The League of the Americas or LTA for short, is the highest tier league for North and South America. The LTA is one of the five major regions in the League of Legends competitive ecosystem together with the LCK, LPL, and LEC.
Image Credit: Riot Games
The season features three splits, all of which are followed by an international event (First Stand, MSI, and Worlds).
In 2025, the North American league (former LCS) as well as the CBLOL (Brazil) and LLA (Latin America), merged together to form a bigger region, the LTA. The peculiarity of the new league is the cross-regional competition that will see the best teams from the North and South conferences compete against one another to determine the LTA representatives on the international stage.
Both LTA North and South leagues feature eight teams each, featuring a partnership and guest team system.
The idea for the LCS dates as far back as the launch of League of Legends back in 2009. Riot Games were seeking a way to fully own and control the competitive ecosystem for the title after the inaugural years saw mixed success. Starting in 2013, the LCS became the premier competition in League of Legends for both Europe and North America. Riot Games pledged to run a league featuring a standardized schedule and guaranteed salaries for players as well as direct support for each team qualified to compete.
The League was divided into two competitive regions, NA LCS for USA and Canada and EU LCS for all European Countries. Both leagues consisted of eight teams competing in a promotion/relegation league system. Since the system entailed relegation an accompanying Challenger league was formed to house both relegated teams and up and comers. This added a more dynamic element to the League, allowing for new people to rise up the ranks. Although, it now consists solely of ten franchised teams competing with changes in the roster come from expansions or sales of slots.
Both Leagues largely retained the competitive system and operated under the League of Legends Championship Series brand between 2013 and 2017. Starting in 2018 and following the move to a franchising system, the LCS brand was solely retained by the North America region, while Europe rebranded their league to League of Legends European Championship (LEC). Now there is ten stable teams, LCS betting is slightly simpler to track with no relegation.
In 2020, the League’s format changed as it became a double-elimination tournament. The LCS has also had a more minor rebrand in 2021, with a new visual identity and motto.
In 2023, Riot Games moved the broadcasting schedule of the LCS to Thursday and Friday to allow fans to follow games from all the different regions. With the lowest average viewership among the four major regions, the LCS ended up getting the short end of the stick, and have decided to return to the weekend schedule for 2024.
But 2023’s turbulent year didn’t just stop there: a walkout happened a few days before the start of the LCS Summer Split following Riot’s announcement of removing the requirement for LCS teams to field an academy squad. With 50 players potentially losing their jobs in the NA Challengers League, the players forced the organizers to push the starting date of the tournament to June 15 to allow the LCS Players Association and Riot Games to negotiate on how to resolve the issues.
LCSPA, Riot, and LCS teams agree on terms to resume 2023 LCS season – talks to continue on unresolved issues pic.twitter.com/xodN7XABie
— LCS Players Association (@NALCSPA) June 9, 2023
Going into 2024, a lot of things have changed within the LCS. First, Golden Guardians and Evil Geniuses announced their exit from the league, reducing the number of teams from 10 to 8 as no replacements were added.
On the other hand, Riot brought in Mark “MarkZ” Zimmerman as the new LCS Commissioner and with him, a wave of new changes. The schedule went back to weekends and the LCS became the first league to implement live patch matches during the regular season. During the Summer split, it was also announced that the LCS would use a Bo3 format during the regular season but go back to a single round robin format.
For 2025, the LCS is set to become the Americas League by merging with the CBLOL and LLA, creating North and South conferences to determine the best teams.
Ten teams are competing in the League Championship Series (LCS) in 2023. The esports season still follows the two split systems established in 2013. Each competitive split features a double round-robin system of play with games being played on Saturday and Sunday of each week.
Given the downsizing of the league, it’s still unclear how many teams will participate in the Spring playoffs that will crown the Spring Split champion (and the representative for the Mid-Season Invitational). The same applies to the Summer Split and LCS championship. More details will be revealed. That said, playoff matches should all be Bo5s.
© LoL Esports
A total of 35 teams have competed in the LCS since its inception. Following the 2018 move to franchising, a permanent roster of 10 teams has been established in the league.
This year, however, the number of teams was reduced to eight after Golden Guardians and Evil Geniuses officially left the LCS. Legendary organization TSM, instead, had its slot acquired by Shopify Rebellion.
The LCS trophies have been held by only seven teams since the inception of the league. Cloud9 (6), Counter Logic Gaming (2), Team Liquid (5), TeamSoloMid (7), Evil Geniuses (1), FlyQuest (1), and 100Thieves (1).
With CLG and TSM gone from the LCS, all the organizations that have started the franchised league in the LCS have all been removed.
Based on what happened so far in 2025, our Power Rankings feature all the nitty-gritty details you might need.
We expect Team Liquid and FlyQuest to be the front-runners in Split 2, followed by C9 and 100Thieves. In particular, Team Liquid and FlyQuest have kept their rosters from the previous year and have continued to deliver domestically in 2025 so far.
Our week-by-week match predictions are available in our News Section before each competitive week commences.
The LTA schedule involves a lot of games, given the format of the tournament. This is the general schedule for each stage of the league.
Split 3
Individual games and end dates are subject to change depending on how things progress, but this is the general schedule for the entire event. If you’re looking to catch LCS Twitch streams though, you’ll have to look up the exact times of each match through this period. You can always check the up-to-date weekly schedule on the official LoL Esports page.
LTA betting is really more fun if you can actually watch the games! Luckily, the tournament really isn’t very hard to find. You can watch the matches on TV and online, offering a lot of different ways to enjoy things. An official LCS Twitch stream runs weekly and is often the easiest way to watch.
However, you can also find it on the YouTube channel if you’d rather watch the traditional way.
Read next: LoL Viewership - Global view of the 2023 season
