Immortals and NRG may leave the LCS, here’s why

With the impending LoL Americas change, in which the CBLOL, LLA, and LCS will merge into a single region, it is being reported that both Immortals and NRG will not be participating in LoL esports come 2025.

Riot Games announced recently that there would be a huge shakeup to the makeup of American League of Legends in 2025. The LCS, LLA, and CBLOL leagues will be merging into a singular Americas league. Today, it has been reported by LoL insider Travis Gafford that both NRG and Immortals will not be part of the new region.

Here’s everything we know about the alleged departures for both Immortals and NRG.

Why are NRG and Immortals leaving the LCS?

The LCS will merge with the rest of the Americas, which may be why NRG and Immortals are leaving the circuit.

On Tuesday, September 8, Travis Gafford reported that sources close to the organizations confirmed that NRG and Immortals will not be in the LoL Americas region come 2025. Immortals returned to the LCS in 2019 after exiting in 2017. NRG, on the other hand, bought out Counter Logic Gaming’s slot in 2023 before winning the LCS in Summer 2023.

This is the fastest entrance and exit of an organization in the LCS since the addition of franchising. Many fans expected to see Immortals go, as the organization had repeatedly placed poorly in regular splits. However, following NRG’s championship run, many fans seemed to think that Shopify Rebellion and Dignitas were also in danger of being on the chopping block.

The new LoL Americas league will include six previous LCS teams plus two guest teams who will occupy promotion and relegation slots. Every year, the bottom teams will have to compete against second-tier organizations in the new Academy and Challenger environment. This will form a return to a promotion and relegation system for the first time since franchising was first introduced to the LCS.

No official comment has been made, but individuals from both Immortals and NRG have been acting in a manner that would suggest the news is true. NRG top laner Niship “Dhokla” Doshi was learning Portuguese on stream, a joke about him looking for teams in the South Conference of LoL Americas. Immortals coach Nick “Inero” Smith posted a meme of James Franco noosed at the gallows saying “First time?” from the 2018 movie The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. This is a reference to Smith’s previous situation at Golden Guardians, another organization that exited the league pre-2023.

No official comment has been made by Riot or the LCS, but it’s likely that the League of Legends developer will wait until after Worlds 2024 to make things official.