The Worlds Pickems are back in 2025, coming with new rewards and an all-new feature to involve the League community. We will also be adding our own picks and giving reasons to help you in your predictions.
Worlds Pickems 2025 Predictions
The LoL Worlds Pickems will officially start on October 7, one week before the start of the action in China. Having a condensed schedule compared to the previous edition, Worlds 2025 will have an adjusted cadence, with play-ins and swiss stage being combined into one single round of predictions. The Swiss stage will also allow fans to predict the qualifying scores of each team. Knockout stage will be bundled together, with no round-by-round picks.
While it makes the prediction process shorter, having to make multiple picks at once will also make the perfect pick’em challenge even harder than it already was. No player has been able to nail all predictions in the last four years, making 2020 the last tournament where eight players were able to get all the ultimate picks in the game.
Introducing FACTIONS
The big addition for this year’s Pick’Ems is FACTIONS, allowing fans to join their favorite creator and earn points during the competition. At the end of the tournament, the Faction with the highest average score wins an exclusive Emote for every participant. The Emote will be highly exclusive and not available anywhere else.
Key Dates for Worlds 2025 Pick’Ems
October 7 at 20:00 CET – Picks open for Crystal Ball, Factions, and Swiss Stage predictions
October 14 – Swiss Stage picks lock
October 25 – Knockout Stage picks open
October 28 – Knockout stage picks lock
Worlds 2025 Pick’Em Rewards
Players can earn in-game items for participation and performance in both Pick’Em and Crystal Ball.
Participation rewards
Swiss stage picks – HONK! Emote
Knockout picks – Esports Capsule
Pick’Em
Perfect Picks: All 7 Ultimate Skins (Pulsefire Ezreal, Spirit Guard Udyr, DJ Sona, Elementalist Lux, Gun Goddess Miss Fortune, K/DA All Out Seraphine, Soul Fighter Samira)
Top 5000 – Trials of Twilight Xin Zhao, The Answer Emote, Group Hug! Emote
Top 25% – The Answer Emote, Group Hug! Emote
Top 50% – Group Hug! Emote
Crystal Ball
Exact rewards to be confirmed
Winning Faction
Float on Emote
Our Worlds 2025 Pick’Ems
Crystal Ball Pick’em
Champions
Which champions will be picked the most?
The champions pickems are probably the hardest to guess since there have been many important changes in recent patches that will inevitably affect the meta. We still expect bruiser junglers like Wukong, Xin Zhao, and Jarvan IV to be relevant. I went for Xin Zhao since Wukong is probably going to be banned more often than not and Jarvan IV is usually not as popular as the Ionian champion.
Which champion will be banned the most?
Going by the logic we explained in the previous point, Wukong is going to be a highly prioritized jungler due to its versatility and incredible teamfight potential, working well with many of the mid lane picks for great early skirmishes.
Which champion will have the highest win rate? (Minimum 5 games played) Which champion will have the highest win rate? (Minimum 5 games played)
This is a tough one since you would need to guess a champion that gets played a bit and also succeeds. Expecting counter picks like Taric to be potentially relevant coming into the tournament: he has been played in pro play this year and could be brought back again at this year’s Worlds.
Who will have the lowest win rate? (Minimum 5 games played)
I’ve been thinking a lot about top laners like Aatrox and Renekton, who often have high play rates but lower win rates than other picks. With the return of engage supports like Rell and Alistar, however, I’m going for Nautilus, who will likely show up in Fearless series once the priority picks have been removed from play.
Which champion will have the most kills?
This is probably the easiest one. Kai’Sa is currently one of the most popular ADCs and she is known for wanting to rack up kills to carry the game. If she stays equally popular at Worlds, she is the number one candidate.
Which pro will have the highest KDA?
It’s probably going to be an ADC player. Pondering between Viper and Ruler, I went for the former due to his high KDAs even when HLE is in losing game states. The guy is consistent and you can expect him to be the same at the tournament.
Which pro will play the most different champions?
Knight is known for playing literally anything in the mid lane and he has already played 17 different picks throughout the last split. If there is someone who can pilot many champions, it’s him.
Which pro will get at least one pentakill?
Expecting an ADC player on this one, too. To avoid going for the usual LCK ADC route, I went for JackeyLove. TES is looking strong and he’s the type of player to potentially get a pentakill when the team snowballs hard.
Which pro will get the most first bloods?
The first two choices that came to my mind were Kanavi and Oner. I’ve decided to go for the latter due to how vital Oner is to T1’s early game and his confidence in playing bruiser picks to snowball leads.
Which pro will get the most kills in a single game?
If Gen.G ends up getting an easy opponent in the Swiss stage, Ruler could literally get away with 15+ kills in a game. If you haven’t picked him in other categories, consider him. Otherwise, pick another late-game carry like Gumayusi, Viper, Elk, or JackeyLove.
For the Teams Pickems, the choices will likely fall onto one of the teams that are expected to have deep runs at Worlds. The first one is without a doubt Gen.G, who has dominated the competition for the majority of the season. T1 is usually a clutch team so we decided to give them the Baron Steals pick ’em (remember Gumayusi and Oner?).
For the shortest game of the tournament, I decided to give it to Top Esports. This team likes to snowball and play through early game aggression so if they get matched up against a weak team, they could be the ones to close out a fast game.
With hypercarries dominating the meta, there could be quite a few pentakills, especially during the swiss stage. Baron steals are not that often so 3-5 seems a pretty good shout. Reverse sweeps happen very rarely, especially in the era of Fearless Drafts: 0 or 1 are both good picks.
In terms of unique champions, the total number of champions played in the third split by the majority of the tier one leagues is around 80 to 90 champions. Expecting a little more diversity at Worlds, which explains the 105-109 range. And for the last one, it’s not going to happen. Do it for the memes if you like to troll a bit. And if teams troll us, well…
Worlds 2025 Play-ins & Swiss Stage Pick’ems
3-0: Gen.G, TES, HLE
Swiss stage always comes with a bit of luck due to the drawing process. Gen.G and HLE seem like good choices to go for based on recent performance. The TES pick is based on the fact that the team has been super dominant in Bo3s and play better in the first games of each series when they have more options. I could be wrong but I’m expecting them or BLG to slot in here.
3-1: T1, BLG, G2
Speaking of BLG, they are my 3-1 team alongside T1 and G2. BLG might get matched against Gen.G at 2-0 during the Swiss stage and I don’t see them beating the LCK #1 seed. The same goes for T1, who is usually slower at ramping up their gameplay and are often weaker in Bo1s. For G2, I decided to put some EU copium here as they might get some easier matchups as the LEC #1 seed. Even though they were rated lower than FlyQuest in our Power Rankings, the team has a slightly higher ceiling.
3-2: AL, KT
AL hasn’t looked that strong despite being the LPL #2 seed and might struggle more than others to get through the Knockout stage. The other team that I’m expecting to see in the top eight is KT. Last time, they got screwed over by one of the most unlucky Swiss draws ever. This time, I’m expecting them to get a little more luck and if the performances from playoffs stand, going through is not that unlikely.
Worlds 2025 Knockouts Pick’ems
For the Worlds 2025 Knockout stage, I went for a mix of crazier picks paired with some more reational ones.
Image Credit: Riot Games/HotSpawn
For the first set of Pick’Ems, I decided to go for AL, G2, Gen.G, and KT as the quarterfinal winners. I believe AL is in a much better form than T1 based on their Swiss stage performance and unless the series goes to five games, AL shouldn’t struggle as much to take down T1.
The LPL team is a lot more composed and are able to maximize their early games through strong drafting and proactive gameplay. T1’s players have also struggled with poorer health conditions during swiss stage and their gameplay has often looked scuffed or not organized as in previous Worlds editions. This is going to be T1’s biggest test at Worlds so far. Will they turn up once again as the LPL slayers? It might not be this time around.
As an EU representative, G2 defeating TES is not a small chance. While TES players are better individually, G2 can come out on top with more innoative drafting and better teamplay, which they have showcased during the swiss stage. Moreover, G2 has had previous experience in taking down TES and that could be the difference maker going into the series.
For Gen.G and HLE, this is probably the series that will decide the finalist of the lower bracket. Both teams have shown convincing performances, with Gen.G looking a lot more consistent and able than HLE, which is why I picked Gen.G to go through. If HLE were to prove me wrong, they are likely going to be fighting for the title.
In the last bracket, I put CFO as the winner in our match preview but the irrational part of me tells me to add KT as the winner. The Korean team has proved us wrong on two occasions already and what can stop them from proving us wrong a third time?
Overall, AL, Gen.G, and HLE are my top three teams at Worlds based on how things stand so whoever makes it to the top four is also expected to go the finals. The LCK #1 seed has been dominant for an entire year basically. While AL did beat Gen.G in a Bo1, I doubt history will repeat when we move to Bo5s so Gen.G is my pick to win Worlds 2025 (who could’ve thought?).
If you want crazier picks, I would suggest going for either T1 or CFO. You never know when the current world champions will show up and CFO lifting the trophy would be a crazy story for the team and the LCP. If you’re on big copium, put G2 as the World champions.
According to Riot, the rewards will be distributed within 48 hours of the end of the final.
If there’s one thing Davide knows better than his morning coffee, it’s League of Legends. He has spent more than 10 years playing the game. When he’s not writing, he’s probably playing padel or pretending to work while actually watching esports tournaments.
