All news: LCK LoL: Champions Korea

LCK is the name of the world's most popular competitive League of Legends. Riot's MOBAs are enjoying massive hype in the country, and competitive gaming is one of the professions there.

Not surprisingly, South Korea is considered to be the center of LoL competitiveness. This has been the case almost every time since 2012.

History of LCK

The first season of the Korean LCK Pro League took place in 2012. Back then, Riot was testing formats and just getting ready for the next steps to grow LCK into a multi-million dollar franchise.

The first tournament of the series was called Champions 2022. The event had the outlines of a classic championship from Riot with a split season into two parts and a large number of participants, but the spring split stood out a lot.

In the spring of 2012, teams from South Korea were divided into 4 groups of 6 participants: a total of 24 clubs took part in the tournament. In each group, a Single Elimination tournament was played with bo2 matches, where 2 teams from the group went to the playoffs.

The playoffs themselves were again played in the Single Elimination format. Since the beginning of building the esports ecosystem, Riot has strived to make League of Legends a real sport, hence the vision to play not the most popular format in esports in the later stages of major tournaments.

The winner of the first LCK split was Azubu Blaze, who beat Azubu Frost 3-0 in the final. In the summer of the same year, the LCK summer split started, where the summer split took place that year, in an already changed format and with a rather interesting list of teams.

LCK Summer 2013 – an attempt at “western” expansion

The Summer Split of the Championship 2013 was an attempt by Western teams to enter the battlefield of the South Korean giants. She nearly succeeded.

Among the participants in the tournament, in addition to local teams, there were NaVi, Americans Dignitas, Europeans from CLG EU. We shouldn't have expected special weather from the trio, because only CLG EU made it to the playoffs. The group stage, by the way, received an update: 4 teams and Round-Robin.

In the playoffs, the representatives of Europe from CLG Europe managed to get to the grand final. In the decisive match, they were defeated 3-2 by the vice-champions of the LCK Spring 2012.

Back to the roots

In 2013, Riot banned non-South Korean teams from the Regional League. Those received their tournaments, and only local representatives remained at the LCK.

For the first time, the season was divided into three splits: winter, spring and summer. Each of them played 12 teams, divided into 2 groups.

In the playoffs, 4 teams from each group were selected, that is, 8 teams. The most interesting in this regard was the LCK Winter 2013 split: then 2 bo5 matches played in the semi-finals of the main stage. Later, the idea was abandoned.

The running champions are:

• Najin Sword - winter
• MVP Ozone - Spring
• SK Telecom T1 2 - summer

SK Telecom T1 2 deserves a special mention. The team launched the careers of legendary Korean artists such as Faker, Impact, Bengi and others. Subsequently, SK Telecom will transform into T1, which will become the most titled team in the history of the League of Legends.

Becoming a LCK Franchise

A global change in the system of the South Korean competitive League of Legends happened in 2015. Nominally, then the event was called Champions 2015, but in fact it turned into LCK.

This happened due to the transition to the structure of the league. In the first season of a full-fledged league, only 8 teams played. It was divided into 2 splits: spring and summer.

During the group stage of LCK 2015, the teams met each other in Bo1 Round-Robin duels. 4 teams with different seedings went through to the playoffs, and the two worst teams by the end of the group stage left the championship.

Already in the summer split, the number of participants in the LCK competitive league has increased to 10, which has become a standard for future years.

Another major milestone came in the summer of 2020. After 5 years of competition, the LCK came to the conclusion to move the league to a franchise model: this meant privileges for teams and players, in-depth cooperation between Riot and participants. For the fans, this meant one thing - a greater presence of their favorite clubs: since the summer of 2020, the team has not left the LCK, regardless of the results. The only option was to buy-in and buy out the slot.

The debut list of partner teams included:

• DAMWON Gaming
• DRX
• Gen.G
• T1
• Afreeca Freecs
• KT Rolster
• SANDBOX Gaming
• Team Dynamics
• Hanwha Life Esports
• SeolHaeOnePrime

Later, the list of participants will change slightly, but the backbone of residents will remain unchanged.

Teams from the LCK on the international stage

The LCK has the status of the strongest region in the world of eSports League of Legends for a reason. Since 2012, the LCK team has been proving everything in practice.

In total, clubs from the LCK became champions of the Worlds series tournaments once, and T1 did it most often. The latter are the absolute champion in the number of World Champions Cup trophies (won 3 times).

All Worlds champions from LCK

• SK Telecom T1 – Worlds 2013
• Samsung White – Worlds 2014
• SK Telecom T1 – Worlds 2015
• SK Telecom T1 – Worlds 2016
• Samsung Galaxy – Worlds 2017
• DAMWON Gaming – Worlds 2020
• DRX-Worlds 2022

Teams from South Korea have won more than half of the world championships (7) of all played (12) as of 2022.

Top Teams of All Time LCK

High performance in international tournaments for teams from the LCK is ensured by a healthy system of intra-regional competitions. As mentioned above, in South Korea, esports is a highly developed industry and therefore it is prestigious to be an esportsman.

Competitive struggle and a serious approach to the competition provides LCK with a large number of top teams. Among the many representatives of the South Korean League of Legends, there are some of the biggest players on the scene.

The unconditional leadership in the number of seasons won is occupied by T1. The South Korean grand is the most successful team in the LCK in particular and the competitive League of Legends in general.