Teams participating in the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational 2021 are ready to fight. The competition starts May 6 with the Finals expected on May 23. It’s going to be held in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland.
Now before we take a closer look at the tournament format, there were initially 12 teams that made it but got reduced to 11. That’s because Vietnamese team GAM Esports won’t be able to join due to national travel restrictions related to COVID-19. However, this won’t change the format of the tournament.
Group Stage
The tournament starts with the Group Stage where teams are placed into different groups, which are:
- Group A
- Royal Never Give Up
- Unicorns Of Love
- Pentanet.GG
- Group B
- MAD Lions
- PSG Talon
- İstanbul Wildcats
- paiN Gaming
- Group C
- DAMWON Gaming
- Cloud9
- Infinity Esports
- DetonatioN FocusMe
Group B and C follow a double round-robin format and because Group A has one less team, it'll have a quadruple round-robin format. All games, by the way, are best-of-one.
The top two teams will move to the next stage with the rest being eliminated.
Rumble Stage
The six remaining teams will play in this stage under a double round-robin format. Matches are still Bo1 with the top four teams moving to the Knockout Stage while the bottom two teams are eliminated.
Knockout Stage
In this stage, the four remaining teams are placed in single-elimination brackets. But this time, all matches are in the best-of-five format. The winner of each bracket will battle in the Finals.
Patch Information
When the MSI was announced, it was clear that Gwen wouldn’t be playable in the tournament considering she is a very new champion. It was also announced that Viego won’t be part of the 2021 LEC season, though there was a chance he could still join this year's MSI. One reason for this might be his rather high win rate. However, according to a report, it seems that Viego won’t make it to the MSI as well.
Excited yet for this tournament? Which team do you think will take the crown?
