The 2021 League of Legends World Championship will be moving from China to Europe, as production crews from Riot Games encountered issues with securing travel visas to China.
Riot Games’s global event was originally scheduled to be a multi-city event, with matches taking place in Shanghai, Qingdao, Wuhan, Chengdu and Shenzhen. This would have been the second year in a row that the World Championships would have been hosted in China. Last year, the event took place offline behind closed doors with the finals in Shanghai.
This will be a major blow for all LoL fans in China, who were expecting their homeland to play host to the World Championship for the second year running. Previously, China also played host during Worlds 2020, which had no fans in attendance until the grand finals, where DWG KIA defeated Suning Gaming and gave South Korea its first Worlds title since 2017.
Now the championship will be moved to Europe, where the last time it played host to Worlds was in 2019. That was also the last time a live audience was allowed to attend an international LoL event. The tournament lasted over a month and spanned across three cities in Germany and Spain whilst the finals were held in France. This was also the last time China tasted victory as FunPlus Phoenix defeated G2 Esports.
It’s unclear when Riot will make an announcement for the locations of Worlds 2021, especially since there’s roughly only a month left before the event is set to begin.
