League of Legends is one of the most popular games in the world. Launched in 2009, millions of people still play and watch it every day in 2026. Over time, the numbers have both gone up and down in response to Riot’s updates to the game. So what is League of Legends’s player count in 2026?
In 2025, League of Legends counted 131 million monthly active users. 2024 pulled roughly the same numbers, and we’re seeing the same estimate for 2026 so far.
LoL has 30 to 40 million daily active players, and around 850,000 to 1,100,000 players online at the same time. Naturally, the majority of those people play in China. Some servers favor LoL ranked, while others have a stronger ARAM audience. North America is known to have a relatively lower-ranked player base compared to Western Europe or South Korea.
| Region | Monthly active users (estimated) | Ranked population (June 2025) |
|---|---|---|
| China | 70,000,000 | Unknown |
| Europe (both servers) | 20,000,000 – 25,000,000 | 6,000,000 |
| South Korea | 20,000,000 | 4,400,000 |
| North America | 15,000,000 | 1,600,000 |
| Other regions | 10,000,000 | Unknown |
With 131 million monthly active users, League of Legends is behind Roblox and Minecraft in popularity, but ahead of Fortnite, PUBG, and every other game. This also makes League of Legends the single most popular PC-only game.
Image Source: Riot Games
The League of Legends player count was at its highest between 2021 and 2023. After a quiet 2017 and 2018, the game experienced consistent growth year after year, reaching its peak in 2021. League of Legends then stayed at that level for three years before finally dropping 20 million players in 2024. Since then, the player count has been mostly stable.
| Year | Number of monthly active users |
|---|---|
| 2011 | 15,000,000 |
| 2012 | 32,000,000 |
| 2013 | 67,000,000 |
| 2014 | 70,000,000 |
| 2015 | 90,000,000 |
| 2016 | 100,000,000 |
| 2017 | 81,000,000 |
| 2018 | 75,000,000 |
| 2019 | 116,000,000 |
| 2020 | 137,000,000 |
| 2021 | 149,000,000 |
| 2022 | 152,000,000 |
| 2023 | 152,000,000 |
| 2024 | 132,000,000 |
| 2025 | 131,000,000 |
| 2026 | 131,000,000 (January estimate) |
Riot Games also has a stronghold in esports viewership, with League of Legends as its flagship game. The 2025 Worlds finals peaked at 6,752,585 concurrent viewers (excluding Chinese viewers). LoL Esports’ record was reached the year before, in 2024, with 6,856,769 simultaneous viewers.
This marks three consecutive years of the LoL World Championship reaching between 6.4 and 6.9 million concurrent viewers, a record number of viewers for a single esports tournament.
| Year | Peak viewership (including Chinese viewers) | Peak viewership (excluding Chinese viewers) | Total unique viewers during Finals (including Chinese viewers) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 210,000 | Unknown | 1,600,000 |
| 2012 | 1,100,000 | Unknown | 8,000,000 |
| 2013 | 8,500,000 | Unknown | 32,000,000 |
| 2014 | 11,000,000 | Unknown | 27,000,000 |
| 2015 | 14,000,000 | Unknown | 36,000,000 |
| 2016 | 14,700,000 | 1,560,000 | 43,000,000 |
| 2017 | Unknown | 2,100,000 | 60,000,000 |
| 2018 | 44,000,000 | 2,050,000 | 99,600,000 |
| 2019 | 44,000,000 | 3,990,000 | Over 100,000,000 |
| 2020 | 46,000,000 | 3,880,000 | Unknown |
| 2021 | 73,860,000 | 4,020,000 | Unknown |
| 2022 | Unknown | 5,150,000 | Unknown |
| 2023 | Unknown | 6,400,000 | Unknown |
| 2024 | 50,000,000 | 6,860,000 | Unknown |
| 2025 | Unknown | 6,750,000 | Unknown |
These numbers show that 85 to 95% of the viewership comes from China, and that the number of total unique viewers is usually two to three times the peak concurrent viewership. With that in mind, we can deduce that the 2025 Worlds Finals also probably reached between 45 and 70 million concurrent viewers and 100 million total viewers. However, due to the challenges in counting Chinese viewers, those numbers can sadly not be verified.
Image Source: Riot Games
League of Legends is the most popular game on Twitch in 2026, where top LoL streamers like Tyler1 and Caedral, are two of the most followed content creators. While it won’t always have the biggest numbers at one given time, its 7-day stats clearly set it ahead of other games on the platform.
Read Also: Best LoL Players of all time
The League of Legends Twitch category has:
However, it gets beaten by five other games as far as the number of people streaming the game, including by Riot’s own FPS, Valorant.
Players regularly ask if League of Legends is dying. Sure, the League of Legends player count is down if compared to its peak between 2021 and 2023. However, it remains a top-three game in every relevant popularity metric.
Featured Image Source: Riot Games
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