gumayusi was involved in 14 of T1's 17 kills, and Keria's Leona shut down KT's Smolder in Game 5. Gumayusi became the first ADC to win Finals MVP since 2017.

The finals that changed the game

4. Los Angeles 2016: SK Telecom T1 3-2 Samsung Galaxy. This was the first Worlds final ever to go five games. Nearly 20,000 fans filled Staples Center on October 29, and two Korean teams produced a series that showed how far the game had come. Faker was named MVP. The prize pool reached $6.7 million thanks to fan purchases, and SKT's 40% share was more than $2 million. It was the moment Worlds started to look like a major sporting event. SKT had already survived a five-game semifinal against ROX Tigers at Madison Square Garden, so its players won back-to-back best-of-fives that went the distance to lift the cup.

5. Reykjavik 2021: EDward Gaming 3-2 DWG KIA. The strangest setting on this list. COVID-19 travel complications forced Riot to move the tournament from mainland China to Laugardalshöll in Iceland, where every match was played without fans. The defending champions, DWG KIA, met EDG on November 6 and lost a five-game thriller; EDG's mid laner Scout was named MVP. With no crowd in the hall, the audience was entirely online, and the official peak of 73.86 million is the highest viewership figure in the event's records. The tournament's theme song that year was "Burn It All Down" by PVRIS, and Vietnam's two teams missed the event because of travel restrictions.

The upsets

6. Beijing 2017: Samsung Galaxy 3-0 SK Telecom T1. A sweep makes our list because nobody expected it. SKT were the two-time defending champions; Samsung had come through Korea's regional qualifier and swept the LCK champions, Longzhu Gaming, in the quarterfinals before beating Team WE 3-1. In the Beijing National Stadium, built for the 2008 Olympics, Samsung won 3-0 on November 4, and ADC Ruler was MVP. 60 million unique viewers watched, a record at the time.

7. Incheon 2018: Invictus Gaming 3-0 Fnatic. The second sweep on our list, because of what it ended. Korea had won five straight World Championships. In front of a Korean crowd, China's IG beat Fnatic without dropping a game, and jungler Ning was MVP. The final's 99.6 million unique viewers were a record, and China's first title opened a new rivalry between the LCK and LPL that still shapes every Worlds.

Where it began, and the near misses

No list is complete without Jönköping 2011. The first Worlds was part of DreamHack, a LAN party in Sweden, and players brought their own computers. Fnatic beat Against All Authority 2-1 in the final and took home $50,000. The whole event peaked at about 210,000 concurrent viewers. Every final on this list grew from that small stage.

A few more finals were close to making the cut. Seoul 2023 was a one-sided 3-0 for T1 over Weibo Gaming, but the setting was unforgettable: a home crowd at Gocheok Sky Dome, NewJeans performing the tournament song "GODS", and Zeus named Finals MVP in front of a record peak audience of 6.4 million outside China. Berlin 2015 gave SKT a second title after a tournament in which it lost just one game. And Los Angeles 2013 was the night League proved it could draw a mainstream-sized audience, with more than 32 million viewers watching SKT sweep Royal Club.

By the numbers

• 15 Worlds finals from 2011 to 2025
• 5 went the distance: 2016, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2025
• 5 ended in 3-0 sweeps: 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2023
• 73.86 million: peak viewers for the 2021 final
• 18,000: the crowd at Chase Center for DRX vs T1 in 2022

What to watch

The 2026 final has the ingredients for a place on this list. Gen.G has not lost a series all tournament; Bilibili Gaming has knocked out three LCK teams, including T1, and lost the 2024 final in five games. Chovy is chasing his first world title, BLG its first ever. Read how both teams got there in our Worlds 2026 road-to-the-final story.