The League of Legends 2026 Esports Nations Cup, with half a year to go before kick-off, has already begun pre-event hype in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi authorities published the points standings, showing LPL at the top with 9,000 points, ahead of LCK. The points are based on recent international performance and the individual points of five players. As BLG is the First Stand champion, their total score being higher than LCK's is understandable.

The top 16 teams in total points are directly invited, with the top 8 advancing straight to the group stage. Teams ranked 8th to 16th must start from the play-in stage, together with 16 teams that qualify through the preliminary rounds. To briefly explain the format: there are 112 teams in total. Apart from the 16 direct invites, all others must play in the preliminaries. After advancing from the preliminaries, they enter the play-ins, where 24 teams compete for 8 spots in the group stage.

In the group stage, 16 teams are divided into groups of four, playing a single round-robin BO3, with the top two advancing. In the knockout stage, aside from the grand final which is BO5, all matches are BO3 single-elimination. After discussing the format, let's talk about the rosters. Everyone's most interested in the LPL and LCK regions. The Korean team ENC's lineup is exactly the same as the Asian Games roster. Even though they can bring two substitutes, Oner still wasn't selected.

For our region, contrary to earlier online rumors that players would only be selected from BLG and AL, the actual roster is built around BLG: Bin, Knight, and ON are all on the list. Only Flandre from AL made the cut. TES serves as the second core, with Tian and JackeyLove included. Additionally, WE's Monki will also join the team. Xun's absence is likely due to the rule that each team can contribute at most three players; the same situation applies to Oner.

To be honest, the player roster seems quite reasonable, but the coaching staff appears a bit weak. The national team head coach this time is actually Bigwei, with Poppy from TES as the assistant coach. Bigwei's coaching ability is hard to praise—no matter how strong the lineup, under his guidance, the team's strength takes a hit. But on second thought, apart from Tabe, LPL doesn't seem to have many highly capable coaches to choose from.

Aside from the Chinese and Korean teams, other participating teams also have some interesting lineups. For example, SofM for Vietnam, Jankos for Poland, Perkz for Croatia, and Wunder for Denmark. These players are legendary veterans who retired many years ago, and they are now forced to come back for the Nations Cup. It's somewhat interesting to watch, but the chances of these veteran-led teams making it to the knockout stage are very low.

The teams from the European and American regions have very low strength in this Nations Cup; they might not even be able to beat our provincial team (Taiwan). This is because all the strong players have been split apart. Take the former powerhouse G2 for example: Caps plays for Denmark, Hanssama for France, Brokenblade for Turkey. The five members are scattered across different teams, and their teammates are mostly unknown players from lower-tier leagues.

With 5 starters and 2 substitutes allowed, some teams barely managed to gather just five players. Therefore, the main focus of this Nations Cup is still on LPL and LCK. Barring surprises, these two teams should be the final contenders for the championship. However, the Taiwan province team is also quite competitive. JunJia and HongQ have returned, and Doggo is on the roster—essentially the peak CFO roster has been reunited.

Conclusion:

People keep saying League of Legends is dying, yet the Nations Cup immediately attracts 112 teams—that scale is truly impressive. The biggest opponent for the LPL team is undoubtedly LCK. I hope Bigwei and Poppy can communicate well with the players and not negatively optimize the team's strength. If they can't manage, just keep quiet and let the players handle the draft themselves.

So, do you think the LPL roster is reasonable?

Feel free to leave comments and discuss!