LCS commissioner Mark “MarkZ” Zimmerman used the 2026 LCS Summer Finals to share early plans for the 2027 season.
The short version is that the LCS stays the LCS. Some things will still change.
According to his remarks, the league will be “staying pretty much the same,” while “formats will get more adjusted” and there will be “more events.”
He also added: “No rebrands at least!”
He didn’t say which formats will change. It could be the regular season, the playoffs, Lock In, or several of them.
“More events” is also vague. It could mean extra tournaments, more roadshows, fan events, or special broadcasts. No cities, dates, or venues were named.
Why “no rebrand” matters
LCS fans have seen a lot of change in a short time.
The league moved to franchising in 2018. It dropped the “NA” from its name in 2019. In 2024, it shrank to eight teams after TSM and Evil Geniuses left.
Then, in 2025, Riot folded the LCS and Brazil’s CBLOL into one league called the LTA. That experiment lasted a single season before the LCS name came back for 2026.
After all of that, a year with the same name is real news.
Format changes are nothing new either. In 2024, the Spring regular season used best-of-one matches, and Summer switched to best-of-three series. “More adjusted” suggests that testing continues.
The fan wishlist is long
Fans already have plenty of ideas for those format changes.
The most common request is more matches. Many fans want a double round robin with best-of-three series, even if that means weekday games.
Others want the season to end closer to other major regions. Their worry is that LCS teams fly to MSI and Worlds later and get less time to practice abroad.
More roadshows are also high on the list, along with a better format for Lock In.
None of these ideas has been confirmed. Riot hasn’t said when the full 2027 details will be revealed.
