Image credit: LoL Esports
Fearless Draft will change how League of Legends is played for the 2025 season.
At the start of the year, Riot Games came out with many changes for the League of Legends 2024 season. This included the Hall of Legends and format changes to international tournaments like the Mid-Season Invitational and the World Championship. For the 2025 season, Riot has implemented Fearless Draft for all its franchised leagues globally and international tournaments.
This will only come into effect from next season onwards while the LPL has already adopted Fearless Draft for its Summer Split. This will also be the first time in many years that Riot has decided to implement a new draft format, especially when it comes to tier-one competitions. But what is Fearless Draft?
Essentially, Fearless Draft features a new way for teams to get creative with its comps. In a best-of-series, Fearless Draft will ban champions that have already been picked in prior matches during the series. This means the 10 champions used in game one won't be available for the rest of the series. There are exciting times ahead for LoL fans as this means teams won't be able to replicate its successes with the same draft twice in the series.
Not only will this new format help shake up the current landscape of how the draft process works, but it also allows for greater variety in terms of champions picked. As there are currently 167 champions in the pool, only more than half will get selected in pro play. During the recently concluded MSI 2024, only 86 of the 167 champions were picked across 78 games during the tournament.
The LPL will directly benefit from the new format come next season as they are already in the midst of it for its Summer Split. All 17 teams already have direct access to the format before anyone else which will also help them prepare for future international tournaments. The 2025 season cannot come soon enough.
