From a Swedish LAN to Stadiums: Every League of Legends World Champion

In June 2011, eight teams carried their own computers into a hall in Jönköping, Sweden, and plugged them into the network at DreamHack, one of Europe's biggest LAN parties. The first League of Legends World Championship had a total prize pool of $100,000. Fourteen years later, the winner's share alone is $1 million, finals sell out arenas on three continents, and a single match has drawn a reported peak of more than 73 million viewers.

The 2026 edition reaches its final in Brooklyn on November 14, so this is the right moment to look back. Here is every World Championship from Season 1 to 2025: who won, how they won, and the records that still stand.

Season 1: a LAN-party beginning

The first Worlds ran from June 18 to 20, 2011. Riot Games had added ranked play and draft mode the year before, and the numbers suggested people wanted to watch competitive League, so it tried a championship. Three teams came from North America, three from Europe, one from Singapore and one from the Philippines.

Europe's Fnatic beat Against All Authority 2-1 in the final and took home $50,000, half the pool. Team SoloMid finished third. More than 1.6 million people tuned in over the weekend, with a peak of about 210,000 watching at once. Those were big numbers for 2011, and they convinced Riot to make Worlds an annual event.

The Korean era begins (2012-2017)

Season 2 moved to Los Angeles with a $2 million pool, and it produced one of the great surprises of early esports: Taipei Assassins beat Korea's Azubu Frost 3-1 to win the title for Taiwan. It remains the only world title for a team from outside Korea, China and Europe.

Then Korea took over. In 2013, SK Telecom T1 swept China's Royal Club 3-0 in Los Angeles. The final drew more than 32 million viewers, with a peak of 8.5 million, numbers that dwarfed every other esports event of the time. SKT's teenage mid laner, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, was already the most talked-about player in the game.

In 2014 the final came to Seoul, and Samsung White beat Royal Club 3-1, with support Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong named MVP. In 2015, in Berlin, SKT returned. Its roster of MaRin, Bengi, Faker, Bang and Wolf beat KOO Tigers 3-1 and lost only one game in the entire tournament, and that came in the final. Top laner MaRin was MVP, and SKT became the first team to win two world titles.

2016 brought the first five-game final in the event's history. SKT beat Samsung Galaxy 3-2 at Staples Center in front of nearly 20,000 fans, with Faker winning his first Worlds MVP. The prize pool climbed to $6.7 million thanks to fan contributions from in-game sales, and the final drew 43 million unique viewers.

A year later, the same two teams met again in the Beijing National Stadium, the Bird's Nest built for the 2008 Olympics. This time Samsung swept SKT 3-0, ADC Park "Ruler" Jae-hyuk was MVP, and 60 million unique viewers watched one of the biggest upsets the game had seen.

China breaks through (2018-2021)

Five Korean titles in a row ended in Korea itself. At the 2018 final in Incheon, China's Invictus Gaming swept Fnatic 3-0, with jungler Gao "Ning" Zhenning as MVP. The final had 99.6 million unique viewers, a record at the time. A year later in Paris, FunPlus Phoenix swept G2 Esports 3-0, and the LPL had two titles in a row.

Korea answered in 2020. In Shanghai, during the pandemic, DAMWON Gaming beat Suning 3-1, and jungler Kim "Canyon" Geon-bu was named MVP. In 2021 the tournament was supposed to tour mainland China, but travel complications from COVID-19 moved it to Reykjavik, Iceland, where matches were played without fans. Edward Gaming beat the defending champions, now called DWG KIA, 3-2, and the final recorded a peak of 73.86 million viewers, the highest figure in the event's records. The pandemic left its mark in other ways too: Vietnam's two teams could not travel because of COVID-19 restrictions, so the tournament went ahead without one of its most passionate regions.

Cinderella and the three-peat (2022-2025)

In 2022, Korea's last seed, DRX, started in the Play-In stage in Mexico City and finished at Chase Center in San Francisco by beating T1 3-2. It was the first time a Play-In team had won Worlds, and veteran ADC Kim "Deft" Hyuk-kyu finally lifted the cup after a decade of trying.

T1 then built the most successful run in the event's history:

• 2023, Seoul: T1 swept Weibo Gaming 3-0 at Gocheok Sky Dome, with top laner Choi "Zeus" Woo-je as Finals MVP. Peak viewership, excluding China, hit 6.4 million.
• 2024, London: At The O2, T1 trailed Bilibili Gaming 1-2 before winning the last two games for a 3-2 victory. Faker was Finals MVP, and the peak of 6.9 million viewers (excluding China) set a new esports record.
• 2025, Chengdu: T1 came through the Play-In stage, went 3-2 in the Swiss stage, and beat KT Rolster 3-2 in an all-Korean final. ADC Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong was Finals MVP, the first ADC to win it since Ruler in 2017.

That third straight title made T1 the first team ever to win three Worlds in a row, and it gave Faker a sixth championship. 2025 was also the first Worlds played under Fearless Draft, the rule that stops a team from picking the same champion twice in a series.

The trophy and the money

The Summoner's Cup is famous for its size. Riot originally specified a cup of 70 pounds (about 32 kg), although the finished version was lighter. British silversmiths Thomas Lyte made the 2012 and 2014 cups. In 2022, Tiffany & Co. produced a version that weighed 44 pounds (about 20 kg), and the 2025 redesign halved that to 22 pounds (about 10 kg).

Prize money has grown with the event. The 2026 tournament has a base pool of $5 million, with 20% for the winner, 16% for the runner-up and a share for all 19 teams, down to $30,000 for last place.

By the numbers

• 15 finals from 2011 to 2025
• 10 titles for Korea's LCK, 3 for China's LPL, 1 for Europe and 1 for the Asia-Pacific region (Taipei Assassins)
• 6 titles for T1, the most of any team, and 6 for Faker, the most of any player
• 3 consecutive titles for T1 (2023-2025), a record
• $100,000: the whole Season 1 prize pool; $1,000,000: the 2026 winner's share
• 73.86 million: peak viewers recorded for the 2021 final

What to watch

The 2026 final on November 14 at Barclays Center is Gen.G against Bilibili Gaming. Gen.G carries the Samsung Galaxy lineage from 2017 and has not reached a final since; BLG lost the 2024 final to T1 and is chasing China's first title since 2021. We cover how both teams got there in our Worlds 2026 road-to-the-final story. Whoever wins, the Summoner's Cup gets a new name for the first time in three years.