Riot Games has detailed what’s coming in League of Legends Season 2 of 2026, and it’s a demon-themed season following Vayne as she hunts demons on the outskirts of Demacia.

The season launches with motion comics exploring Vayne’s past, alongside a shorter seasonal structure and major gameplay changes across role quests, runes, items, and Arena mode.

Pandemonium Season 2 is a shorter season, with an adjusted Battle Pass

Season 2 will be six patches long rather than the usual 8. To compensate for the shorter split, players will have a shorter Battle Pass too. You’ll find changes to that, too, featuring the non-Prestige skins available to buy in the store. Taking their place will be special Fiendish Mystery Skin demon orbs, which can reward a random demon-themed Epic skin instead.

Prestige Shaco and LeBlanc are coming this season, with Veigar following early in Season 3.

The new Pandemonium skin line features demon-themed skins for a variety of champions. The trailer showcases some details for Annie and Vayne as part of the demon-hunting theme.

There’s also Rain Shepherd Ivern and PROJECT: Quinn on the way too.

For a new theme, there are cooking-themed Day Job skins, with Breadsticks Irelia and Spaghetti alla Vel’Koz joining the culinary lineup.

Pandemonium is coming. Embrace your inner demon and prepare to fight.
Season 2 Act I launches on Patch 26.9. pic.twitter.com/zkn5naD7Gt

— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) April 14, 2026

Role Quest changes

Over the last few seasons, it appears that certain champions were punished for trying to do what their champions wanted to do. Proxy Singed, for example, could have some issues with top lane XP quest. While assassins could be punished for wanting to roam and look for picks and snowball. So the game has some leeway systems to ensure it’s not as punishing to not be in your lane all the time, for example, to perform other mini-champion roles that occupy the mid and top lanes.

Probably some Bard support and Pyke support in there too.

Players will still need to come to lane to progress on role quests, but they won’t be actively penalized for roaming or proxying anymore. The system is now more forgiving when you leave lane to do what your champion is designed to do.

In addition, the top lane and mid lane quest rewards are changing. Top laners can get more XP for getting involved with team fighting, meaning they want players to use their top to leave lane and get involved with team fights around Dragon, Herald, and other macro plays. Mid laners are losing their empowered recall, and instead getting 6% bonus AD or AP for completing their quest to further empower their damage profiles from mid lane carries.

The goal with these changes is to better reward the variety of classes and champions that get played in these roles, rather than mainly rewarding split pushers in top lane or non-roaming champions in mid.

Build diversity and returning runes

Riot is starting to invest more into supporting alternate builds for champions to better reward creativity and strategy. Think things like AP Ezreal, ADC Kennen, or attack speed Xin Zhao getting more support from the item system.

Deathfire Touch and Stormraider’s Surge are coming back this season, with Stormraider’s Surge replacing Phase Rush as an alternative movement speed rune.

There’s a variety of item adjustments coming, including Dusk and Dawn changes, two new starting items, new omnivamp boots, and the removal of Trailblazer and Opportunity from the item shop.

Arena gets a massive overhaul

Arena will be getting a big update in Season 2. Standard Arena games will be replaced by Events, new twists that change how Arena is played. It should help revive the mode, since ARAM Mayhem has been dominating casual interest in the game.

The three Events planned throughout Season 2 are:

• 3×6 – where the lobby is composed of six teams of three
• Bravery – where your only options are Bravery or a Crowd Favorite
• Swift Arena – where there are only four teams of two and games are faster

A new map is also coming to Arena called the Petricite Grove, alongside some changes to the Ancestral Woods.

Another new feature coming to Arena is Augment Levels, which let you supercharge your favorite augments by making them stronger or adding new effects, like Fan the Hammer firing more missiles.

There are also over 20 new and reworked guests of honor coming throughout this season. Some of which include Nocturne, who will create dark zones around the map, or Shaco, who will create chaos and make all of your augment rolls random tiers.

There are also over 30 new-to-Arena Augments, some being ported over from ARAM Mayhem and some brand new to League.

WASD controls coming to Ranked

After extensive testing, analysis, and adjustments, WASD has reached a performance level similar to that of Point and Click controls. There’s still a small delta in win rates between the control schemes, with Point and Click having a slight advantage.

As a result, WASD is finally ready for Ranked and will be going live in patch 26.9.

Riot is also adding champion-specific keybinds to the game this patch, so you’ll be able to configure different keybinds for all of your mains.

Other updates

Riot is beginning to roll out a new Discord integration with the League client, starting with a beta in the US, Canada, and Brazil. In short, you’ll be able to link your Discord and Riot accounts to easily invite your Discord friends to in-game parties, see who’s playing, and join League lobbies via party links.

Your Shop returns on May 5th, followed by the Blue Essence Emporium on May 13th.

The next champion will be a mid-lane AP assassin, though no other details were revealed. Sup[ports are once again absolutely seething as they still don’t have a new champion since Milio released.

We did speculate it could be a Nocturne rework given the season theme, but alas it is not.

Later this season, Riot is adding a feature that lets you vote to end the game early when game-ruining behavior is detected.

Players on the allied team will be LP neutral, players on the enemy team will receive full LP as though they had won, and the offending player and their premade party will all lose LP. And of course, the offending player will also receive a punishment.

That concludes the full update on what to expect. Season 2 should kick off around April 29th.