Mid-Season Invitational is an annual League of Legends tournament, happening between the Spring and Summer splits of all regions. The top teams of each LoL Region compete for the MSI trophy and an extra team slot for their region at LoL Worlds.
The first Mid-Season Invitational was held in 2015 in Tallahassee, Florida. The event featured the champions of the five main LoL regions and one extra team from the International Wildcard event. Edward Gaming were crowned the first-ever Mid-Season Invitational Champions.
Since then, seven different teams have lifted the MSI trophy, with Royal Never Give Up winning on three different occasions (2018, 2021, 2022).
In 2024, thanks to a new format change, the Mid-Season Invitational will feature a total of 12 teams, two teams from each major region and one team from the four wild card regions.
All the MSI 2024 teams are top teams from their own home regions. The 12 teams participating are:
Read our MSI Power Rankings to find which MSI 2024 teams are the favorites in this year’s competition.
At the start of 2023, Riot Games made the decision of changing the tournament format following the restructuring of some minor regions in 2023. Regions like LCO, TCL, or the CIS no longer had their own spot at MSI, making LLA, CBLOL, LJL, PCS, and VCS the remaining minor regions.
This year, however, the LJL went under major restructuring and was incorporated into the PCS, meaning that the Japanese league had no longer direct access to international competitions.
The four major regions (Korea, China, Europe, and North America), instead, are going to get two representatives per region, meaning that there will be eight teams.
The new format will have the second seeds from the major regions go up against the four wildcard teams to determine the four lineups that will join the major region’s first seed in the bracket stage.
The eight teams from the play-in stage will be drawn into two groups of four, with double-elimination brackets. All matches will be best-of-three, with the top two teams from each group qualifying for the bracket stage.
The top eight teams will face off in a double-elimination playoff bracket. If necessary, a Bracket Stage Draw Show will take place on May 5. All matches are going to have the best-of-five format, with all teams getting a second chance to redeem themselves. Once two teams are left, they will clash in the finals to determine the MSI champions.
This is the first time that MSI will have direct implications for the World Championship later in the year. The winner of MSI will get direct access to the second international tournament if they qualify for the Summer Playoffs. Additionally, the top two regions from MSI (based on finishing position) will get the additional fourth slot for Worlds. The decision came with the goal of rewarding the best-performing regions and raise the stakes of the Mid-Season Invitational.
The schedule at Mid-Season Invitational has already been set and all the matches are set to be played between the May 1 and May 19. MSI LoL odds are already widely available for the opening matches.
The MSI winners thus far were:
The MSI History started in 2015, with the tournament evolving with each consecutive iteration. The prize money, host destinations, competing teams and ruleset are constantly adapted and tweaked as the tournament grew in size and scope. Initially the LoL esports system consisted of major and minor regions with the main regions automatically participating in the MSI Group Stage, while the minor regions had to play through a Play-Ins event. Starting in 2021, all regions are on equal grounds and they are seeded based on their regions past performance in international League of Legends events.
MSI 2015 was the first event of its type organized by Riot Games. It was hosted in Florida, USA between 7–10 May 2015. The event featured 12 participating regions, with LPL, LCK, EULCS, NALCS and LMS automatically seeded into the main event. The remaining 7 teams played a separate International Wildcard Invitational event in Turkey to determine the final 6th participant at MSI 2015. The winner of the Wildcard event was the TCL champion Beşiktaş Esports.
EDward Gaming defeated SKT T1 3:2 in the final to claim the first ever MSI trophy.
MSI 2016 was hosted in China, between 4-16 May 2016. The event featured 13 participating regions, with LPL, LCK, EULCS, NALCS and LMS automatically seeded into the main event. The remaining 8 teams played a separate 2016 International Wildcard Invitational event in Mexico to determine the final 6th participant at MSI 2016. The winner of the Wildcard event was the TCL champion SuperMassive eSports.
SKT T1 defeated Counter Logic Gaming 3:0 to claim the trophy and $1,000,000 in prize money. This event was the first one to feature MSI betting at a large scale, with the final being one of the most “bet on” matches to date.
Image Credits | Riot Games
MSI 2017 was hosted in Brazil between April 28-May 21 2017. The event featured 13 participating regions, with the LPL, LCK and EULCS automatically seeded into the main event. The remaining ten teams played through a play-in stage to determine the three participants heading into the Main Event stage.
SKT T1 defeated G2 Esports 3:1 in the final. This event marked the first time a team successfully completing a back-to-back championship run at the Mid-Season Invitational.
MSI 2019 was hosted in Germany and France between 3-20 May 2018. The event featured 14 participating regions, with the LPL, LCK, EU LCS and NA LCS automatically seeded into the main event. The remaining ten teams played through a play-in stage to determine the two participants heading into the Main Event stage.
Royal Never Give Up defeated Kingzone DragonX 3:1 in the final. It marked the first time an LCK team lost a major event at the hands of a non-LCK team in over three years.
MSI 2019 was hosted in Vietnam and Taiwan between 1-19 May 2019. The event featured 13 participating regions, with the LPL, LEC and LCK automatically seeded into the main event. The remaining ten teams played through a play-in stage to determine the three participants heading into the Main Event stage.
Image Credits | Riot Games
G2 Esports defeated Team Liquid 3:0 in the MSI final, in the fastest international event series to date. G2 is currently the reigning MSI champion.
Following the cancellation of MSI in 2020, the international tournament returned in 2021 in Reykjavík, Iceland. Despite being a fully offline event, Riot Games made sure that the various teams were able to play safely in what was essentially a ‘bubble’. Therefore, no fans were allowed in the studio.
Nonetheless, the international tournament showcased great matches all round, especially from the Rumble stage onwards. All the teams from the major regions were able to take victories off of each other, showing that the west could battle it out with the stronger eastern teams.
MAD Lions, PSG Talon, DWG Kia and Royal Never Give Up were the 4 teams that qualified for the knockout stage, with the latter two fighting in the event’s finals. In the end, RNG defeated DWG Kia 3-2 to become the 2nd ever organization to win two MSI titles.
In 2022 MSI moved away from Iceland and went back to Busan, South Korea. Despite the change of location, the script did not change, with Royal Never Give Up winning, once again, against a Korean team. This time, however, it was T1 who failed to take the trophy, after achieving a record-breaking perfect regular split in the LCK Spring 2022.
Image Credits | Riot Games
This victory also marked an important milestone for RNG: they became the second team in MSI history to win back-to-back titles, and are now currently the only organization with three MSI championships under their belt.
The two spots in the top four were occupied by EU’s G2 Esports and NA’s Evil Geniuses, proving that there was still a gap to beat the Eastern regions.
MSI came back to Europe in 2023 by hosting the tournament in London at the Copper Box Arena. In an era where LCK teams were supposed to dominate internationally, the LPL teams proved the world otherwise. Not only did JD Gaming dominate the competition from start to finish, but even BLG managed to take down both Gen.G and T1 to make it a full Chinese final. T1 and Gen.G finished in the top four with the western regions all slotting between 5th and 8th place.
Image Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
For JD Gaming, it marked their first-ever international trophy as they were on their golden run to achieve a Grand Slam. Unfortunately, despite winning the LPL Summer split, the team failed to win during Worlds, finishing in the top four.
MSI 2024 took place in Chengdu at the Financial City Performing Arts Center. For the first time ever, Riot Games announced the winner of MSI would get direct access to Worlds (if the team qualified for the Summer playoffs).
Photo Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
This was also the first time that Worlds seeds were assigned to the international tournament. The two best-performing regions would get one additional seed each for the championship. In 2024, it was the LCK and LPL who ended up getting this privilege, as BLG and Gen.G squared off in the final. Despite playing on home ground, BLG failed to defeat Gen.G as the organization took their first international title in years. T1 and G2 Esports finished 3rd and 4th, respectively.
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