How it works: The 2025 LoL Worlds Swiss Stage format explained

LoL Contributor

Publish Date: October 13, 2025

The 2025 LoL Worlds Swiss Stage will have 16 teams compete to determine which eight will advance to the Knockout stage. In this article we explain how the LoL Worlds Swiss stage format works, and how the teams will progress through five rounds of Swiss to make it to the knockouts. Swiss stage will run over Oct. 15-19 and Oct. 22-25.

What is a Swiss format?

The Swiss-system is a tournament format where in each round teams will face an opponent with the same record as them.

So, a team that went 1-0 will face another team that went 1-0, and so on for each round.

The LoL Worlds Swiss stage format

For the League of Legends World Championship, teams play until they reach either 3 wins, or 3 losses. At 3 wins, a team advances to playoffs, while their tournament run ends at 3 losses. This makes the LoL Worlds Swiss stage go for 5 rounds.

Every qualification or elimination match is a best of 3 (Bo3), while every other match is a best of 1 (Bo1).
Best of 3s are played using Fearless draft, where every champion picked is banned for the rest of the series.
Lastly, rematches aren’t permitted within this stage.

All Swiss Stage matches will be played at the Beijing Smart Esports Center.

Image Source: Riot Games / LCP via X (@lolpacificen)

Round 1 (Oct. 15)

With every team starting off at 0-0, the match-ups are based on seeding. So, every tier 1 team faces a tier 3 team, and every tier 2 team faces another tier 2 team. For this round only, a team may not face an opponent from their region.

The tiers are as follows:

Tier 1: GenG, BLG, FlyQuest, G2, CFO
Tier 2: HLE, AL, VKS, KOI, TSW, TES/KT
Tier 3: 100, FNC, PSG, KT/TES, iG/T1

If iG wins play-ins, then TES goes to tier 2 and KT to tier 3. If T1 wins, then we have KT in tier 2 and TES in tier 3.

Read our T1 vs iG preview here

Round 2 (Oct. 16)

All 8 1-0 teams face another 1-0 team.
All 8 0-1 teams face another 0-1 team.

Round 3 (Oct. 17-19)

The four 2-0 teams are drawn one against another in a Bo3. The two winners qualify for the Knockout stage.
The eight 1-1 teams play one Bo1 among themselves.
The four 0-2 teams play one Bo3 within their group. The two losers are out of Worlds.

Round 4 (Oct. 22-24)

The six 2-1 teams play one Bo3 among themselves. The three winners are now in quarterfinals.
The six 1-2 teams play one Bo3 against one another. The three losers are eliminated from the tournament.

Round 5 (Oct. 25)

At this round, we will only have six teams left, all with a score of 2-2.
They play one final Bo3, and the three winners join the previous five to make up the eight quarter finalists of the 2025 League World Championship!

You now know all there’s to know about the LoL Worlds Swiss stage format! Now, make sure that your LoL Worlds Pick’ems are ready for the occasion.

Featured Image Source: Riot Games/LoLEsports