Riot Games LEC Commissioner addresses community criticism about LEC Summer Split format

Riot Games’ LEC Commissioner, Artem Bykov, has released a statement to address negative community feedback regarding the ongoing LEC Summer Split 2025.

On his personal X (formerly Twitter) account, Bykov promised a revamped format for next year’s Summer Split and improved transparency in the future.

The LEC Summer Split 2025 is running from August 2nd until September 28th, featuring 10 EMEA teams and a €80,000 (~£69,300) prize pool. As the third and final LEC split of the year, it also offers direct qualification for the annual League of Legends World Championship to its top three contestants. 

However, LEC Summer stands out as the only season split to divide its competitors into two single round-robin groups. During the Winter and Spring splits, teams fought through a single group of round-robin matches, allowing each participant to play nine Group Stage games.

In the current Summer format, Group Stage matches for each team have been reduced to four. Moreover, the league changed its tiebreaker rulebook mid-way through the ongoing split as the Head-to-Head Game Score tiebreaker had been mistakenly removed previously.

With LEC representatives struggling internationally throughout the past few years and the most-recent Mid-Season Invitational (MSI), the EMEA LoL community has expressed concerns regarding the league management. The Summer Split format, in particular, has been criticised for its perceived lack of competitiveness heading into the 2025 World Championship.

Last week, LEC Commissioner Artem Bykov took to social media to respond to the community feedback, promising adjustments to the Summer Split format next year.

“Summer Split format didn’t land the way we hoped and we won’t bring it back next year. We’re also looking for ways to increase the number of competition days across the whole year in 2026,” assured Bykov.

The Riot Games representative also highlighted some reasons behind the current Summer split format. LEC Winter’s best-of-one (BO1) Group Stage matches were not well perceived by fans and, therefore, led the league to switch to best-of-three (BO3) games instead.

However, a single round-robin group, including ten teams and BO5s, would have been impossible to execute given the short time window between June’s MSI, July’s Esports World Cup and the Summer Finals in September.

According to Bykov, the LEC has been facing additional scheduling problems caused by the overlap with Riot’s VALORANT Champions Tour (VCT). Both leagues share the same studio, the Riot Games Arena in Berlin, for their offline Group Stage matches. As a result, some LEC games took place on Mondays and Tuesdays, which are less popular days for viewership.

“The good news is we’ve learned a lot from both Spring and Summer, and we’re already working on 2026 with a structure that addresses your feedback,” emphasised Bykov. “I’m excited about what’s coming, and we’ll share details in the weeks following the Summer Split.”