League of Legends reveals First Stand event format
The First Stand event, hosted at LoL Park in Seoul, South Korea, is the first of three international events that will take place across the 2025 League of Legends calendar.
With the launch of the game’s eSports ecosystem this month, more details surrounding the First Stand format have now been revealed.
The First Stand consists of the best teams in international League of Legends leagues: for you (South Korea), LPL (China), Long term agreement (Americas), LEC (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and LCP (Pacific Ocean). These five teams will enter the first stands Best of Three (BO3) round robin stage.
The selection of one aspect of the game for each series of this phase will be predetermined at random. according to Riot GamesThis is to ensure that each team has the advantage of side-picking in two series.
Once each team faces each other, the last placed team will be eliminated from the competition. After that, the first position will move to A Best-of-five (B05) knockout stage.
The Knockout Stage will feature a seeded single-elimination bracket with the victor becoming the first-ever First Stand Champion.
Alongside this award, the winning team will also receive a second bye to their region at MSI 2025. As a result, this means that the winning region will see their second representative advance directly to the MSI 2025 Bracket Stage.
A fearless project
One of the major additions to the League of Legends esports ecosystem is the introduction of Fearless Draft. The new champion selection system will be used during the first section of League of Legends, which ends with the first stand.
Riot Games explained that Fearless Draft is a system where champions used in previous games from the best of the series become unavailable to both teams in subsequent matches. The standard pick and ban phase will continue at the start of each match.
For example, after the first game of a BO5 series, the ten heroes selected by players in that game will be unavailable for the rest of the series. These would be known as the “Brave Ban”.
This means that under this new format, if the series moves to a fifth game, there will be a total of 50 champions banned (10 standard bans and 40 brave bans).
According to what was reported by Riot Gamesthe format aims to challenge teams to adapt by introducing new strategies and hero choices.
