After a disappointing LEC 2025 summer split format, the new 2026 season is set to have a new competition replacing the Winter split, featuring twelve teams, two of which will be from the ERL tier-two ecosystem.

LEC to have new winter format with 10 LEC teams and 2 ERL teams, including Los Ratones, in 2026

LEC 2026 will have a new Kickoff Tournament

According to a report by Sheep Esports, the EMEA Masters Summer Champions and the best-performing team across the year at the EMEA Masters will be “promoted” to the tier-one league for the first part of the 2026 season. This is akin to the guest slots used in the VALORANT scene, where two teams from the VRLs will compete with the partnered organizations each season.

Having dominated the ERLs and won EMEA Winter and Spring, Caedrel’s Los Ratones are set to make their way into the LEC next year. If they were to win EMEA Summer as well, the slot would be given to the other finalists in the EMEA Masters Summer.

Tier-two teams will have the chance to qualify for FST

Even though the winter split will no longer be there, the winner of the Kickoff tournament will still qualify for First Stand, which is set to take place in Brazil. This means that an ERL team could fight against the top teams from other regions starting next season.

For the Spring and Summer splits, however, the league would return to a ten-team lineup and will consider those two splits as the LEC season. According to the report by Sheep Esports, ERL teams were considered to compete with the LEC for Worlds, but this was eventually declined by the partner teams as it would devalue their franchise slots.

Additionally, there are still some questions yet to be answered. The first one is what would happen if one of the LEC academy teams were to claim one of those two slots, as they wouldn’t be able to play in the tier-one league.

While this is looking like an experimental approach to integrate Los Ratones into EU’s most competitive league, it still raises questions on how tier-two and tier-one ecosystems should exist without being exclusive to one another. Having the ERL teams for one part of the season seems like more of a short-term solution to create more storylines and give fans an answer on how strong a team like LR can be compared to a top LEC team, but it still doesn’t solve the fact that tier-two squads have no better goal than winning EMEA Masters.

Speaking of EMEA Masters, the top ERL teams are competing for the crown, with the finalists facing each other at the Paris Games Week on November 2.