The LCK 2025 Season is now under way. All LCK teams are competing for a spot at First Stand 2025, the newest international LoL event also introduced this year. This ticket to First Stand is the only prize to be won at the LCK Cup, but teams are still eager to test their new rosters and prepare for the regular season. Throughout the first week of the Group Stage, we’ve seen every team make their 2025 debut.
Note: This brand new event has been implemented called the LCK Cup. Not to be confused with the KeSPA Cup, the LCK Cup is a month-long tournament at the start of the new League of Legends season in Korea. Teams are fielding their full main rosters as they take on Fearless Draft format for the first time in LCK history, and it’s been a blast so far.
Gen.G Back to Winning Ways
Gen.G made a splash in the off-season by re-acquiring their previous ADC Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk. This star-studded squad is now even stronger on paper. With a candidate for “best player in their role” in Top, Mid, Jungle, and Bot, Gen.G is primed for another year of winning, hopefully with a better ending this time.
The only question surrounding this team is how their new Support Joo “Duro” Min-kyu will do. Gen.G likely needed to replace veteran Son “Lehends” Si-woo for budget reasons and found Duro while shopping around bottom half teams. Duro made his LCK debut last year on FearX, making him by far the youngest member of the team. He’s looked fine so far, but we’ll need to see the pressure turned up to truly judge where he stands.
Gen.G’s week one consisted of a 2-0 Summer Finals revenge win against Hanwha Life Esports and a sweep over the aforementioned FearX. With matches against BRION and DN Freecs next week, they’ll likely be off to a fast 4-0 start.
Dplus KIA Came to Play
When your opening match in a season is against the defending world champions, things may get a bit tough. Even so, Dplus KIA managed to start the season 2-0 after their opening win against T1. Though Dplus has two roster changes this year, the team likely feels that nothing is too different.
Returning to his first LCK organization ever, Cho “BeryL” Geon-hee looks as comfortable as ever shotcalling the team. Their other new member, Jeon “Siwoo” Si-woo, is a 17-year-old top laner moving from Dplus’s academy team to the main roster. Siwoo showed great versatility in the match against T1, having a carry game one on Ambessa before piloting a supportive nullifying Sion into Jax in game three.
Dplus was a top four team in the LCK last year, but with this squad, they want to be jockeying for number one. They have a matchup against HLE next week, which will be the second big test for the squad.
Doomed for Group Baron?
Losing their matches against Gen.G and Dplus respectively, Hanwha Life Esports and T1 find themselves tied for first in their group at one win apiece. This already puts the group down 2 points. To make matters worse, all of the other teams in Group Baron only earned one game win in week one. With the overall points total being 7 to 3 in favor of Group Elder, the likelihood of a comeback is slim.
For those who are unaware, the Group with the most points (match wins) overall gets their top three teams straight to the Playoffs. Their other two teams also get to stay alive in the Play-Ins. As for the losing group, their bottom team is eliminated immediately while everyone else is thrown to the Play-In. Yes, even the group winner.
Ironically, if HLE and T1 want any hope of direct playoff qualifications, they’ll need to rely on the likes of FearX and DN Freecs to rack up some wins against Nongshim, KT Rolster, and DRX. BRION already lost to Nongshim and DRX, so their contributions will be slim to none. They’ll also probably be the team eliminated in last place overall.
Fearless Draft Starts Strong
The LCK Cup 2025 is utilizing a “hard” Fearless Draft. This means that Champions can only be picked once period every series before they’re banned. In just 24 games played, we’ve already seen 71 unique Champion picks. Additionally, only four champions have been banned in more than half of games played, two ADCs in Kalista and Varus and two Junglers in Skarner and Vi.
Drafts are so much more interesting now that teams have to reach deeper into their pockets to find champions that are good in that specific game. When the matches go to game three, that’s where the magic really happens. Things like Ivern, Zeri, even mid-flex Ambessa have already hit the Rift.
As the teams get better at strategizing around Fearless Draft, and we get into Best-of-Fives come Play-ins and Playoffs, who knows how many unique picks in unique draft spots we’ll end up seeing.
