League of Legends (LoL) 2026: Everything about Season 26.1
We're back with a brand new season of League of Legends, and honestly, it's one of the biggest updates we've seen in years. Season 1 of 2026 brings the kingdom of Demacia to Summoner's Rift, along with massive gameplay changes that affect every role, a long-awaited champion rework, and some seriously cool new features. Let's break down everything you need to know.
The Demacia Theme Takes Center Stage
This season kicks off with Unity, Justice, and Righteousness. That means Demacia is taking over the Rift with a full visual overhaul. We're talking petricite towers, gold-winged accents, and some Easter eggs scattered throughout the map for eagle-eyed players to discover.
Beyond the visuals, we're getting motion comics throughout the season that follow up on moments from the season start cinematic. And there's a brand new metagame called Demacia Rising that evolves over time. You'll experience the rise of Demacia through young Lux's eyes as she learns about history, politics, and military strategy from her aunt, Tiana Crownguard.
The cool part? We learned from previous metagames. You don't need to dedicate 15-30 minutes at a time anymore. You can spend as much or as little time as you want building cities, and you can complete fights through auto-battling. If you do spend more time playing, you'll get bonus Battle Pass XP.
Role Quests: The Biggest Change to Summoner's Rift
Here's where things get interesting. Riot is introducing Role Quests for all five positions, not just jungle and support. These quests are automatically assigned based on your queue position and reward you for playing out your lane matchup.
Top Lane Gets Real Agency
Top laners have always felt a bit isolated, so we're giving them some serious love. Complete your quest and you get:
- Level cap increased to 20 (up from 18)
- 600 bonus experience plus 12.5% increased XP gains
- Free Unleashed Teleport on a 7-minute cooldown (or a shield if you already took TP)
You progress by killing minions (doubled in top lane), taking towers, getting kills, and just being in your lane. The quest requires 1200 points, but you'll passively gain progress faster when you're actually in top lane.
Mid Lane Gets Speed and Power
Mid laners progress their quest through damage to champions plus the usual objectives. Your rewards?
- Free Tier 3 boots upgrade (seriously powerful versions with extra stats)
- Empowered Recall every 5 minutes (4-second channel instead of 8)
The Tier 3 boots are no joke. We're talking Crimson Lucidity with 20 Ability Haste and movement speed on ability casts, Spellslinger's Shoes with magic penetration, and more. These are game-changers.
Bot Lane Becomes the Gold Factory
They are doubling down on bot lane as the game's defining gold income carries. Complete your quest and get:
- 300 gold immediately
- 2 gold per minion for the rest of the game
- 50 gold per champion takedown
- A 7th item slot (your boots move to the Role Quest slot)
That seventh item slot opens up some wild late-game possibilities. Full build plus an extra legendary? Yes, please.
Jungle and Support Get Upgrades Too
Junglers complete their quest faster now (35 stacks instead of 40) and get 4-8% movement speed in jungle/river after completion, plus bonus gold and XP per large monster. Supports get to store 2 Control Wards in their Role Quest slot for only 40 gold each after quest completion.
Shyvana's Rework: Time Has Finally Come
After years of waiting, Shyvana is getting her update in Act 2. Think Dr. Mundo or Volibear level rework. Her abilities stay pretty similar at a high level, but the gameplay feel and kit details are meaningfully updated.
The big focus? Connecting her two forms better. She still gains fury from abilities and takedowns, but when she transforms with her ult, she becomes an actual dragon and breathes fire down on everyone in her path. We're prioritizing her bruiser build as the primary choice, though AP will still work.
Her base human and dragon forms are getting completely updated visuals, along with all her skins. If you've been waiting for this update, Act 2 can't come soon enough.
New Systems That Change Everything
Faelights: Vision Gets Interesting
Faelights are glowing mushroom rings that appear on the map. Place a ward on one and it becomes a superward with 25% increased vision radius plus a bonus vision region for 45 seconds. The bonus region shape is specific to each faelight location.
There are faelights near each base gate, in island brushes near top and bot, in the banana brushes near mid, and more appear after Elemental Rift transformation near side lanes. We're also adding more Scryer's Blooms with faster respawn times to help with vision control.
The goal? Make wards more usable for enabling plays (like split-pushing) even without your support nearby, while keeping the vision game strategic and rewarding.
Crystalline Overgrowth: Demolish for Everyone
This is huge for game flow. Lane turrets now build up crystals over time. When you hit the turret, the overgrowth bursts for bonus true damage based on how much has accumulated. It's not based on your stats, so any champion can use it.
After a 90-second startup, the damage scales from 2-3.3% of the turret's max health at level 1, up to 8.8-18.9% at level 18. This means smaller pushes actually matter now, and you don't need Baron buff to make turret progress.
Homeguards Get Faster
Riot retuned Homeguard to reduce dead time. It no longer has a duration. Instead, it stays active until you reach your outermost turret, the minion wave, enter combat, or enter the jungle.
Before 14:00, you get 80% movement speed ramping down to 40%. After 14:00? 150% ramping down to 65%. In Swiftplay, it's a wild 200% ramping to 100%. Getting back to the action has never been faster.
Epic Objectives and Game Flow Changes
We're saying goodbye to Atakhan, Blood Roses, and Feats of Strength. These features made 2025 unique, but they weren't having a positive enough effect on the game. To focus on core objectives.
Baron Nashor now spawns at 20 minutes instead of 25. Epic monsters have increased resistances (making them take 10-30% longer to kill for teams), but true damage is unaffected, so junglers can still solo them effectively. First Blood and first turret destroyed grant gold again (+100g and +300g respectively).
All turrets except Nexus turrets now have permanent turret plates. The total gold hasn't changed much, but it's now distributed across five plates at 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP. This rewards partial progress and makes smaller pushes more valuable.
The Crit Damage System is Back
This is a big one. Base crit damage is back to 200% for most champions. The developers compensated by adjusting champions who build crit regularly. This means ADCs will feel more like true auto-attack carries instead of ability-spam machines.
About 25 champions will be adjusted, generally lowering ability damage ratios while preserving or enhancing their auto-attack patterns. Champions like Yasuo, Yone, Jhin, and Senna have special crit modifiers to keep them balanced.
Nine New and Returning Items
Riot Games will adding new League of Legends items for underserved subclasses:
New Items:
- Dusk and Dawn: AP fighter item with Sheen proc that doubles on-hits
- Fiendhunter Bolts: Marksman Zeal item with ultimate haste and empowered attacks after ulting
- Endless Hunger: AD caster fighter sustain item with scaling ability haste
- Bastionbreaker: AD assassin item for ending games (bonus damage to objectives)
- Actualizer: Mana-stacking mage active that empowers your spells
- Hexoptics C44: Crit marksman item with range on takedowns
- Bandlepipes: Tank support item with attack speed aura
- Protoplasm Harness: Tank Lifeline item with healing based on resistances
- Whispering Circlet/Diadem of Songs: Enchanter Tear items
Returning Items:
- Hextech Gunblade: Back with 80 AP, 40 AD, 10% Omnivamp, and an active slow
- Stormrazor: Second AD/AS/Crit option with Energized attacks
- Essence Reaver: Sheen is back in the build path
Minions and Jungle Camps are Faster
Minions spawn at 30 seconds instead of 1:05. First jungle camps spawn at 55 seconds. At 14 minutes, minion waves spawn every 25 seconds instead of 30. At 30 minutes, every 20 seconds.
This means that minion gold and experience have to be compensated for the increased spawn rate. The game starts faster, lanes progress more naturally, and there's less downtime overall.
League of Legends Skins Confirmed For 2026
Demacian and non-Demacian skins all season long. Coming soon:
Next Patch:
- Battle Academia Briar and Samira
- New Aegisframe legendary skin for Galio
- Aegisframe Ornn
- Revenant Reign Viego (Exalted skin with sword collection mechanic)
Lunar Revel:
- Firecracker skins return
- New Petals of Spring thematic (created with Wild Rift)
Later in the Season:
- April Fool's skins (balloon animals, pugs, zonks)
- Darker Demacia skins
- New First Stand thematic (Road Warrior with werewolves)
Prestige and Mythic:
- Prestige Mother Morgana (available now)
- Prestige Sona and Mordekaiser coming later
- Mythic variants for Aurelion Sol and Master Yi
The Victorious skin goes to everyone's favorite mustachioed muscle man (Braum), and you can get it at any rank as long as you play enough games.
LoL Esports Gets Even Bigger in 2026
2025 was historic with T1 winning their third consecutive World Championship. For 2026, Riot is bringing First Stand to São Paulo, Brazil (March 16-22) with eight teams battling in best-of-five matches.
Mid-Season Invitational heads to Daejeon, South Korea for the first time. The esports team is also introducing "first selection" to give teams more strategic flexibility in draft. Teams can choose either which side to play on OR whether to pick first or second, giving their opponent the other choice.
Hall of Legends returns later this year with a third inductee who's "another true icon."
Looking Beyond 2026: No League of Legends 2
Players asked about League of Legends 2 a lot. The answer is still no. Instead, we're working on bigger updates to League:
- Brand new around-game client fully integrated with the in-game experience
- Summoner's Rift visual overhaul with new gameplay elements
- Rune system changes and pre-game choice updates
- Overhauled new player experience to make it the best time ever to get friends into League
The majority of the League team is now working on these updates. They are not ready to show the work in progress yet, but expect more details between MSI and Worlds this year.
ARAM Mayhem Sticks Around
ARAM Mayhem has been incredibly popular since launch, so it's staying for a while longer. They are working on a larger update coming in patch 26.3 with more wacky augments and improvements based on your feedback.
Lobby Hostage System Goes Live
Starting in some regions, tests are in place to terminate lobbies held hostage by bad actors. If someone says "I'm going to run it down" or takes Ghost/Cleanse on a champion in a lane they never play, the lobby gets terminated.
It's been refined based on your lobby reports and they have high confidence in day one accuracy. If you enjoy viable off-meta picks, don't worry. They are closely monitoring manual reviews to ensure experimentation can still thrive.
The Bottom Line
Season 2026 is massive. Role Quests fundamentally change how lanes work. Shyvana finally gets her update. New items open up fresh build paths. The game flows faster with meaningful choices at every stage.
Whether you're climbing ranked, experimenting in normals, or trying Swiftplay, there's something here for everyone. The emphasis on turret pushing over objective hoarding makes games more dynamic. Vision gameplay gets deeper with Faelights. And that seventh item slot for bot laners? Game-changing.
Everyone is excited to see how the meta evolves and what strategies emerge. Good luck, have fun, and we'll see you on the Rift.
