Riot Games just announced the biggest League of Legends changes to date, planned for 2027. Codenamed League Next, the new version will be a major overhaul to the massively popular MOBA. After years of saying that the next year will change League of Legends forever, is Riot Games finally delivering with League Next?
For the past 15 years, League of Legends has been updated every two weeks without fault, vacation aside. Yearly patches are more consequential, and the start of 2026 will bring unprecedented gameplay changes. However, for 2027, Riot is looking to change the game itself, as they announced in a new dev video.
To start things off, Riot has confirmed that this will not be a League of Legends 2. This notably means that no one has to worry about losing the content on their accounts.
Image: Reddit
Instead, the upcoming version of the game will only be an update to League. An all hands on deck update: The client, Summoner’s Rift, the runes, the tutorial, the engine, these will all change with more to follow.
The first change that Riot announced is a new League client. Instead of the current one that is its own application, it will be integrated in game. This will make the client work like it does in Valorant and Legends of Runeterra.
The League client received its last rework in 2017. Before that, the previous overhaul took place in 2014. The League client has always been the subject of warranted criticism. In its current version, it has over 100 recorded bugs and shows little signs of improvement.
The fact that the team has been working on a new client this whole time might explain why they’ve always been slow on fixing the current one. Here’s to hoping the future one will be able to deliver a smoother experience!
Riot hasn’t yet shared how Teamfight Tactics would tie into this. TFT is played from the League client and on the League game engine, so these changes will affect it.
Meddler also shared that League of Legends’ gameplay engine will be updated. It won’t move to a new engine (as that would create bugs and make champions feel off), only be updated to offer more possibilities.
Image via Reddit
The client will also use the new engine, allowing the game and the client to use the same technology. This change will notably allow for champion (and skin) models to be displayed in the client.
The Autumn version of the first Summoner’s Rift, in 2011 (Image Source: Riot Games)
Summoner’s Rift will get a full visual update! It will also receive gameplay changes.
The Summoner’s Rift received some tweaks in the past years. Shape of mid lane, river bushes, Rift corruption from the Void, alcoves, and most notably Elemental Rift and its evolutions. Recolors as well, with the Winter or Noxus maps.
However, these were all moderate-scale changes made on the same old Summoner’s Rift. The last Summoner’s Rift revamp took place in 2014, more than 11 years ago. The last and only one: between seasons 1 and 4, the game’s visual quality gradually went up but the map was the same.
A new Summoner’s Rift update means that every match will feel different from the way they do today.
There will also be changes for other maps and game modes alongside the Summoner’s Rift ones!
Image: Reddit
For more system overhauls, the runes will change in 2027.
Riot has announced many changes to the gameplay for 2026, so the fact that they’re revealing this one in a video about bigger changes insinuates that we’re not just looking at balance changes.
Runes are another aspect of League that saw many changes in the game’s history.
| Date | State of runes |
|---|---|
| 2011 | Masteries are a set of special bonuses to pick from, among offense, defense, and utility trees. Runes grant flat stat bonuses. Runes have to be paid for with Influence Points (now Blue Essence). |
| 2011-2015 | The set of masteries gets updated every year. Preseason 2015 brings more drastic changes to the system. |
| Preseason 2016 | Introduction of keystone masteries. Keystones are the strongest masteries, each tree has three of them, and players must pick exactly one. |
| Preseason 2018 | Runes Reforged! Former masteries are now called runes. There are 5 rune trees, retaining keystones. Former runes are gone, instead the rune trees also provide flat stats. Most importantly, the paying aspect is fully gone. |
| Preseason 2019 | Rune trees no longer provide flat stats. Introduction of Rune Shards, which instead provide flat stats that aren’t tied to the choice of trees. |
However, there again, the last major change took place in late 2017. Nearly 10 years later, we can finally expect another update of the scale of Runes Reforged.
Riot also announced that they would change “the way players make pre-game choices”. This should refer to the choice of runes in champ select, or to the information available there. Further details are unknown.
The original runes in League of Legends, retired in 2017 (Image Source: Riot Games)
League of Legends is notorious for having a terrible tutorial and a poor new player experience. To their credit, these have both been improved over time. In 2018, the tutorial changed entirely, and went through several useful stages instead of recommending Thornmail on Ashe.
The new tutorial also allows the player to try out several easy champions. Afterwards, their free champion rotation is replaced with a set selection of similarly easy champions until level 11. Players also unlock their first couple of champions much easier now than before 2018.
However, it’s still not enough. The tutorial does a nice job now, but players often find themselves struggling in their first dozens of games. Sometimes facing smurfs, sometimes simply being overwhelmed, often receiving insults. Another problem is the fact that playing with more experienced friends will also cause the newcomer to face strong opponents.
With League of Legends struggling to grow in the West the way it used to, better ways to welcome newcomers seem overdue.
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2027 will bring its major changes, but the game will still retain its regular biweekly patches. 2026 has its own set of big updates to the game, including the full integration of the WASD control scheme. Cross-account bans will also be implemented to further combat bad uses of smurfing. Though it has to be noted that most of the League of Legends team is now working on League Next.
Initially, this dev post was meant to be released as a full video and article in January 2026. However, leaks caused Riot to change their plans and release a short to act as an official source of information. We can expect more to be revealed in January!
Afterwards, Riot will share more information between July and October 2026.
Finishing off with a recap of the 2027 changes in League Next:
| System updated | Last overhaul | Year of the last overhaul | Number of years since the last overhaul | Total number of overhauls to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LoL client | League Client Update | 2016-2017 | 9 | 2 |
| Engine | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| Skin viewer | New feature | N/A | New | None |
| Summoner’s Rift | Summoner’s Rift Rework | 2014 | 11 | 1 |
| Runes | Runes Reforged | 2017 | 8 | 1 |
| New Player Experience | New tutorial and new player experience | 2018 | 7 | 1 |
Featured Image Source: Riot Games
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