Riot Games confirmed on September 28, 2025, during the LTA Championship grand final in Allen, Texas, that the League of Legends Championship of The Americas will be discontinued after one season, with the LCS and Brazil's CBLOL returning as separate leagues in 2026 — the fastest reversal of a major League of Legends franchising bet ever attempted.
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Why did the LTA fail after a single season?
The LTA, per Riot's own June 11, 2024 announcement, was built to merge the LCS, CBLOL, and the Latin American LLA into one Pan-American league of 16 inaugural teams, unveiled October 31, 2024. The structural warning signs came early: on that same October day, per the league's announcements, 100 Thieves sold its slot back to Riot and continued as a non-relegatable provisional guest team — a franchise partner exiting before the league played a single official match.
The 2025 season then ran on an experimental three-split calendar, with the Split 1 knockout stage held in São Paulo and Team Liquid taking Split 1, per the league's results pages. The championship final itself, announced on June 3-4, 2025 for the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, drew FlyQuest against Vivo Keyd Stars — a North American org against a Brazilian one, which was precisely the interconference fixture the merger was supposed to normalize. FlyQuest won the only LTA title, and the league died with it.
What actually changes for North America and Brazil in 2026?
Two regional leagues replace one: the LCS returns for North America and the CBLOL returns for Brazil, per Riot's September 28, 2025 announcement. That unwinds the 2024 decision that ended both brands in the first place.
- The LCS name — retired when the merger was formed — is back as the North American competition.
- The CBLOL regains its identity as Brazil's top league after a year inside the merged structure.
- North American promotion mechanics stay alive: per the published 2026 promotion rules, five teams contest LTA North's promotion slot, including the guest team, the top two from NACL Split 2, and the top two from LRN Split 2.
What does the reversal mean for franchising economics?
The uncomfortable reading is that the Pan-American experiment cost partners a year. Franchise slots in the merged league were sold on the premise of a bigger combined market — Brazil plus North America under one broadcast and one calendar — and that premise survived exactly one competitive season. A partner selling its slot back to Riot before opening day, as 100 Thieves did per the October 31, 2024 announcements, was the market pricing that risk in real time.
The reversal also reopens the question every regional league now faces: whether geographic consolidation in esports adds viewers or just adds travel, time zones, and scheduling compromises. Riot's answer, one year into the test, was no. For a league office that once framed the merger as a long-term structural play, retreating to the pre-2024 regional map inside a single cycle is an admission that the costs landed faster than the benefits.
Could the regional leagues be merged again later?
What happens to the teams that played in the LTA?
They redistribute along the old borders. North American organizations fold back into the LCS structure, Brazilian organizations into the CBLOL, and the promotion and relegation mechanics published for 2026 — guest team, NACL qualifiers, LRN qualifiers — determine who occupies the remaining slots, per the published promotion format. The 2026 season, in other words, begins with a restoration rather than a reinvention.
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