League of Legends: What is LCK?

The League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK) is South Korea's premier League of Legends esports league, featuring ten franchised teams that are permanently part of the competition. The current 10 teams are: T1, Gen.G, Dplus KIA, DRX, FearX, Hanwha Life, KT Rolster, Kwangdong Freecs, NS Redforce and OK BRION.

LCK has officially been launched in 2015. But it isn't the first Korean league the MOBA of Riot Games ever had: it is actually the successor of the League of Legends Champions, which lasted from 2012 to 2014 and operated with 16 teams.

The league is currently structured in two splits: Spring and Summer, each featuring a double round-robin regular season, where teams face off in best-of-three matches. The top six teams from each split advance to the playoffs, which are displayed in a best-of-five format to determine the split champion. The winner and runner-up of spring are directly qualified to MSI, while only the winner of summer is qualified to Worlds. To determine which other teams will qualify to Worlds, a Regional Qualifier is played among the teams that accumulated the most Championship Points (that you earned with your ranking in both splits).

Ever since the launch of League of Legends servers in Korea in December 2011, it is well established the LCK has been dominating most of the international competitions. Korea won 8 times Worlds (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, and 2023) but also 2 MSI titles (2016 and 2017). Although the level can be incredibly high in the league, the LCK is the home of the most iconic team in the game: T1. The Korean organization, shelter of the most entitled player in history, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, is the most decorated team ever: 10 LCK titles, 5 Worlds, 2 MSI and an Esports World Cup title.

In ten out of the thirteen Worlds competitions since 2011, an LCK team has reached the final, and in four of them it was a 100% Korean final. It is to mention the international Korean domination has also been successful with numerous legendary teams winning Worlds such as Samsung Galaxy (2014 and 2017), Damwon (2020) or even DRX (2022). Domestically, Gen.G led by Jeong "Chovy" Ji-hoon is currently the most dominating team and has won a record-breaking 4-split in a row, but tended to struggle on the international stage. However, the team broke the curse by winning MSI 2024 and is now aiming for the Golden Road.

The LCK usually starts with the Spring Split in January and the Summer Split running until August. Riot Games offers an official stream which broadcasts the games in English. LCK is also casted in its native language here, and in other languages by national broadcasters. In addition, certain streamers have obtained the rights to costream the competition since 2023.