The LEC Versus 2026 has invited two teams from the ERLs, Los Ratones and Karmine Corp Blue. These tier 2 teams are playing the first split of the 2026 LEC alongside the ten tier 1 teams.
Despite barely failing to reach the playoffs, LR ended up very competitive and got more viewers than any of their opponents. Their performance as a non-LEC team begs the question: should Riot end franchising?
Los Ratones is a team of streamers created by the former pro player and caster Caedrel. With Baus, Velja, Nemesis, Crownie, and Rekkles, LR combines World caliber players and entertaining solo queue content creators.
In 2025, the team played in the Nordic League Championship (NLC), one of the European tier 2 leagues. LR crushed all opposition, finishing first everywhere besides the EMEA Masters 2025 Summer where they lost to KCB in the semifinals.
The combined popularity of Caedrel and the players, who were all streaming every match and scrim, resulted in Los Ratones having 90-99% of the viewership of their league.
However, being too strong for tier 2 and unable to reach tier 1, LR’s fate was uncertain.
Until Riot announced that for 2026, they were inviting the two best-performing ERL teams to LEC Versus. The selected squads are Karmine Corp Blue and Los Ratones, as the two EMEA Masters winners of 2026. These teams only play in the Versus tournament, and will return to tier 2 for the Spring and Summer split.
LR and KCB are competing alongside every other team to try and reach the LEC playoffs, where they get a chance to represent Europe at First Stand 2026. Being from tier 2, they were expected to simply fold to the better teams. Which is exactly what happened to KCB, who finished their split winning a single game against an LEC team.
However, things turned out differently for Los Ratones.
YamatoCannon, coach of Los Ratones. Image Source: Wojciech Wandzel / Riot Games
The start of the season wasn’t easy for LR. Caedrel’s team started with four back-to-back losses, including in the easier match against Karmine Corp Blue.
Then, on day 5, their luck finally turned around. After falling down 4k gold at minute 15, Los Ratones came back and snagged their first win against Team Heretics. Riding off that momentum, they added a second win, this time against Shifters.
The real shocker came in week 3 though, as LR picked up two more wins in a row, against Movistar Koi and G2 Esports.
All of a sudden, after starting off 0-4, LR was now on a 4-game win streak and had taken down the LEC 2025 Summer winners and runners-up. The LEC teams finally needed to recognize them as real opponents and to take them seriously. While having two players with a weaker early game in Baus and Velja, LR’s mid-game macro had proven to be ridiculously good. As a result, the streamers’ team fell behind in most of their games, before finding ways to win from a 5000+ gold deficit.
In the end, Los Ratones went 5-6 in the group stage and barely missed qualifying for the LEC Versus playoffs.
LEC Versus regular season results: the Los Ratones viewership will no longer carry the league. Image Source: LEC
Los Ratones’ performance in the LEC was unexpected, but still not dominant. However, they outclassed every other team in terms of viewership. The match between G2 and LR reached 585k viewers, per Escharts, and was the peak of the LEC Versus’ regular season. It then got dethroned by none other than Los Ratones’ final game, at 591k.
The LEC in general ended up having a slight increase in viewership compared to 2025, as far as the Winter regular season is concerned. This was entirely off the back of LR’s numbers. LR vs Vitality tied the peak of LEC 2025 Winter viewership – the first match between the LEC’s two former biggest fanbases in KC and MKOI.
Not only that, but by that time in the middle of week 3, each of the five most viewed matches were LR’s. With the regular season now ended, the top 5 matches are three LR games, and the other two matches that decided whether the rats would qualify on the final day.
The most watched matches carried by the Los Ratones viewership, weeks 3 and 4. Image Source: Escharts
If we look at the three most popular regular season matches from LEC Versus 2026 and LEC 2025 Winter, the picture is clear:
| 2025 | 2026 | Comparison | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most watched | 592k (KC vs KOI) | 591k (VIT vs LR) | – <1k |
| Second most watched | 546k (G2 vs KC) | 585k (G2 vs LR) | +39k |
| Third most watched | 532k (FNC vs KC) | 580k (G2 vs FNC) | +48k |
One thing’s for certain, Riot was rooting for LR in the final day, and is upset that their LEC run ends there. Caedrel’s team was the golden goose of European viewership, and it died of natural causes (one singular late game misplay).
Now that they’re eliminated from the LEC, they have no way back in and won’t play for the rest of the year. The deal of inviting ERL teams only held for the LEC Versus, and Riot would receive too much outrage from the LEC teams if they tried going back on their word.
On top of it, it’s all but certain that Los Ratones will disband. The players didn’t plan on this being a longer-term project, and the team doesn’t belong in an ERL. In fact, Caedrel had announced in November that the team wouldn’t compete in ERLs in 2026.
However, they proved that they belonged in the LEC. Los Ratones came extremely close to making it to the playoffs. It took all of KC, FNC, and themselves to lose on the final day to eliminate them. The team still performed better than Shifters and SK. Looking at their strength of wins, they arguably performed as well as (or better than) Fnatic, G2, and MKOI.
Los Ratones is out of the LEC Versus. Image Source: Wojciech Wandzel / Riot Games
Riot hasn’t announced anything yet, but this has got to put franchising into question. The LEC teams have proven to not be the ten best LoL teams in Europe, or ten most interesting ones either. Yet the better teams can’t enter the league, because its roster is locked.
Los Ratones shows that franchising harms both the LEC’s power and its viewership. At the same time, Riot has no way of shutting down franchising without buying the slots back from the teams.
Time will tell how Riot gets themselves out of the hole that they dug.
Featured Image Source: Wojciech Wandzel / Riot Games
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