The 2026 First Stand Tournament will be the second event of

First Stand Tournament The First Stand Tournament (FST, also simply as First Stand) is an annual ''League of Legends'' international tournament hosted by Riot Games at the conclusion of the first of three splits of the League of Legends in esports, game's professional ...

(FST) – a ''

League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by ''Defense of the Ancients'', a custom map for ''Warcraft III'', Ri ...

'' tournament organized by publisher

Riot Games Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop ''League of Legends'' and went on ...

at the conclusion of the first split in the current competitive calendar of the game's professional esports scene. The tournament will be held in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It will be the second international ''League of Legends'' competition to be hosted in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

after the

2017 Mid-Season Invitational The 2017 Mid-Season Invitational was the third annual Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) - a tournament for the MOBA video game ''League of Legends'' was hosted by Riot Games. The tournament was held from April 28 to May 21, 2017, in Brazil. This was t ...

, which was also held in Brazil.

Hanwha Life Esports Hanwha Life Esports (HLE) is a South Korean esports organization based in Seoul, owned by Hanwha Life Insurance. It has teams competing in ''League of Legends'' and ''Kart Rider'', with the former competing in the LCK, South Korea's top level pr ...

of the ''League of Legends'' Champions Korea (LCK) are the defending champions.

Qualification

Five teams from each of the five major professional regions, namely the ''League of Legends'' Champions Korea (LCK), ''League of Legends'' Pro League (LPL), ''League of Legends'' EMEA Championship (LEC), ''League of Legends'' Championship of The Americas (LTA), and the ''League of Legends'' Championship Pacific (LCP), will qualify through winning their respective splits.

Venue

was chosen to host the tournament on 8 January 2025 in a development update video published by Riot Games to begin the 2025 competitive season. An announcement on the exact city and venue will be made soon.

Format

The tournament is expected adapt the Fearless Draft format, where teams cannot pick a champion that they've already played in a series, even if the opposing team already picked that champion. The five qualified teams were placed in a single round-robin best of 3 group; teams could which side of

Summoner's Rift ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by ''Defense of the Ancients'', a custom map for ''Warcraft III'', Ri ...

they want to be on for two of their series, while their opposing teams had the choice during the other two series. The top four teams then advances to the knockout stage, which was a single-elimination best of 5 bracket. The winner of the Final is crowned FST champion and gives their region's two representatives automatic advancement or byes to the 2026 Mid-Season Invitational's Bracket Stage.

References

{{League of Legends Esports competitions in Brazil