Home » Full LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes

Full LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes | For Demacia!

Robert Hanes

Publish Date: January 7, 2026

A new year is here and with it a new Season for League of Legends. This time we are heading to Demacia and with some major story changes, it could be one of the best seasons yet. There are plenty of changes, so here are the Full and condensed LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes.

LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes

These are the full LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes without the extra bits to help you find exactly what you need to. This Patch will go live on Thursday, January 8, 2026.

Find the TFT Patch 16.2 Patch Notes Here

Role Quests

This year, we’re introducing a major new concept to Summoner’s Rift: Role Quests. Building off the item-based quests that junglers and support players have had for years, we’re adding new lane-phase defining quests for the other three positions and updating the existing quests for support and jungle.

You’ll be automatically assigned the position quest corresponding to the role you’ve queued up as—if you want to trade positions, you’ll need to do that during champion select. And the game will now reward playing out your lane matchup, at least for the first few minutes every game. This change will also help us better balance and tackle the pro play meta around lane swaps going forward, so no more LANE SWAP DETECTED pop ups.

Every position will receive quest rewards for successfully completing their role quest. For top, mid, and bot lane players, these will be entirely new advantages. For support and jungle players, your existing rewards will be updated, and you’ll be receiving some new rewards as well.

Queuing Up

In all queues with assigned positions, you will automatically be given the quest associated with your assigned position in champ select.

Custom Summoner’s Rift lobbies will now require players to select a position.
Swiftplay and rotating game modes will not have this feature enabled, and will retain the same jungle and support quest rules as before.

Completing Your Quest

Once in game, you’ll complete your quest by playing out your assigned lane. For each position, you’ll earn points—reflected in the UI near your item inventory—for taking appropriate actions (many of which are based on what actions you do in-game today), and when you’ve earned enough points, you’ll receive a reward.

Support and jungle players will earn points for taking basically the same actions as before—supports will stack their World Atlas, while jungle players will grow their pets.

For top, mid, and bot lane players, you’ll earn points for champion takedowns, epic monster takedowns, minion kills, turret plates, turret takedowns, and some will passively generate over time. Minion, turret, and plate rewards are doubled in your assigned lane. Mid laners will also progress by dealing damage to champions.

Passive generation is a slow trickle outside of your lane, but is a significant amount of overall quest progress while you are in and around your assigned lane—roughly, past your outermost living turret in your assigned lane. Drive your opponent out of lane or kill them to slow their quest progress!

Top Lane

Top lane has been a particularly difficult role to give appropriate agency to over the years, and is frequently viewed as the position with the lowest agency. We’re enhancing their agency in this update with universal access to Teleport, and ensuring that they are a relevant scaling champion by increasing their experience gains and level cap.

Gold and experience from minions reduced by 25% outside of top lane until level 3

Quest Progress:

1200 points required for quest completion
+1 per minion kill (+2 in Top Lane)
+30 per epic monster takedown
+25 per turret takedown (+50 in Top Lane)
+20 per turret plate (+40 in Top Lane)
+15 per champion takedown
Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in and around top lane (Note: roughly, past your outermost living turret in your assigned lane.)

Quest Rewards:

Level cap increased to 20
+600 experience
All future experience gains increased by 12.5%.
If the top laner did not select Teleport as a Summoner Spell, gain Unleashed Teleport on a 7 minute cooldown.
If the top laner did select Teleport as a Summoner Spell, they are also shielded for 30% of their maximum health on arrival, lasting for 30 seconds.

Jungle

Jungle quest completion is mostly unchanged except for some light tuning—you’ll complete your quest sooner, and the Gustwalker Hatchling’s reward is slightly reduced compared to the other options. In addition to their previous rewards, junglers now get increased gold and experience after completing their quest, better allowing them to be a powerful champion later in the game, as well as increased movement speed in the jungle.

Pet counters needed to fully finish the quest: 40 ⇒ 35
Gustwalker movement speed duration: 2s ⇒ 1.5s
Smite damage: 600/900/1200 ⇒ 600/1000/1400
After quest completion, Junglers gain 4% movement speed in the jungle or river, increased to 8% while out of combat.
After quest completion, Junglers gain +10g and +10 XP per large monster killed

Mid Lane

Mid laners uniquely progress their role quest through dealing damage to champions in addition to other events. For rewards, mid laners receive a free upgrade to their boots, and periodically get an empowered Recall.

The boots upgrades are based on the items introduced for Feats of Strength, but they’ve been heavily reworked and are significantly more powerful now.

Gold and experience from minions reduced by 25% outside of mid lane until level 3

Quest Progress:

1350 points required for quest completion
Ranged Champions gain 1.5% of damage dealt to Champions as quest progress
Melee Champions gain 3% of damage dealt to Champions as quest progress
+1 per minion kill (+2 in mid lane)
+30 per epic monster takedown
+25 per turret takedown (+50 in mid lane)
+20 per turret plate (+40 in mid lane)
+25 per champion takedown
Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in and around the mid lane

Quest Rewards:

Tier 2 boots upgrade to their corresponding Tier 3 boots. If you do not have Tier 2 boots in your inventory upon quest completion they will be upgraded on purchase.
Every 5 minutes, gain an empowered Recall, reducing the channel time from 8 to 4 seconds
Champion takedowns reduce the cooldown on empowered Recall by 1 minute

Crimson Lucidity (Upgrades from Ionian Boots of Lucidity)

Ability Haste: 20
Movement Speed: 45
Ionian Lucidity: Gain 20 Summoner Haste.
Noxian Haste: Empowering or protecting allies with abilities, dealing damage to enemy Champions with abilities, or casting a Summoner Spell grants 10% Movement Speed for 4 seconds.

Swiftmarch (Upgrades from Boots of Swiftness)

Movement Speed: 65
Fleetfooted: Reduce the effectiveness of Slows by 40%.
Noxian Fervor: Gain 5% of your Movement Speed as Adaptive Force.

Spellslinger’s Shoes (Upgrades from Sorcerer’s Shoes)

Magic Penetration: 18
Magic Penetration: 8%
Movement Speed: 45

Gunmetal Greaves (Upgrades from Berserker’s Greaves)

Attack Speed: 40%
Movement Speed: 45
Life Steal: 5%

Chainlaced Crushers (Upgrades from Mercury’s Treads)

Magic Resist: 30
Movement Speed: 45
Noxian Persistence (15s cooldown): After taking magic damage from a Champion, gain a (10-120 [level scaling] +10% Health) magic shield for 5s.

Armored Advance (Upgrades from Plated Steelcaps)

Armor: 35
Movement Speed: 45
Plating: Reduces incoming damage from Attacks by 10%.
Noxian Endurance (15s cooldown): After taking physical damage from a Champion, gain a (10-120 [level scaling] +10% Health) physical shield for 5s.

Bot Lane

We’re doubling down on bot laners as the game’s defining gold income carries. Bot laners progress their quests more from minion kills than other positions, and are rewarded with some up front gold, increased gold income for the rest of the game, and the ability to move their boots into their Role Quest slot, freeing up an inventory slot for more component items—or even a fully completed 6th item if the game goes long enough.

Gold and experience from minions reduced by 25% outside of bot lane until level 3

Quest Progress:

1350 points required for quest completion
+1.5 per minion kill (+3 in Bot Lane)
+30 per epic monster takedown
+25 per turret takedown (+50 in Bot Lane)
+20 per turret plate (+40 in Bot Lane)
+15 per champion takedown
Starting at 1:05, +1 per 3 seconds passively, increased to +8 per 5 seconds in the Bot Lane playspace

Quest Rewards:

+300g
+2g per minion kill for the rest of the game
+50g per champion takedown for the rest of the game
Boots move to the Role Quest slot, effectively opening up a 7th item slot

Support

The Support Quest is already very fulfilling and functional, and as they say if it isn’t broken don’t fix it. That said, we did want to take this opportunity to localize the role quests to bot lane, similar to the other quests, while also adding a few quality of life upgrades to the quest. Gone are the days of having to sacrifice one of your item slots for Control Wards, now is the time for laners and junglers to fear the potential of a six item support!

Gold and experience from minion kills and from Support Quest Items is reduced by 25% outside of bot lane until level 3
Zaz’Zak’s Realmspike, Solstice Sleigh, Bloodsong, Dream Maker, and Celestial Opposition: 5g per 10s ⇒ 9g per 10s
After Quest Completion, Control Ward gold cost reduced to 40g
After Quest Completion, store up to 2 Control Wards on your Role Quest slot instead of your item inventory

Atakhan, Blood Roses, Feats, and Kills

Feats of Strength have been removed from the game.
First Blood once again grants +100g to the killer.
The first Turret destroyed once again grants +300g.
Atakhan has been removed from the game and will no longer spawn.
Blood Roses have been removed from the game and will no longer spawn.
Base kill gold devaluation per 1 gold given on death: 0.2 ⇒ 0.4. For example, dying and giving away 300g will reduce your base kill gold by 75g.
Base kill gold revaluation per 1 gold earned: 0.1 ⇒ 0.2. This change does not affect the accrual of positive bounties.

Epic Objective Tuning

Our pass on epic monsters for this season is intended to make them more contestable, empowering junglers to better solo objectives, make them more sustainable and tunable, and ultimately more consistent to interact with.

We want to increase the risk incurred when taking epic monsters, bringing it closer to the danger level of pushing for turrets. To do this, we’re making these epic monsters more resistant to physical and magic damage, which means a team will take anywhere from 10-30% longer to kill them. In the case of late-game elemental drakes, they are being slowed even further. Claiming Dragon Soul is just as impactful as taking Baron Nashor, so we want the time commitment for doing so to be comparable. Because true damage sources—such as the jungle pet and Smite—are unaffected, junglers who solo these objectives won’t be nearly as penalized, which means playing for lane priority in order to give your jungler cover is comparatively more powerful. Most Epic Monsters also no longer reward simply being around when it dies, meaning laners can continue to focus on lane control.

This increase in resistances and a small buff to Smite also protect junglers from some non-jungler objective steals. Junglers are already under a lot of pressure to perform around these objectives and that level of stress can burn a lot of players out, so we’re making this specific portion of jungle gameplay more forgiving.

We’ve also done a pass on epic monster rewards, aiming to make most of them give roughly as much gold and twice as much experience as a typical jungle camp, which we think is a fair reward for camps that mostly just cost time. For the game-ending objectives, namely Elder Dragon and Baron Nashor, we’re substantially curtailing their gold rewards, choosing instead to retain their emphasis on buff power and experience. The experience value of these epic monsters is remaining high and we’re refactoring their comeback experience mechanics in order to make them strong turning points for mounting a comeback for the losing team. The buff power is remaining because they should be strong, time-limited moments that meaningfully change how each game plays out.

In the past, epic monsters had inconsistent scaling with some caring about game time, some caring about level, and some having a mix of factors. We’ve rebuilt all epic monster scaling to have base stats and level ups similar to how champions do. Each epic monster has a minimum level that’s aligned with the typical game but ensures outliers aren’t too squishy. They’ve all been given the same underlying armor and magic resist growth, which roughly mirrors what champion-vs-champion combat feels like and should scale appropriately for champions of any damage type. These changes have the added benefit of making experiences like Multiplayer Practice Tool more productive, as a level 15 Baron teamfight will always behave like a level 15 Baron teamfight, regardless of how many minutes into the game you are.

Elemental Drakes

Minimum level: 6 (unchanged)
Health: 5,730-13,790 ⇒ 3,625 + 375 growth (5,106-10,000)
Armor: 21 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (66-170)
Magic Resistance: 30 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (48-100)
Mountain drakes have +15% HP (4,200 + 430 growth) instead of +20 armor and magic resist
Dragon Vengeance damage reduction: 7/14/21% ⇒ 15/30/45%
Dragon Vengeance no longer increases damage to champions by 20/40/60%
Dragon Vengeance tooltip now shows its numbers more accurately
Kill gold: 25 ⇒ 75
Local XP: 150-330 (6-15) ⇒ 160-400 (6-18)
Comeback XP is now linear instead of quadratic but still scales up to 2x at a 4 level deficit.

Elder Dragon

Minimum level: 10 ⇒ 13
Armor: 120-189 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (122-170)
Magic resist: 70-113 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (76-100)
Health: 13,650-17,130 ⇒ 11,500 + 575 Growth (17,796-21,275)
Gold: 100 Kill + 250 Global ⇒ 100 Kill + 150 Global
Total gold: 1350 ⇒ 850
Experience: 830 Local + 500 Global ⇒ 0 Local + 650 Global
Total experience: 3,330 ⇒ 3,250
Comeback XP is now linear instead of quadratic but still scales up to 2x at a 4 level deficit.

Void Grubs

Minimum level: 4 ⇒ 7
Armor: 0 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (73+)
Magic Resistance: 0 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (51+)
Health: 2,250-3,750 ⇒ 1300 + 200 Growth (2,269+)
AD: 30-45 by game time ⇒ 12 + 2 Growth (22+)
Grubs now deal 50% more damage to non-champions, matching Dragon and Baron
Mite AD: 4.2-6.6 by game time ⇒ 1.8 + 0.3 Growth (3+)
Mite HP: 470-710 by game time ⇒ 180 + 30 Growth (325+)
Gold: 20 local + 50 global (210g) ⇒ 30 local (90g)
Experience: 75 + 2% per level / 4 (79.5-84) ⇒ 65 (195 for 3)
XP radius: 0 ⇒ 2000
No longer heals its killer for 60 HP

Rift Herald

Minimum level: 6 ⇒ 9
Armor: 60 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (88+)
Magic Resistance: 50 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (59+)
Health: 10,688-14,250 ⇒ 7,000 + 700 Growth (11,718+)
Rift Herald eye cooldown: 8 ⇒ 6
Eye cooldown is no longer reduced on-hit
Rift Herald now deals 50% more damage to non-champions, matching Dragon and Baron.
Experience value: 309-330 ⇒ 240
XP radius: 600 ⇒ 2000
Gold: 200-600 based on nearby champions: 100g to killer
Mercenary charge damage: 2500-3000 ⇒ 3000
Mercenary health: 4,770-6,360 ⇒ 2,500 + 270 Growth (4,059+)
Mercenary armor: 60 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (88+)
Mercenary Magic Resistance: 50 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (59+)

Atakhan

Atakhan has been removed from the game.

Spawns ⇒ No longer spawns

Baron Nashor

Spawn timer: 25m ⇒ 20m
Minimum level: 11
Health: 15,600-19,020 by time ⇒ 16,300 + 170 Growth (17,792-19,190)
Armor: 120 ⇒ 34 + 8 Growth (104-170)
Magic Resistance: 70 ⇒ 32 + 4 Growth (67-100)
Attack damage: 350-520 from 20-57 minutes ⇒ 175 + 20 Growth (351-515)
Corrosion secondary attack damage: 70 + 20% total AD ⇒ 35% total AD
Acid Pool damage: 200 + 10% total AD ⇒ 100% total AD
Territorial Baron pull damage: 300 ⇒ 100% total AD
All-Seeing Baron rift total damage: 1000 ⇒ 140% total AD
Acid Shot damage: 200 + 50% total AD ⇒ 100% total AD
Tentacle Knockup damage: 200 + 25% total AD ⇒ 100% total AD
Re-added: Shreds 0.5 armor/MR per second to all nearby enemies
Experience: 800 local + 600 global ⇒ 650 global
Total experience: 3800 ⇒ 3250
Gold: 25 kill + 300 global ⇒ 100 kill + 150 global
Total gold: 1525 ⇒ 850
Baron Nashor is now subject to comeback experience like with dragons. Players on the losing team gain 25% increased experience per level behind they are, capped at 2x.
Fixed a broken icon in death recap from one of Baron’s abilities

Jungle Adjustments

Buff Camps

We’re removing the global red and blue buffs that were available after 25 minutes for a few reasons.

First, we think these buffs should be meaningful, and giving them out globally makes them less special when you do get one, since these buffs aren’t very impactful if they’re given out to five champions at a time. It also made it harder to appreciate the reward, since it could often show up without any effort from you. We prefer the version where someone intentionally walks over to pick up the buff their jungler left for them.

Second, we think the overall power level of these camps got too high with so many buffs given out, and considering this season’s emphasis on pushing for the enemy base over taking jungle monsters, reducing the power of team buffs was a straightforward decision. This also means, as a jungler, you’re less likely to face off against an enemy who’s wearing matching buffs, giving junglers a little more late-game combat agency in their average fight.

Baron’s spawn no longer corrupts Red and Blue buff, which made their buffs global and gave the monsters 30% more HP. A second version of the buff still drops after the Elemental Terrain transition.
Red buff regen: 0.5/1/3% at level 1/4/6 ⇒ 0.5/1/1.5/3% at 1/4/6/11
Red melee slow: 5/10/15/20% ⇒ 10/15/20%
Red ranged slow: 5/7.5/10% (unchanged)
Red buff burn: 10-75 ⇒ 15-54
Burn now displays its cumulative damage on its target
Red/Blue buff tooltips now show exactly how much power they provide.
Bugfix: Red/blue buff no longer last 30 seconds longer if a jungler kills a champion for it

Jungle Rules

Monster damage amp: 25% ⇒ 10%
Smite damage: 600/900/1200 ⇒ 600/1000/1400
New: Junglers take 50% damage from non-epic monsters
Maximum heal on kill: 81 + 13.5/lvl (1-10), max of 202.5 ⇒ 90+20/lvl (1-9), max of 250
Minimum heal on kill: 36+6 (44% of max), max of 90 ⇒ 0 (0% of max)
NEW: Now restores 15 energy on large monster kill
Pet heal per second: 14-37 (1-10) ⇒ 6-36 (1-18)
Pet base DPS: 20-90 ⇒ 20-150
Base pet DPS against epic monsters 15.5 ⇒ 20-150
Scuttle Crab no longer spawns at -1 level, thus increasing its gold/XP value
Kills required for first evolution: 20 ⇒ 15
Jungle role quest completion: 40 stacks ⇒ 35 stacks

Faelights and Vision Changes

Faelights

Faelights are a new map feature we’re introducing to improve the vision system. They appear as rings of glowing mushrooms on the ground—some present at game-start, and some upon the Elemental Rift transformation. When you place a ward on the ring, it will temporarily reveal a nearby area of the map, which is not revealed to enemies unless they use a detector effect or ping the ward directly.

These were designed with a few goals in mind:

First, we want wards to be more usable for enabling plays (like a split-push), even if the support isn’t nearby to provide multiple wards (especially when coupled with the Scryer’s Bloom changes; see below). This is a major motivator for the powerful faelight spots that spawn near side lanes after elemental rift transformation. It’s also why the bonus vision regions are long enough to make a play, but not long enough to dominate vision.

Second, we want the vision game to be more approachable while still rewarding good decision-making and strategic skill (particularly as the game moves past lane phase). This is why the island brush locations near side lanes are simple feels-good spots to ward during lane phase, while the areas towards the center of the map are sparser and less powerful. It’s also why the system still forces you to make strategic decisions about when and how to use limited ward/trinket resources (rather than resembling a plant or hexgate, for example), including for playing-against (as asymmetric information is critical to depth of strategy).

Third, we want to ensure the vision system has interesting mechanics to promote healthy new vision dynamics (e.g. enable split-pushes without turbo-charging jungle invades). This is why each location has its own tuning levers, like location, elemental rift delay, bonus vision shape/size, and the location/frequency of nearby Scryer’s Blooms. These enable faelights like those at base gates, which can be useful for offensive plays, but are designed to be easier than average for a losing team to retake and use to recover after being pushed in.

Finally, the vision system has historically been hard to understand and low-satisfaction, so we’re keen on vision mechanics that feel visceral, alive, and aesthetically pleasing on the map, rather than being a subcomponent of an item or UI component. This informed the natural-magic visual motifs and punchy particle effects that hopefully make it a fun and inviting feature to interact with.

We’ll be keeping an eye on how faelights impact the vision game, adjusting rules and individual locations as necessary to keep them fair.

Faelight: Placing a ward (of any type) on a faelight makes the ward a faelight superward, applying the following effects:

Grants +25% vision radius to the ward
Reveals a bonus vision region for 45 seconds
The bonus vision region shape is specific to that faelight location
The bonus region particles are only visible to your team
The bonus vision region is not affected by the type of ward being used (e.g. Control Wards don’t enhance it.)
This duration is represented by a countdown circle visual on the ward
The bonus vision region can see into brush if the brush is in the region shape
Enemies will know they’re in the bonus region while their team has a detector/sweeper effect within the region
Enemies will know they’re in the bonus region if their team has ping-tracked the ward directly (including via Sixth Sense)
All faelight superward buffs are suppressed while the ward has nearsight, and removed when the ward dies
If your team already has a ward on the faelight, that ward will be destroyed to make room for the new superward
For the sake of Vision Score, the ward has a +25% score mod
For the sake of Vision Score, the bonus vision region is treated as an extra ward obeying the Position modifier rule, but no other modifier rules (e.g. staleness)

Faelight Locations

One near each base gate (4 total), providing vision into the nearby jungle
One in each island brush near top and bot (2 total), providing vision into river
One in each river wall brush near mid AKA banana brush (2 total), providing vision of nearby river (hugging the mid lane brush but not overlapping it)
[After Elemental Rift Transformation] One near side lanes in each quadrant (4 total), providing vision in the jungle path along the lane

Other Vision Changes

Stealth Ward Trinket Cooldown: 210-120s (by level) ⇒ 170-90s (by level)
Oracle Lens Trinket Duration: 6s ⇒ 8s
Scryer’s Bloom Default Respawn Time: 260-350s (random) ⇒ 200-260s (random)

At 15:00 (or elemental rift transformation), new Scryer’s Bloom locations become available

One at each river coast near side lanes (2 total)
One behind each side lane inner turret (4 total)
One near the rocks in base where Hexgates spawn (4 total)
Elemental rift Scryer’s Bloom locations near these points have been deprecated, and any other plants too close by have been repositioned
These new Scryer’s Bloom locations have much shorter default respawn times: 90-120s (random)

Homeguards

Homeguard no longer has a duration.
Homeguard is now removed after reaching the endpoint, entering combat, or entering the jungle.
Homeguard will always take you at least to just before your outermost living turret in a lane.
Homeguard will always take you at least to your Inhibitor in your base.
After 14:00 or after at least one turret on either team has been destroyed in a given lane, Homeguard will track the furthest minion in the lane, ending approximately 2000 units before reaching the minion wave.
Before 14:00, Homeguard grants 80% movement speed ramping down to 40% over 4 seconds.
After 14:00, Homeguard grants 150% movement speed ramping down to 65% over 4 seconds.
In Swiftplay, Homeguard always grants 200% movement speed, ramping down to 100% over 4 seconds.

Crystalline Overgrowth

Targetable lane turrets are now subject to Crystalline Overgrowth.
Crystalline overgrowth will appear after a 90s startup/cooldown (30s in Swiftplay); at that point, the turret will take true damage the next time an enemy champion attacks it.
The overgrowth will stay at its minimum damage state for 60s (30s in Swiftplay), then scale the damage up linearly for 240s (180s in Swiftplay), then hold at max damage indefinitely.
The damage calculation is based on the average level of the attacking team:
At level 1, the damage range is 2% – 3.3% of the turret’s max Health (2.15% – 3.76% in Swiftplay).
At level 18, the damage range is 8.8% – 18.9% of the turret’s max Health (13.2% – 39.6% in Swiftplay).
The attack hitbox of the turret is increased for melee champions based on the size of the overgrowth.
Crystalline overgrowth will not proc from attacks while the turret has backdoor protection.
If an enemy unit is near the turret at that 90 second mark when it would become active, Crystalline Overgrowth will be suppressed and not appear. Once enemies are gone, the Overgrowth will then be applied and it will “fast forward” its state to make up for where it should be. This is to avoid sudden mid-push activations.

Demolish

Demolish trigger: Charge up a powerful attack against a tower while near it. ⇒ Your third attack against towers deals bonus physical damage.
Cooldown: 45s ⇒ 30s
Melee Damage: 100 + [35% of maximum health] ⇒ 85 + [28% of maximum health]
Ranged Damage: 100 + [35% of maximum health] ⇒ 50 + [20% of maximum health]

Game Start Time

Minion spawn time: 1:05 ⇒ 30 seconds
Murk Wolf, Blue Sentinel, Red Brambleback, Raptor Camps: Spawn at 55 seconds
Krug, Gromp Camps: Spawn at 1:07
River Scuttler Camps: Spawn at 2:55
Baron Nashor: 25:00 ⇒ 20:00
Epic Monster spawn times are unchanged unless noted above.
Ambient Gold Start Time: 65 seconds
Most miscellaneous start of game systems (for example, World Atlas’s first charge) start 35 seconds faster.
Remake Eligibility: 1:30 through 3:00 ⇒ 0:55 through 2:25
Early Surrender (with AFK) eligibility: 3:30 ⇒ 2:55

Turrets

Bulwark resist duration: 20s, refreshing on each plate takedown: 20s, overlapping durations
Bulwark resist visualization updated and new effects have been added. VFX no longer disappear when champions walk out of range.
Turret plates take 17% less damage from minions and ranged champions ⇒ Turrets take 20% more damage from melee champions
Updated all turret item tooltips to more clearly explain turret mechanics.
Turret true sight range: 1095 ⇒ 1100. Tooltip updated to reflect the accurate range.

Outer Turrets

Nearby players are now rewarded a share of 300g for destroying the first turret of the game.
Plates are now permanent instead of falling off at 14 minutes.
Resistances: Set armor/MR to 40 at 14 minutes ⇒ Lose 15 armor/mr per minute starting at minute 11, capped at -60
Plate gold: Turret plates drop at 14 minutes, awarding no further gold ⇒ Plate value reduces by 10g per minute at minute 11, capped at -40
Plate thresholds: 20/40/60/80/100% ⇒ 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP
No longer gains 50 permanent resists per dead plate.
In-world turret plate models have been removed. They now only show as health bar segments.
Base resists: 15 ⇒ 60
Base HP: 5,000 ⇒ 9,000
Maximum bonus AD: 192 at 16 minutes ⇒ 168 at 14 minutes
Local gold: 250 ⇒ 0
Turret plate gold: 125 ⇒ 120
Maximum local gold: 875 ⇒ 600
Minimum local gold: 250 ⇒ 400

Inner and Inhibitor Turrets

NEW: Turret Plates claimed at 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP
Inner turret local gold: 425/675 ⇒ 600 spread across 5 plates
Inner turret health: 4000 ⇒ 5000
Inner turret resistances: 55 ⇒ 60
Inner turrets no longer gain up to 15 armor/MR at minutes 16-30
Inhibitor turret local gold: 375 ⇒ 600 spread across 5 plates
Inhibitor turret regen thresholds: 33/66% HP ⇒ 30/75% HP
Inhibitor turret health: 3500 ⇒ 4750
Inhibitor turret resistances: 70 ⇒ 60

Nexus Turrets

NEW: Turret Plates claimed at 10/25/45/70/100% missing HP
Nexus turret health: 3000 ⇒ 3500
Nexus turret resists: 70 ⇒ 60
Nexus turret HP on respawn: 100% ⇒ 40%
6 HP/sec Nexus turret regen: 33/66% ⇒ 40/70% HP
Added a separate tower item for Nexus Turrets to show that they respawn.

Minions

At 14 minutes, minion waves now spawn every 25 seconds. When a cannon minion spawns on these waves, one fewer melee minion spawns.
At 30 minutes, minion waves now spawn every 20 seconds. One fewer caster minion spawns on these waves.
Minion to turret damage: 55% ⇒ 60%
Base Movement Speed: 325 ⇒ 350
First cannon minion wave: wave 4 ⇒ wave 3
Cannon AD: 39, +1.5 every 90 seconds ⇒ 39, +1.5 every 90 seconds, then +4 every 90 seconds at wave 15
Super minion base AD: 210 ⇒ 180
Experience share: 95/62/41.3/31/24.8/20.7% ⇒ 100/65/43.3/32.5/26/21.7%
Melee minion XP: 65 (61.75 / 40.3) ⇒ 62 (62 / 40.3)
Melee minion gold: 21 ⇒ 20
Ranged minion XP: 32 (30.4 / 19.84) ⇒ 31 (31 / 20.15)
Cannon/Super minion XP: 100 (95 / 62) ⇒ 75 (75 / 48.75
Cannon/Super minion gold: 60 + 3 every 90 seconds⇒ 50 + 1 every 90 seconds
Cannon minion damage to turrets: 82.5% ⇒ 84%
Cannon minion item updated to show its special rules for attacking turrets.

Champions

With every champion’s base crit damage being increased back to 200% this season, we’re making some preemptive balance changes to those who currently get at least 25% crit chance in the average game. We want to move many of these champions toward auto attack scaling via their new and improved crit damage and away from ability scaling in order to make these ADCs shine as true auto-attack carries and less like mages. This means we’ve usually nerfed ability damage through the AD ratio and/or crit scaling ratio as compensation for the impending increase in auto-attack damage.

When handling critical strike damage in general, we’re pushing every ability to scale as a portion of bonus critical strike damage, which we feel most consistently preserves the value of critical strikes. For abilities that are very close to basic attacks in functionality, we tried to preserve a high crit damage ratio and the more spell-like the ability, the less it needs to scale with crit.

Cassiopeia

Base Stats

Base Movement Speed: 328 ⇒ 335

Passive – Serpentine Grace

Passive Rework: Gain 4-72 Movement Speed (Based on level), but she cannot purchase boots. ⇒ Increased effectiveness of all Movement Speed buffs by 6-40% (based on level).

Samira

Q – Flair

Q Non-Crit Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 95/102.5/110/117.5/125% total AD) ⇒ 0/5/10/15/20 (+ 110% total AD)
Q Critical Strike Damage: 1.25/1.65x with IE ⇒ 50% of bonus crit damage: 1.5/1.65x with IE

R – Inferno Trigger

R Non-Crit Damage: 5/15/25 + 45% total AD ⇒ 20/40/60 + 30% total AD
R Critical Damage: 1.75/2.15x with IE ⇒ 100% of bonus crit damage: 2.0/2.3x with IE

Aphelios

Calibrum

Bonus Damage per Mark: 15 (+ 20% bonus AD) ⇒ 15 (+ 10% bonus AD)

Severum

Onslaught Damage per Hit: 10/15/20/25/30/35/40 (+ 22/25/28/31/34/37/40% bonus AD) ⇒ (+ 19/22.5/26/29.5/33/36.5/40% total AD)
Still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x ⇒ 2.0/2.3x)

Infernum

Duskwave Active Damage: 25/31.67/38.33/45/51.67/58.33/65 (+ 56/60/64/68/72/76/80% bonus AD) ⇒ 20/35/50/65/80/95/110 (+ 10/11/12/13/14/15/16% bonus AD)
Follow-up attack still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x ⇒ 2.0/2.3x)

Crescendum

Sentry Active Damage: 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 42/45/48/51/54/57/60% bonus AD) ⇒ 35/50/65/80/95/110/125 (+ 30/32/34/36/38/40/42% bonus AD)
Still critically strikes for 100% crit damage (1.75/2.15x ⇒ 2/2.3x)

Moonlight Vigil

Follow-Up Attack Critical Damage: 1.2/1.6x with IE ⇒ 30% of bonus critical strike damage: 1.3/1.39x with IE

Caitlyn

Passive – Headshot

Crit Scaling: 0-148.75/182.75% total AD ⇒ 100%*Bonus Crit Damage (0-100/130% total AD)

R – Ace in the Hole

Crit Scaling: Up to 1.5x ⇒ 30% of bonus critical strike damage: up to 1.3/1.39x with IE

Tristana

E – Explosive Charge

Non-crit Damage: 60/70/80/90/100 (+ 100/110/120/130/140% bonus AD) ⇒ 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 80% bonus AD)
Crit Scaling: 100%: Up to 1.75/2.15x with IE ⇒ 40% of critical strike damage: 1.40/1.52x with IE

Nilah

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 2.25% ⇒ 2%

Q – Formless Blade

Active Damage: 5/10/15/20/25 (+ 90/95/100/105/110% total AD) ⇒ 0/10/20/30/40 (+ 100% total AD)
Crit Scaling: Up to 2x ⇒ 80% of bonus crit damage: 1.8/2.04x
Armor Penetration Crit Scaling: 0-33% ⇒ 0-30%

R – Apotheosis

Mana Cost: 80 ⇒ 100

Jinx

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 1.4% ⇒ 1%

R – Super Mega Death Rocket!

Maximum Flat Damage: 250/400/550 (+ 130% bonus AD) ⇒ 200/350/500 (+ 120% bonus AD)

Jhin

Jhin won’t behave any differently next season as we want to avoid letting his guaranteed crit fourth shot do too much damage.

Base Stats

Multiplicative Crit Damage Mod: 86% ⇒ 75% (1.505x ⇒ 1.5x)

Sivir

As Sivir’s going to gain a lot of power from stronger Ricochet crits, we’re reducing her Q’s scaling.

Q – Boomerang Blade

Damage: 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 85% bonus AD) ⇒ 60/85/110/135/160 (+ 70% bonus AD)
Crit Scaling: Up to 1.5x ⇒ 40%: 1.4/1.52x

Zeri

We’re updating Zeri’s E to crit exactly as a basic attack would, which means re-tuning some of her abilities to make room for that power.

W – Ultrashock Laser

Damage: 30/70/110/150/190 (+ 130% total AD) ⇒ 30/70/110/150/190 (+ 120% total AD)
Through-Wall Damage: 1.75x, 2.15x with IE ⇒ 75% of bonus critical strike damage: 1.75/1.975x
Tooltip now shows the enhanced damage
Damage now cosmetically critically strikes its targets when shot through a wall

E – Spark Surge

Damage: 20/22/24/26/28 (+12% bonus AD) ⇒ 17/19/21/23/25 (+ 10% bonus AD)
Crit Scaling: Up to 1.85x every hit ⇒ 100% of bonus crit damage on crit: 2.0/2.3x

R – Lightning Crash

Active Damage: 200/300/400 (+ 100% bonus AD) ⇒ 150/250/350 (+ 100% bonus AD)

SR Ranked and Matchmaking

2025 Season 3 End and 2026 Season 1 Start

The S3 Ranked 2025 season will end on local server time 2026-01-07 at 23:59:59. Ranked Queues (Solo/Duo and Flex) will be disabled briefly as the season ends. S3 2025 Ranked Reward Mission will end at around the same time.

Shard Transfers will be disabled 2026-01-07 at 00:00 PST globally while we prepare to grant ranked rewards.
Ranked Season 1, 2026 will start on local server time 2026-01-08 at 12:00:00. Ranked Queues (Solo/Duo and Flex) will be re-enabled on season start. Season 1 2026 Ranked Reward Missions will start at the same time.
When the new season starts in 2026, player ranks will reset, and after playing 5 provisional games, players will be assigned a starting rank of the season to climb with.

End of Season Year 2025 Ranked Rewards

Additional accessories include:

Victorious Skin Border that is compatible with all 3 Victorious Skins of 2025 (requires owning all 3 Victorious skins of the year)
2025 Ranked Emote
2025 Ranked Icon
In order to receive rewards players must have an honor level of 3 or above.

Aegis of Valor

As detailed in /dev: Ranked 2026 dev blog, we’ll be launching the Aegis of Valor alongside the 2026 season start. If you are autofilled and get mastery C or above rating, you will have no LP deduction on a loss, or you’ll gain double LP gain for a win. In order to make sure autofilled players are trying their best we’ve also made some behind-the-scenes updates to the Mastery System to better detect player contribution.

Autofill status won’t go away by dodging the champ select. If a player dodges an autofilled game during champ select, the status would carry on until the player plays their autofilled game.
For Master or above players, dodging a ranked champ select would cost more LP.
Ranked Flex will have better and more reasonable skill rating based on your Solo/Duo queue rank.

Apex Duo Restriction Update for Solo/Duo Queue

For most regions (excluding KR and CN), you can now duo queue all the way to Challenger, with the premade party lower band at Diamond 1. We’ve also made updates to improve our high-ranked premade MMR offset to make sure the high rank duo play is both fair and competitive.

Duo queue specs are as follows:

D1 can duo with D3-D1, Master, Grandmaster and Challenger.
Grandmaster can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger
Challenger can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger
Master can duo with D1, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger
For CN, duo queuing is allowed up to Master with the premade party lower band at D1. CN Grandmaster and Challenger can only solo queue.
For KR, Master, Grandmaster and Challenger can only solo queue.
For CN and KR, similar to previous years, their APEX duo MMR restriction (CN at Grandmaster target MMR, KR at Master target MMR) will be temporarily disabled for 26.1, so if you are Grandmaster MMR in CN, or Master MMR in KR, if you have not achieved the visual Rank because you are still climbing, you can still duo. Visual Rank restrictions will always be on.

Swiftplay

Swiftplay has found a regular audience, and it’s become clearer who this queue is for and what their needs are in detail. This season we’re taking a major swing at moving Swiftplay closer to its long-term goal of providing a shorter, faster-paced, but still authentic Summoner’s Rift experience. In this update, you can expect to see a more significant divergence from the base rules in order to give an accelerated game start, a generally shorter and more action-packed game loop, and a more forgiving experience for off-meta picks, especially in the Jungle.

Swiftplay is inheriting most of the changes to Summoner’s Rift in this patch, with the notable exception of Role Quests. Lane phase is a much shorter experience in Swiftplay, and we wanted to avoid creating another situation where there is simply too much to do during this part of the game and not enough time to do it.

Start of Game Flow

Swiftplay will be inheriting the accelerated start-of-game flow from regular Summoner’s Rift. In addition, champions will start at level 3 with 1400 gold, moving much more quickly into the action.

In order to facilitate this, we’ve swapped out the Doran’s items for the Guardian’s starting items. These have exactly the same stats and effects in Swiftplay that they have in ARAM.

Off-meta junglers in particular should benefit from this flow, as a large number of off-meta junglers are filtered out by their relatively poor (or almost impossible, in some cases!) first clears.

Starting Level: 1 ⇒ 3
Starting Gold: 500g ⇒ 1400g
Doran’s Blade, Doran’s Shield, and Doran’s Ring have been removed from the item shop.
Guardian’s Horn, Guardian’s Orb, Guardian’s Blade, and Guardian’s Hammer have been added to the Swiftplay item shop.

Objectives

Swiftplay has all the same objectives as regular SR, condensed into a much shorter time period. This results in a too-dense strategy game that forces players to constantly be in the right place at the right time, without creating enough space to actually push down turrets and bring the game closer to its end.

This has a particularly unwelcome effect on the jungler, who ends up playing an even-higher-pressure version of the role, despite Swiftplay’s promise of lower stakes.

Game-ending power is generally more accessible than before, with some updated Dragon Soul and Elder Dragon spawn rules and a more potent Hand of Baron buff.

Void Grubs have been removed.
Rift Herald has been removed.
Baron Nashor now spawns at 12:00
The Hand of Baron buff now persists through death.
Atakhan has been removed, just as in other SR queues.
Elemental Drakes now spawn a maximum of twice.
Dragon Soul is now awarded if a team manages to kill both Elemental Drakes.
The Elemental Rift transformation now occurs after the first Elemental Drake is killed, and matches the element of the second Elemental Drake.
Elder Dragon now spawns at 15:00. If there is an Elemental Drake in the pit when Elder Dragon is spawning, it despawns.
If no Elemental Drakes are killed, the Elemental Rift transformation does not occur.

Pacing Changes

We’ve made a large number of under-the-hood changes to accelerate the game, aiming at a much higher action, shorter game loop than before.

Notably, gold and experience should scale up faster than before, while death timers are significantly shorter through most of the game. As noted above, new Homeguard rules are present in Swiftplay, and significantly faster than on regular SR. Minions scale up even faster, with a Cannon Minion in every wave, and Sudden Death comes online 5 minutes sooner.

Rubberbanding start time: 4:00 ⇒ 0:30
Gold and experience accelerate faster over game time
Rubberbanding slightly decreased per instance of gold or experience earned
Rubberbanding can no longer add more than 100% to the value of a single source of gold or experience.
Bugfix for gold acceleration from game time and rubberbanding double counting for some gold sources.
Turrets begin to lose resists: 25:00 ⇒ 20:00
Turrets begin to burn down from Sudden Death: 30:00 ⇒ 25:00
Death timers by level: 10s – 52.5s ⇒ 10s – 40s
Death timers no longer scale up with game time until 25:00, scaling up to a maximum of +50% by 27:30.
Minions scale up 50% faster
Cannon Minion health scaling: 85 ⇒ 100
Start of minion waves spawning every 25 seconds
There is now a Cannon Minion in every Minion Wave from the third wave on.
Turrets deal reduced damage to Cannon Minions
Minion damage to turrets multiplier: 50% ⇒ 60%

Minion Frenzy

The combination of shorter death timers and faster movement out onto the battlefield significantly increases the amount of PvP action you can expect to experience in Swiftplay, but it also has the potential of grinding the game to a halt, as you simply can’t make enough progress at destroying the enemy team’s base before they respawn and get back into the action.

To address this, we’re adding a new feature to Swiftplay only: Minion Frenzy. When you kill an enemy champion, your nearby allied minions will frenzy, gaining a large amount of movement speed, attack speed, and damage to minions and turrets. They’ll push towards the enemy’s base, translating champion kills more directly to turret damage.

If you kill a champion with no minions around, you’ll receive a marker buff that you can bring over to a minion wave – the next time you go near an allied minion, you’ll cause them to frenzy.

Minion movement speed: +125
Minion attack speed: +100%
Minion damage to enemy minions and turrets: 150% – 250% by game time (scaling linearly from 1:00 to 20:00)
Minions spread Frenzy to other nearby allied minions in the same lane
Champion marker buff duration: 90s or until death
Frenzy duration: 10s – 30s by game time

Jungle Changes

We have a small number of changes intended to make the Jungle a more comfortable position in Swiftplay.

Stacks required to complete Jungle Quest: 30 ⇒ 25
Red Brambleback and Blue Sentinel respawn times: 300s %rArr; 270s
Murk Wolves, Raptors, Gromp, and Krugs camp respawn times: 135s %rArr; 120s
Nearby allies now receive 30% of the gold value for non-epic jungle monsters killed. The killer still receives 100% value.

Arena

With the start of a new season of League of Legends we didn’t want to leave Arena out of all the fun and are introducing many of the brand new items into Arena, a new Fame track, New Augments, and some light balance changes. We’ve promised you all a larger Arena update later this year and we’re still hoping to deliver that, but we felt like we could sneak in some new toys to celebrate the start of a new season.

General

Critical Strike Damage

Critical Strike Damage increased from 190% > 200%

Fame Track

With a new Fame Track comes new augments to augment your builds, you’ll unlock these as you gain fame from playing the mode.

Hybrid – 100 Fame
Righteous Fury – 1,600 Fame
Combat Intro Card – 3,600 Fame
Panic Room – 6,100 Fame
Bonus Reroll – 9,100 Fame
Multitool – 12,600 Fame
Energetic – 16,600 Fame
Combat Intro Card – 21,600 Fame
Hive Mind – 26,600 Fame
Aim for the Head – 31,600 Fame
Quest: Rite of the Forge God – 37,600 Fame
Combat Intro Card – 47,600 Fame

Augments

We’re introducing 9 new augments to the mode.

(New) Hybrid

Hitting an Ability boosts your next Attack. Hitting an Attack boosts your next Ability.

(New) Righteous Fury

Healing/Shielding increases your Ability damage for the round.

(New) Panic Room

The first time you would die, instead be safely whisked far away.

(New) Multitool

Gain a special item that becomes a new item of your choice each round.

(New) Energetic

Become Energized much faster. Triggering Energize shoots magic missiles.

(New) Hive Mind

Attacking plants harvest Bees! Damaging enemies launches the Bees at them.

(New) Aim for the Head

Your Crit Chance is capped lower. Gain a ton of Crit Damage.

(New) Quest: Rite of the Forge God

After buying some Item Anvils, all your Items become Masterwork.

(New) Unshackled

You can now cast your ultimate on allied champions. Gain 50 Ultimate Haste.

Champions

[c] Zaahen has been a dominant champion in Arena since his release, so we feel like we should step in and make some adjustments here..

Zaahen

Passive AD ratio: 1.5-2.8 ⇒ 1-2
Passive Heal Amount: 30%-75% ⇒ 30%-45%
Q AD ratio: 20-60% ⇒ 10-50%
Q Champ Healing: 5%-9% ⇒ 3%-7%
R Damage: 250/400/550 200% bonus AD ⇒ 200/350/500 150% bonus AD

Items

We’re bringing over all the new items from Summoner’s Rift into Arena, with the exception of Bastionbreaker, as its focus on objectives doesn’t make a lot of sense in Arena.

Bugfixes

Fixed a bug where Die Another day wouldn’t cast if you were untargetable when you pressed it.

ARAM Mayhem

Champions

Ivern

Damage Dealt: 95% ⇒ 100%
Shielding Done: 80% ⇒ 100%

Janna

Damage Dealt: 95% ⇒ 100%
Damage Taken: 105% ⇒ 100%
Healing: 90% ⇒ 100%
Shielding: 95% ⇒ 100%

Karma

RQ Bonus Damage: 40 / 90 / 140 / 190 ⇒ 40 / 100 / 160 / 220

Milio

Healing: 95% ⇒ 100%
Shielding: 90% ⇒ 100%
Ability Haste: -10 ⇒ 0

Nami

Damage Dealt: 95% ⇒ 100%
Damage Taken: 105% ⇒ 100%

Renata

Damage Dealt: 95% ⇒ 100%
Shielding: 80% ⇒ 100%

Sona

W Heal Ratio: 20% ⇒ 30%
W Shield Ratio: 20% ⇒ 25%
Q Cooldown: 10s ⇒ 8s

Augments

Snowball Roulette

Augment Tier: Prismatic ⇒ Gold

It’s Killing Time

Instead of storing damage from all sources, now only store from the augment owner.

Flashy

Instead of refreshing 1 charge every 180s, will now refresh all 3 charges every 120 seconds.

Quest: Steel Your Heart

We’ve updated the functionality of the reward to now multiply future stacks by 3 and not just the stacks at the time of completion.
The tooltip implied this but it didn’t actually work this way, so we’re just making it do that to match the expectation and so Heartsteel can go brr.

Quest: Urf’s Champion

Golden Spatula Stats:
Attack Damage: 60 ⇒ 90
Ability Power: 80 ⇒ 110
Movement Speed: 5% ⇒ 10%
Immolate Range: 300 ⇒ 400

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where Ultimate’s Awakening’s buff bar is displaying incorrect Ability Haste.
Add a cooldown tracker for Ultimate Awakening.
Fixed a bug where Executioner is not working with Renger’s basic abilities.
Fixed a bug where Orbital Laser’s Ground damage is doing incorrect damage to minions.
Fixed a bug where Orbital Laser is tracking damage dealt to minions.
Fixed a bug where Gold Rend fails to function if your ally also takes it.

Demacia Rising

Demacia Rising is a new metagame that will be playable for the entirety of Season 1.

You play as Lux, who is being mentored by her aunt Tianna in the ways of military strategy. This begins with a history lesson — the founding of Zeffira, Demacia’s first settlement, in the great petricite forests of old.

In Demacia Rising, you will expand the kingdom, produce resources, train an army, research powerful upgrades to your army and towns, and defend the burgeoning nation from threats alongside several of League’s champions.

The game will be updated several times during Season 1, and new upgrade tiers, research items, story, units, champions, threats, and events will become available.

In order to build your kingdom, you will need Silver Shields, a resource earned primarily by playing games of League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics.

Daily and weekly missions will be available to provide large amounts of Silver Shields. Playing LoL or TFT and completing missions will earn enough Silver Shields to finish the entire game.
Purchasing the Battle Pass will instantly reward Silver Shields, and also increase the amount you earn from the recurring mission.
Playing a game with a skin released during Season 1 will reward a one-time bonus of Silver Shields.

If you want to learn more then check out our support article for Demacia Rising!

Lobby Hostage Taking & Player Behavior Updates

Trying to manipulate other players to do what you want, pushing a dodge penalty onto someone else, or playing out a game with something like disco Nunu just isn’t something we want in League. Starting with this patch we’ve added the capability to terminate lobbies during champion select with detection systems that will evaluate players for hostaging when they’re reported in champion select. We don’t expect it to be perfect or catch every case on release, and will continue to build upon these detections throughout the year, so please send those reports in to help us evolve our systems. As a reminder, trying something off-meta or having strategic disagreements with your team do not automatically qualify as hostage taking.

Champion selects will be terminated when a player in champion select is reported and determined to be holding the lobby hostage to force a dodge or for any other reason. This will never trigger without a report in champion select, so be to sure to report players you believe are hostaging.
When a champion select is terminated by hostaging detection, the offender will receive a penalty that will not allow them to immediately queue again, and all other players will re-enter matchmaking similar to if a player dodges today.
Penalties for repeated disruptive gameplay have been increased.
Improved detections for intentional non-participation in-game.
If you receive an Account Ban for having an inappropriate Riot ID, you’ll be unable to change your Riot ID until the ban is over.

Lane Based Autofill Matchmaking

In our last dev update we mentioned we were working on some changes to make games where there were autofilled players more fair by matching them by role. This means if your team had an autofilled jungler the enemy jungler would also be autofilled as well to help keep games competitive.

We wanted to let you know we’re still working on these changes, but we don’t expect to have them ready in January like we originally planned. We want to make sure we get this right, so we’ve delayed these changes to February. We appreciate your patience while we take the time to make this system as accurate as it can be.

Riot Games Community Pact

With the first patch of 2026, when you launch League for the first time in the new season you’ll see our new Community Pact that we’ve adopted across all of our games. It’s pretty straightforward and it has four simple asks from every player:

Play to Win. Play Fair. Play with Respect. Or play something else.

The Community Pact is an evolution of the Code of Conduct and covers what our expectations are for everyone that plays our games, and unlike past Codes of Conduct each year we will ask players to recommit to it.

To also better reflect these expectations in game, we’ve updated the reporting categories and descriptions on the Report Player windows to align with these core player principles.

Clash – Summoner’s Rift Demacia Cup

The Demacia Cup will be happening on Summoner’s Rift this patch! Grab your 5 stacks and get ready to rumble!

Registration Begins: December 12 @ 11:00 AM (Local Time)
Tournament Dates: December 17 and 18 (~4-7 PM Local Time, varies by region)

If you have any questions or you’re just looking for the full 2026 Clash schedule, make sure to check out our Clash FAQ support page.

Bugfixes & QoL Changes

Fixed an issue that caused Fizz’s W basic attacks to be heard from Fog of War.
Fixed an issue where the Guardian items in ARAM were missing their unique tooltip tags.
Fixed an issue where Ivern’s E failed to break Banshee’s Spellshield.
Fixed an issue where Skarner’s Q auto’s failed to stack Spear of Shojin (shoutout to the Skarner mains who tweeted this to us)
Fixed an issue that allowed players to right click through rule quest selection UI resulting in unwanted move commands.
Fixed an issue where it was possible to obtain excessive gold from rubberbanding after a large amount of time in the match.
Fixed an issue that caused the “Enable Streamer Mode” option to be missing in the Interface settings.
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to lose targeting on champions that go invisible during his R
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to be able to leap after a melee auto attack during R
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to inconsistently gain stacks of conqueror/other effects
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar leap to not trigger some attack effects (i.e. Navori, Lethal Tempo)
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar R damage to not be increased by Ultimate Damage amp (i.e. Axiom Arcanist)
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to gain grey health before levelling W
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to apply R shred/damage to monsters in melee range
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar E to not root Dr. Mundo
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to sometimes not gain ferocity from a melee bush/R attack
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar’s empowered state to override certain cooldown reduction effects (i.e. Navori, Trancendence)
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to be unable to leap for a short period of time when flashing during R
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to deal more damage to towers with Q if cast during leap
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar Q to not go on cooldown if held with 4 ferocity
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to not see camouflage indicators during R
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar’s basic abilities to not refresh from practice tool cheats
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to sometimes do no damage to nexus when leaping
Fixed an issue that caused Rengar to sometimes not leap over a wall when his target is close to the edge
Fixed a bug where Slayer Kayn’s R would fail to heal him if his target died at specific times during the ability.
Fixed an bug that caused Zeri to be able to cast Q during ally bard R and Kalista R
Added Slayer Kayn’s R’s base damage to the level-up tooltip.
Fixed a bug where the ranked end of season memorial modal shows the wrong season year
Fixed a bug where the ranked end of season memorial modal shows the wrong reward eligibility due to honor level database discrepancy.

Upcoming Skins & Chromas

The following skins will be released in this patch:

Prestige Veiled Lady Morgana
Petricite Cho’Gath
Petricite Nautilus
Durand’s Legacy Taliyah

The following chromas will be released in this patch:

Prestige Veiled Lady Morgana
Petricite Nautilus

You can find articles like “LoL Patch 26.1 Patch Notes” and you can ‘Like’ The Game Haus on Facebook and ‘Follow’ us on Twitter for more sports and esports articles from other great TGH writers along with Robert!

“From Our Haus to Yours”