Riot Announces New Tournament for the APAC League of Legends Community
As previously reported, Riot announced that starting in 2025, VCS will be merged into the APAC region, resulting in only five major regions for League of Legends. This consolidation not only increases competitiveness but also allows Riot to focus investments on truly deserving teams. There were considerable concerns from the Vietnamese LoL community that well-funded VCS teams (GAM Esports, Team Secret, Vikings Esports…) would always secure their spots, while smaller teams would struggle to survive.
Recently, Riot officially announced the new tournament. Accordingly, the official tournament for the APAC region starting in 2025 will be named the League of Legends Championship Pacific (abbreviated as LCP). During the organization of this tournament, regions within the APAC group (VCS, PCS, LJL…) will continue to compete as usual to vie for promotion spots and to maintain and develop their own League of Legends ecosystems.
Vietnamese LoL Teams May Hold the “Secret” at the APAC Tournament
Looking at the three largest regions of the LCP, it can be seen that VCS and PCS have the most advantages. Among them, VCS stands out since, except for PSG Talon, it can be confidently stated that the other teams from PCS will struggle to compete for spots with VCS. In fact, if Vikings Esports had not faced a strong opponent like MAD Lions KOI in the very first match of the 2024 Worlds Play-In, the VKE players might not have fallen into such a severe slump in their later match against PaiN Gaming.
As for PCS, during the recent Summer Split, except for PSG Talon, no other team could defeat Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS Gaming. Meanwhile, everyone has seen how SHG performed on the international stage. It would truly be difficult to imagine any other PCS team aside from PSG Talon or any LJL team at this moment causing challenges for GAM or teams like TS, VKE.
Of course, with VKE’s recent performance against PNG, it’s hard to predict anything. However, regarding GAM’s position, at least the VCS audience can feel assured about the yellow-black team as they are still showing a bright face at this year’s Worlds. The 2025 season promises many changes and the VCS audience can fully trust that their home region will strive to secure as many international tournament spots as possible.