LCK changes extremely strong
Recently, as soon as Worlds 2024 was not over, LCK had a unexpected change. Specifically, according to the announcement from LCK's official fanpage, from 2025, this tournament will no longer be classified into spring – summer. Instead, the audience will welcome 2 other tournaments. A tournament called LCK Cup takes place in a short time, will fall around the beginning of the year and end before March to select Riot's international tournament team. And the other prize, called LCK Regular Season (lasted from April to September to find the team to attend MSI and Worlds.
LCK will have had extremely strong changes from 2025
The new format will divide the LCK Cup into an extra prize and have nothing to do with LCK Regular Season afterwards. In addition, LCK Regular Season will also have a phase called MSI Qualified for teams to compete for MSI after Round 1 – 2 of this tournament ends. Thus, the LCK in the immediate future has eliminated the form of the familiar MSI representative, based on the results of the Spring Prize.
The new formula of LCK consists of 2 LCK Cup prizes at the beginning of the year and LCK Regular Season to replace spring – summer
LCK Cup will apply Fearless Draft while LCK Regular Season both to choose the LCK year champion, and to choose the representative of MSI and Worlds
In addition, after MSI ends, the teams will continue to play from Round 3 – 5 to select the representatives for the playoffs. LCK will be divided into two tables (called Legend and Rise) to delinge the teams to continue on the playoffs. The first 5 teams of Legend group and 3 Rise teams will continue to qualify for the championship to compete as well as 4 Worlds.
Playin round format of LCK Cup
The playoffs round to choose the champion and also the representative of LCK to attend the new international tournament of Riot
MSI 2024 qualifier with the top two teams after Round 1 – 2 of LCK Regular Season will fight 1 match, whoever wins is the No. 1 seed of LCK and the losing team will fight the remaining teams to choose the seed No. 2
Another change is that the LCK Cup will perform Format Fearless Draft that was introduced at LPL as well as LCK Challengers in 2024. It is the BTC LCK BTC also admitted: If a match is pulled to the Bo5, there will be 50 banned generals (including 10 generals in each match, and 40 generals have been banned in the previous 4 matches). This is a new change, when the previous Fearless Draft will often reset all the previous generals so that the teams have more choices.
Fearless Draft may be tested before applying to the main prize.
The question of LCK changes is the impact of faker
It can be said that the new schedule will be somewhat softer, when there is only one main award and the matches may be stretched out. According to some opinions, perhaps Faker's injuries also contribute to this major change of LCK. Because, whether applying Fearless Draft (such as LPL) or has a long -term prize (LEC, LCS), there is no large area that dares to completely cancel the system of 2 Spring – Summer prizes as LCK is doing.
Faker's injury can contribute to the change of many LCK competition formats
Granted, the number of tournaments may increase (4-5) but some tournaments like the LCK Cup can be considered as a boot tournament and the nature will not be too stressful. After that, the winning team will attend Riot's new international tournament. But even so, MSI and Worlds will still be more focused goals. This can also be considered as an opportunity for teams to test new tactics, or to bring young players to play and rub for experience.
The tournaments like this can also be an opportunity for the teams to let the youth team players accumulate experience
In addition, Fearless Draft will also be able to bring positive effects. The audience was too tired of seeing the team playing and knowing which champions would always be banned. The Gen.G itself is the team that often has the ban on lack of mutations, gradually losing the necessary boldness. Even in the defeat of T1, the audience immediately knew that Gen.G would bring Canyon's Nidalee to play or to counter ChoVy, just banned from Smold + Yone.
ChoVy will be able to encounter difficulties in the LCK Cup if his champion and his teammates are still limited as the past time and lack of necessary mutations.
In addition, with the LCK teams also faced many financial difficulties, the expansion of a number of tournaments, both for testing and for the teams to have an additional bonus is also an effective solution. At the same time, the BTC LCK only needs to arrange the schedule so that the players are not overloaded, they can be considered as success.
LCK in 2025 will be very different but these are changes that the audience will look forward to seeing the results when officially applied, with the expectation that will completely change LCK in the future.