League of Legends Championship Pacific


The League of Legends Championship Pacific is a professional esports league for League of Legends teams competing in the Asia-Pacific region. Riot Games, the game's developer, and tournament organizer Carry International created the league on 29 September 2024. This followed an announcement in June by Riot in which they planned to form a single tournament to replace the Pacific Championship Series and Vietnam Championship Series as a tier-one league. Both leagues, alongside the League of Legends Japan League, which was integrated into the PCS for the 2024 season, became tier-two leagues.
The LCP utilizes a hybrid franchise and promotion and relegation model, similar to the Valorant Champions Tour in Riot's tactical shooter Valorant. Three teams are partners of the league and cannot be relegated, while another five are guest teams that can be relegated to the PCS, VCS, LJL or other sub-regional leagues based on their location.
The LCP is currently made up of three organizations each from Vietnam and Taiwan and two organizations from Japan. With the exception of some touring events, all games of the LCP are played live at the LCP Arena in Taipei, Taiwan. In addition to a small studio audience, all games are streamed live on Twitch and YouTube.
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History

Prior to the LCP

The first professional esports league for League of Legends players in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Southeast Asia was the Garena Premier League, which ran from 2012 to mid-2018 and ran by Garena, who distributed the game in those regions. Teams from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau were given their own league, the League of Legends Master Series, in late 2014. Three years later, the Vietnam Championship Series was upgraded to a Tier 1 tournament and Vietnam became its own competitive region, separate from the rest of Southeast Asia. The GPL was rebranded as the League of Legends SEA Tour in mid-2018.
On 25 September 2019, Garena announced its intention to merge the LMS and LST into a single league. This was fully announced by Riot Games as the Pacific Championship Series on 19 December for a 2020 start. The league, whilst originally franchised to feature 10 teams, would shrink to 8 teams for Spring 2024 and 7 for Summer 2024. The PCS would merge with Oceania's league, the League of Legends Circuit Oceania, in time for the 2023 season, giving the two best LCO teams spots in the PCS playoffs instead of the league qualifying for international tournaments on their own.
Japan's professional esports league for League of Legends, the League of Legends Japan League, was formed in 2014. Throughout the course of the league's history, DetonatioN FocusMe dominated the competition, scoring 16 LJL titles and representing the region several times in international competition. On 26 November 2023, Riot announced that the league would become part of the PCS, much like Oceania, for the 2024 season. During the season, DFM's dominance would be replaced by that of Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks Gaming, who won both LJL splits and finished as PCS runners-up in Spring and Summer, qualifying for the 2024 World Championship in the process.

Formation

On 11 June 2024, Riot Games released a blog post titled "LoL Esports: Building Towards a Brighter Future", in which they would overhaul the competitive scene for 2025. Among these changes were the announcement of an 8-team pan-Asia-Pacific tournament that would take the place of the PCS and VCS as a tier-1 league. This league was announced to feature a hybrid promotion and relegation system, with some teams being franchise partners of the league while others were guests that would be relegated. On 19 July Riot publicly announced that the league would consist of four partners and four guest teams. The league would officially launch as the League of Legends Championship Pacific on 29 September, with the format for the inaugural season announced on 1 November and the teams revealed on 3 November.
Despite being part of the larger Asia-Pacific region, it was announced on 20 September 2024 that the LCO had folded. It is currently unknown what would replace the competition as a domestic league that promotes teams to the LCP.

Format

Season Kickoff

  • 8 teams compete in a single round robin best-of-3 group
  • * First round is single elimination between the 3rd to 6th seeds, the rest is double elimination
  • ** The first two rounds and lower bracket semi-final are best-of-3, all later rounds are best-of-5
  • * All series during this split utilize Fearless Draft, where picked Champions cannot be picked again in later games during a series

Mid-Season

  • 8 teams compete in a double round robin best-of-1 group
  • The top 6 teams advance to the Qualifying Series
  • * First round is single elimination between the 3rd to 6th seeds, the rest is double elimination
  • ** The first two rounds are best-of-3, all later rounds are best-of-5

Season Finals

  • 8 teams complete in two single round robin best-of-3 groups
  • * The top four teams from Split 2 are put into the Contender group, while the bottom four teams are put into the Breakout group
  • The bottom 2 teams in the Contender group and the top 2 teams in the Breakout group then participate in best-of-3 Group Breakers
  • * The seeding is as follows: Contender #3 vs Breakout #2, Contender #4 vs Breakout #1
  • ** Winners go to the Contender Group, losers go to the Breakout Group
  • The two groups then each go through a double elimination best-of-3 bracket
  • * All teams in the Contender group advance to the Playoffs and therefore play for seeding, while the top two in the Breakout Group will advance to the Playoffs
  • The playoffs are double elimination, with the first rounds being best-of-3 and the final rounds being best-of-5
  • * The winner of the Playoffs is crowned LCP Champion

Qualifications

  • The winner of the first split qualifies for the First Stand Tournament
  • The winner and runner-up of the second split qualify for the Mid-Season Invitational as the LCP's first and second seeds respectively
  • The winner and runner-up and third place team of the Season Finals qualify for the World Championship as the LCP's first, second and third seeds respectively
  • * If the LCP secures an additional Worlds spot via MSI, the fourth place team in the Season Finals qualifies as the LCP's fourth seed

Promotion Tournament

  • The worst guest team after Season Finals is sent to defend a Free-for-All guest spot against the best teams in the domestic leagues
  • The second guest team is sent via Regional Merit
  • * Should there be more than one remaining guest team from a certain region, the worst performing guest from that region goes to the Promotion Tournament
  • * Else, if the remaining guest teams are all from different regions, the second-worst guest team is sent to the Promotion Tournament
  • ** Domestic teams who fought for the Free for All spot cannot fight for the Regional Merit spot
  • If a Guest team qualifies for Worlds, they will be exempted from that year's Promotion Tournament.
  • If a domestic team that would be in the Promotion Tournament is an academy of an LCP team, they cannot participate
  • * The spot then goes to the highest-ranked non-academy team from that league.
The domestic teams currently eligible for promotion to LCP are as follows:
  • LJL Finals winner
  • VCS Final Round winner
  • PCS Split 3 winner
  • Wild Card spot

Teams

Eight teams make up the league. This consists of three partner teams that cannot be relegated and five guest slots that can be relegated to the domestic leagues below the LCP based on their location. For the league's inaugural season, there were four partner teams and four guest teams, with the guests consisting of two merit slots for the best non-partnered team in both the 2024 PCS and VCS Summer splits, as well as two additional teams.