LoL Ranked Decay Explained: Who Decays and How Fast

If you are Emerald or below, you can take the entire season off and come back to exactly the LP you left at.

Everyone from Diamond upward is on a clock. Here is exactly how fast that clock runs, and how many games it takes to reset it.

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

RANKED DECAY

UPDATED AUGUST 2026

If you are Emerald or below, you can take the entire season off and come back to exactly the LP you left at.

Everyone from Diamond upward is on a clock. Here is exactly how fast that clock runs, and how many games it takes to reset it.

Who actually decays

Tier	Decays?	Grace period	Max bank	LP lost per day
Iron to Emerald	No	n/a	n/a	n/a
Diamond	Yes	28 days	28	50 LP
Master, Grandmaster, Challenger	Yes	10 days	14	75 LP

How the banking system works

Decay does not run on a simple timer. You carry an activity score, and playing ranked games adds to it.

Once you stop playing, one point of that score is removed every 24 hours.
Nothing happens to your LP while the score is above zero. This is the grace period in the table above.
The moment the score hits zero, you start losing LP every day until you queue up again.
Your score is capped, so you cannot grind fifty games in a weekend and disappear for six months.

You are given a full bank the moment you are promoted: 28 for Diamond, 10 for the apex tiers. The one exception is if you arrived in Diamond by decaying down out of Master, in which case the grace period is skipped entirely and the decay continues.

Decay can drop you a tier. It does not stop politely at 0 LP. A Diamond IV player at 0 LP who keeps decaying is demoted to Emerald I, and a Master player at 0 LP falls back to Diamond I.

What changed since this was written

This post originally covered the 2021 rules, and several of the numbers have moved since:

Master and above used to lose 250 LP per day. It is 75 LP per day now, which is far more forgiving.
The apex bank cap went from 10 to 14. The grace period is still 10 days.
Platinum used to be the highest safe tier. Emerald was added between Platinum and Diamond in 2023, and it does not decay either, so the safe ceiling moved up one tier.

The practical version

Diamond

Play once a month and you will never see decay. If you are going away for longer than that, there is no way to bank past 28 days, so plan to come back and play a game.

Master and above

Play at least once a week. The 14 day cap means a fortnight away is the absolute maximum, and at 75 LP a day a two week holiday can cost you a tier if you leave with a low bank.

Emerald and below

Nothing to manage. Play when you want.

Where to go next

If you are climbing back after time away, the meta has probably moved. Start with the solo queue tier list to see what is strong right now, or read the latest patch analysis for what changed.