Riot Games have confirmed that they’re giving League of Legends a massive overhaul, putting most of LoL’s development team on the project with the goal of releasing League Next in 2027.

It’s no secret that League of Legends is, in some ways, incredibly outdated. The client is slow, clumsy, and prone to crashing. Graphically, LoL is lacking in comparison to other live service titles, and there’s only so much that can be done to create new and enticing cosmetics.

Additionally, matches are long in a world with shortening attention spans. League of Legends remains the largest esport in the world in terms of viewership, but it won’t keep that crown for free.

So, Riot’s taking some initiative and trying to drum up hype behind League of Legends to get a new generation of players in.

What’s Changing in League of Legends 2?

The way League of Legends 2 was announced is unorthodox to say the least. Bloomberg released a report detailing the in-development pseudo-sequel, and Riot had a video prepared that went live about 15 minutes later, officially acknowledging its existence.

So, for the sake of clarity, let’s go over what we know for a fact is happening with LoL. 

A look at some of our plans for League after 2026. pic.twitter.com/vqsnBksg1Y

— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) December 18, 2025

First, they’re finally putting the game and the client on the same engine, making them fully integrated with each other. This will allow them to flesh out the client and smooth over a lot of the nasty bugs that have plagued LoL for over a decade at this point, and it’ll make the process of implementing changes like the recent WASD control update much easier.

Additionally, they’re completely changing Summoner’s Rift and adding some new gameplay elements to the main competitive mode. They’re also making some big adjustments to the out-of-game systems like runes.

Perhaps most important for game health is their aim to give the new player experience some major upgrades, aiming to make the process of getting into League of Legends for the first time easier for the average player.

Riot is also adamant that this update isn’t a sequel, but it’s League of Legends 2 in a similar vein to what Valve did with Counter-Strike 2 and what Blizzard did with Overwatch 2, so it’d be no surprise to see the LoL 2 name stick.

That moniker is a bit more informative than “League Next,” the internal codename that was leaked in the Bloomberg report that broke the news.

A lot of what they had to say mirror’s Riot’s announcement, but there are two key parts of the report that add some additional context on what this could mean for LoL going forward.

First up is why Riot’s doing it: Money.

“While League of Legends has fared better than some competitors in the slow-growing video-game business, its player base has dropped off, according to the people Bloomberg News spoke with. Valorant, another Riot title, makes more money,” their report claims.

This could be due to several factors. When a weapon skin gets released in Valorant, you can run it on any character you want. Considering LoL has 172 champions, there’s a good chance a skin for an unpopular champion performs poorly, not because of the quality of the skin, but because 5% of your players are interested in it compared to 100% for a Knife skin in Valorant.

So, whether or not Riot can solve LoL’s financial woes may be a deeper issue than just updating the game and bringing more players back in.

Second, the internal structure of Riot’s dev team has been entirely reorganized. This was hinted at in the official video, but there will be significantly fewer people working on the core game of League of Legends in 2026. There’s a good chance that massive content updates will slow down.

Regardless, Riot is clearly committed to keeping League of Legends alive for years to come.