2025 LTA season

Formation and Structure

The League of Legends Championship of The Americas was announced by Riot Games on 11 June 2024 as a merger of the North American LCS, Brazilian CBLOL, and Latin American LLA leagues. The new Pan-American league was officially formed on 31 October 2024, with its inaugural 16-team roster revealed the same day. The league was split into a Northern and a Southern Conference, each containing eight teams.

Thirteen of the teams were franchised partners. Two guest teams, Disguised from the North America Challengers League in the United States and Isurus Estral from Argentina, also competed. These guest teams were subject to a promotion and relegation tournament against top teams from the Tier 2 leagues. A provisional guest team, 100 Thieves, participated after selling its LCS slot back to Riot Games. This status meant the organization was not subject to relegation but would leave competitive League of Legends after the 2025 season, which it confirmed on 19 July 2025.

Mark Zimmerman, the final commissioner of the LCS, was appointed as the first and only commissioner of the LTA on 13 January 2025. The league adopted the new three-split competitive calendar introduced by Riot Games for the 2025 season globally.

Format and Rule Changes

The 2025 LTA season was played across three distinct splits, each with its own format. Split 1 began on 18 January 2025. It featured a double-elimination bracket within each conference to determine the top four teams, followed by an eight-team, cross-conference single-elimination playoff. All matches in the conference brackets and the playoff first round were best-of-three. The grand final was a best-of-five, won by Team Liquid. The draw for the first round matchups in each conference was held on the opening day.

A significant competitive innovation was the use of the Fearless Draft format, where teams could not pick a champion they had already played in a series, even if the opponent had picked it. This format was popularized by China's LoL Development League. Initially planned only for Split 1, Riot Games announced on 16 March 2025, prior to the First Stand Tournament final, that Fearless Draft would continue for the rest of the LTA season and for international tournaments like the Mid-Season Invitational and Worlds.

On 21 March 2025, Commissioner Mark Zimmerman announced format adjustments for Splits 2 and 3 to align with the global rollout of Fearless Draft. For Split 2, the regular season, initially a double round-robin best-of-1 group stage, was split into a single round-robin best-of-1 positioning phase and a single round-robin best-of-3 group stage. For Split 3, all matches in the double-elimination elimination phase, previously part of the Pick and Play format, were converted to best-of-five series.

Split 1: The Inaugural Champion

Split 1 began on 18 January and concluded with its finals on 23 February 2025 at the newly renovated Riot Games Arena in São Paulo, Brazil. Team Liquid won the inaugural split, defeating 100 Thieves in a 3–0 sweep. This victory qualified Liquid as the lone LTA representative for the 2025 First Stand Tournament.

The split's eight-team playoff bracket featured cross-conference matches in the quarterfinals, an aspect of the format. All of these first-round matches were won by teams from the Northern Conference. The finals were the only best-of-five series in the playoff stage, with all other matches being best-of-three.

Split 2: Conference Champions and MSI Qualification

Split 2 featured competition contained within each conference, with the winners crowned Conference Champions. The format involved a positioning phase, a group stage, and a playoff bracket. The group stage saw teams split into two groups of four within their conference. Tiebreakers were decided by game scores, the cumulative number of games won and lost over multiple series.

In the North, a three-way tie for records of 1-2 in one group was resolved by game scores, with Shopify Rebellion at 4–5, 100 Thieves at 3–4, and Dignitas at 2–5. In the South, RED Canids took a group's third place over Fluxo w7m with a 3–4 game score versus a 2–5 score. FURIA and LOUD had identical 5–3 game scores, but FURIA took the top spot due to their head-to-head win in group play.

FlyQuest won the Northern Conference Championship, and FURIA won the Southern Conference Championship. Both teams qualified for the 2025 Mid-Season Invitational. The LTA North runners-up also qualified for the Esports World Cup alongside the conference champions.

Split 3: The Road to Worlds and the LTA Championship

Split 3 determined qualification for the 2025 League of Legends World Championship. It used a Pick and Play format for its initial stages. For the first three weeks, after initial matches based on Split 2 results, the lowest-ranked teams picked their opponents for best-of-three matches. This was followed by a four-week double elimination bracket called the Elimination Phase, where the top four teams were seeded into the winner's bracket and the bottom four into the loser's bracket. All matches in this phase were best-of-five.

The top three teams from each conference's elimination phase qualified for the Americas Regional Championship, also known as the LTA Championship playoffs. The winner of each conference's bracket, FlyQuest in the North and Vivo Keyd Stars in the South, earned a direct slot at Worlds 2025 as conference champions.

The LTA Championship was a cross-conference, double-elimination bracket featuring the three qualified teams from each conference. The conference champions started in the upper bracket, with the other teams starting in the lower bracket. The first two rounds and the Upper Bracket Final were held at the Riot Games Arena in Los Angeles. The Lower Bracket Final and the Grand Finals were held on 27–28 September at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas, as announced on 3 June 2025. FlyQuest won the inaugural LTA Championship 3–1 over Vivo Keyd Stars, determining the final LTA spot for Worlds.

Notable Events and Partnerships

Several notable events occurred alongside the competition. On 14 January 2025, Cloud9 announced a partnership with KIA America, rebranding as Cloud9 KIA. Ten days later, Fluxo partnered with w7m esports, becoming Fluxo w7m.

On 19 May 2025, Japanese car manufacturer Honda ended its sponsorship of Team Liquid's League of Legends division in response to a tweet made by one of Liquid's Rainbow Six Siege players.

The joint venture guest team Isurus Estral dissolved on 23 June 2025, with the Argentine organizations Isurus and Estral Esports parting ways. Isurus retained the LTA slot for the South Conference.

The season's end was marked by two major announcements. On 28 September 2025, prior to the LTA Championship final, Riot Games announced that the LCS and CBLOL would return as separate leagues in 2026, discontinuing the LTA after just one season. This meant the promotion and relegation tournament would determine guest teams for those returning leagues, not for a continued LTA.

Post-Season and Legacy

Following the LTA Championship, a promotion and relegation tournament was held for the two guest teams, Disguised and Isurus. They competed in a five-team double-elimination tournament per conference against teams from the second-tier leagues. The winners qualified as guest teams for the returning LCS and CBLOL in 2026.

The 2025 season awards were presented after the finals. FlyQuest's Kacper Inspired Słoma was named Player of the Year, while his teammate Alan Busio Cwalina was the Finals MVP. The Rookie of the Year awards went to Lee Loki Sang-min of Cloud9 KIA for the North and Pedro Tatu Seixas of FURIA for the South.

The LTA experiment concluded after a single year. The league was created to unify the Americas region but was dissolved as Riot Games reversed course, opting to restore the historic LCS and CBLOL leagues starting in 2026. The Liga Latinoamérica was also part of the original merger. The 2025 season remains the only chapter in the brief history of the League of Legends Championship of The Americas.