League of Legends Roadmap
League Next
Confirmed facts, rumors, and open questionsThere is no League of Legends 2, and Riot has said so on camera. What exists instead is a rebuild of the game you already own, aimed at 2027 and known internally as League Next. It rewrites the client, the engine, the look of Summoner's Rift and the systems you touch before the game starts, and it's the reason 2026 has been so quiet.
Last updated September 3, 2026. Riot has promised more detail around Worlds, which opens October 15.
The Timeline, End to End
Read left to right, this is a short story about a leak forcing a company's hand. Riot had a large project it hadn't announced, a reporter published it, and Riot confirmed the outline within hours rather than let a week of speculation run. Everything before that point is hindsight, including the 2023 line from then game director Pu Liu about 2025 changing League forever. The marker shows where we sit today: Riot said the next real update would land after MSI, and as of early September it hasn't.
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Dec 18, 2025
The plan leaks
Bloomberg reports a 2027 rebuild, sourced to five current and former Riot staff.
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Dec 18, 2025
Riot answers within hours
Bellezza rules out a sequel on camera. Van Roon confirms the six areas of work.
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Early 2026
The cost shows up
The champion team moves onto the rebuild. The year gets one champion.
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Jun 2026
Engine questions answered
Not Unreal. The client moves into Hextech. Locke ships on the 24th.
- Sep 2026, you are here Riot promised more detail after MSI. It hasn't come.
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Oct 15 to Nov 14
Worlds 2026
The window Riot pointed at for real detail and a tighter target inside 2027.
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2027
Target release
A year, and only a year. No month, no season, nothing narrower than that.
What Riot Has Actually Confirmed
Everything in this section comes from a named person at Riot speaking publicly. Each card says who said it and when, so you can weigh it yourself rather than taking our word for it. Nothing here is inference.
Riot is not making a sequel
Executive producer Paul "Pabro" Bellezza addressed the question directly: "We're often asked if we're going to make League of Legends 2 someday. And the answer to that has been, and remains, no." The plan is to keep improving the game that already exists rather than start a second one beside it. If you're worried about your account, your skins or your rank being stranded on an old version, that's the sentence that matters most on this page.
Paul "Pabro" Bellezza, executive producer, in a Riot video published December 18, 2025.
The client is being folded into the game itself
League currently runs on two separate pieces of technology. The match runs on Riot's own Hextech engine; the launcher, shop, profile and champion select run on something else entirely, which is why those two halves have never quite felt like one product. League Next collapses that split.
Andrei "Meddler" van Roon, who runs the League studio, put it plainly: "With League Next we're moving everything into Hextech, which should both make for a more seamless experience and get away from a lot of the challenges the client has had over the years." He's also described the specific limitation this removes, noting that the current split "leads to challenges connecting the two and doing things like champion models in the around game experience."
Andrei "Meddler" van Roon, head of League studio, June 2026.
League is staying on its own engine
Teamfight Tactics moved to Unreal. League isn't following it. Van Roon: "With League we're investing further in the custom game engine League uses, since that's been tailored for MOBA gameplay specifically and fits League's needs really well."
This one is worth holding onto, because "League is being rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5" circulated widely for months and it's wrong. The engine work is an upgrade to Hextech, not a migration off it.
Andrei "Meddler" van Roon, June 2026.
The announced scope
Riot's own video and van Roon's follow-up comments describe six areas of work. This is the full public list, and it hasn't grown or shrunk since December:
- A new client, built into the game rather than bolted onto it
- An upgrade to the Hextech engine underneath the match
- A complete visual overhaul of Summoner's Rift
- Changes to runes and the other choices you make before the game starts
- A rebuilt new player experience
- A broader visual reimagining that reaches champions and the interface
Riot's other modes and maps are in scope too, though nobody has said what happens to any specific one.
Riot video, December 18, 2025, plus van Roon's subsequent posts.
New players are the point
Bellezza was specific about who this is for: "We're overhauling the new player experience, so that once we're done, it should be the best time ever to get your friends into League." Sixteen years of accumulated systems have made the game genuinely hard to start playing, and the visual rework of champions and the interface is aimed at the same problem rather than at players who already know what a Voidgrub is.
Paul "Pabro" Bellezza, December 18, 2025.
2026 has one new champion, and that's because of this
Van Roon confirmed the reason without much softening: "Most of the team that normally make new champs are helping out with the large update that we'll talk about post MSI or so." One champion shipped all year. Locke, the Ashen Exorcist, arrived in Patch 26.13 on June 24, and the roster has sat at 173 champions since.
If this year has felt slow, that's not your imagination and it isn't neglect. The staff who would normally be building champions are building League Next.
Andrei "Meddler" van Roon, early 2026. Roster count verified against Riot's Data Dragon, patch 16.17.1.
More detail is coming around Worlds
Van Roon set the schedule himself: "At MSI we'll talk about some of the rest of 2026. Post MSI we'll talk more about League Next." MSI finished on July 12. Worlds 2026 runs October 15 to November 14 across Los Angeles, Allen and New York, and that's the window Riot has pointed at for real specifics, including a tighter release target inside 2027.
As of the date at the top of this page, that detail hasn't landed yet.
Andrei "Meddler" van Roon. Worlds 2026 dates from Riot's published schedule.
What's Still a Rumor
Plenty of confident claims about League Next are circulating with nothing behind them. Here's where each one actually stands.
"League is moving to Unreal Engine 5"
It isn't. Van Roon addressed this specifically and said Riot is investing further in League's own engine because it was built for this genre. The confusion is understandable, since Teamfight Tactics really did move to Unreal, but the two projects went different directions on purpose.
"League of Legends 2 is a separate game you'll have to buy or reinstall"
No sequel exists. Riot's executive producer said no on camera, and every technical detail since has described work on the current game rather than a second one. The name League Next describes an update, and it isn't final branding either.
"The new Summoner's Rift already shipped"
The gold and blue Rift that arrived on January 7, 2026 is the Demacia season, a theme laid over the existing map by the existing pipeline. Riot has not shown the League Next map at all. If you've seen a new looking Rift, you've seen the season rather than the rebuild.
"It's launching in early 2027" (or late, or at the season start)
Every version of this is a guess. The 2027 figure itself comes from Bloomberg's sources rather than from a Riot announcement, and Riot has never publicly committed to the year, let alone a point inside it. Large rebuilds slip. Treat any specific month you see as invented until Worlds.
"There'll be a public beta or a PBE test period"
Reasonable to expect, given how Riot ships everything else, and completely unannounced. Nobody at Riot has described a testing plan for League Next in public.
"Every champion is getting a new model at launch"
The confirmed statement is that the visual aesthetic, champions included, is being reimagined. That's a direction, not a delivery schedule. Whether that means a wave of updates at launch, a rolling program afterward, or a smaller subset first is entirely unstated, and a full roster of 173 champions is an enormous amount of art.
"The name is League Next"
It's a codename that leaked, which Riot has since used loosely and provisionally. The thing you eventually install may be called something else entirely, or nothing at all beyond a season number.
Questions Riot Hasn't Answered
These aren't rumors, because nobody is even claiming to know. They're the gaps, and they're worth naming because they're the parts most likely to matter to someone with years invested in an account.
Skins
Nothing has been said about what happens to a collection when the game's visual style changes. This is the single biggest unanswered question and there is no answer to give yet.
Ranked
Whether ranks, MMR or the ladder structure carry across a rebuild of this size is unaddressed.
System requirements
An engine upgrade and a full visual overhaul usually cost performance. Nobody has said whether older machines keep up.
Runes, specifically
Confirmed as changing. What changes, and whether that means adjustment or replacement, is not described anywhere.
ARAM and the rotating modes
Other maps and modes are in scope. Which ones, and what happens to them, is unstated.
Esports
A competitive scene runs on a stable game. How a 2027 rebuild lands against a season calendar hasn't been discussed publicly.
What It Means for the Game You're Playing Now
The practical effects are already here, and they explain a year that a lot of people have found frustrating.
One champion in twelve months is the clearest one. The team that builds champions is largely elsewhere, so the roster has been frozen at 173 since June and the metagame has had to move through balance changes rather than new arrivals. That makes the meta more stable than usual, which is good for anyone learning a champion and dull for anyone who plays for novelty.
It also means the tier list stays useful for longer. When no new champion lands to scramble a role, patch-to-patch movement comes from numbers, and numbers move in smaller steps than kits do. If you've been waiting for a reason to commit to a main, a year with almost no roster churn is an unusually good one.
None of this suggests the game is winding down. The opposite reading fits better: Riot has moved most of a very large team onto a multi-year rebuild of a sixteen-year-old game, which is not what a company does with a product it's finished with.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a League of Legends 2?
No. Riot's executive producer Paul Bellezza said on camera in December 2025 that the answer "has been, and remains, no." What's coming is a large update to the existing game, currently called League Next, targeted at 2027.
What is League Next?
A rebuild of League of Legends aimed at 2027. It merges the client into the game engine, upgrades that engine, visually overhauls Summoner's Rift, changes runes and pre-game systems, rebuilds the new player experience, and reimagines how champions and the interface look.
When does League Next come out?
There's no announced release date. 2027 is the reported target, and Riot has said it will share a more specific window around Worlds 2026, which runs October 15 to November 14.
Will I lose my account, skins or rank?
Riot hasn't addressed this directly, so anyone telling you either way is guessing. The relevant fact is structural: this is an update to the game you already have rather than a separate sequel, so there's no second product for an account to fail to transfer into.
Is League of Legends moving to Unreal Engine 5?
No. Andrei van Roon confirmed in June 2026 that Riot is investing further in League's own custom engine because it was built for this genre. Teamfight Tactics moved to Unreal; League is not following it.
Why did League only get one new champion in 2026?
Because most of the champion team is working on League Next. Van Roon confirmed this directly. Locke, the Ashen Exorcist, released in Patch 26.13 on June 24 and is the only champion of the year.
Will Summoner's Rift look different?
Yes. A complete visual overhaul of the map is one of the six confirmed work areas. The Demacia themed map that arrived in January 2026 is a seasonal skin on the current map and is not related to it.
Is League of Legends dying?
The evidence points the other way. Riot has moved most of a large development team onto a multi-year rebuild, which is a substantial investment in the game's next decade rather than a wind-down. The quiet year is the cost of that work, not a symptom of decline.
How this page is sourced
Every item marked Confirmed traces to a named Riot employee speaking publicly, and the card says who and when. Items marked Reported come from journalism rather than from Riot, and are labeled that way throughout. The 2026 champion count and roster total are checked against Riot's own Data Dragon rather than taken from any article.
The existence of the project was first reported by Bloomberg on December 18, 2025. Riot confirmed the outline publicly the same day.
This page is maintained. It will be updated when Riot speaks about League Next again, which they have indicated will be around Worlds 2026.
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