All competitors have now been locked in for the 2019 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational.
The Mid-Season Invitational is one of the highlights of the League of Legends calendar, the game’s second-largest international competition behind the World Championship itself.
The tournament sees the Spring champions of the various regional leagues around the world come together to battle for supremacy. This year’s event is particularly highly-anticipated as the four most popular regions – North America, Europe, China, and Korea – are all sending particularly stand-out squads.
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Lee ‘Faker‘ Sang-hyeok’s rebuilt SK Telecom T1 super-team swept aside favorites Griffin to reclaim the organization’s throne in the LCK. In Europe, G2 Esports’ own super-team dominated their final against Origen before Team Liquid claimed their third consecutive title in North America’s LCS with a reverse sweep over TSM. Finally, World Champions Invictus Gaming claimed their first domestic victory in the LPL.
With so many legendary teams and players in attendance, this year’s MSI is expected to be one of the most exciting in the history of the event, and perhaps one of the most competitive as well.
Where and when is MSI 2019?
For the Season 9 iteration of the event, MSI will be taking place in Vietnam and Taiwan. The play-in stage will run from May 1 to May 7 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, before moving to Hanoi for the main event group stage on May 10 to May 14. The playoffs will take place in Taipei, from May 17 to May 19.
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Main Event Group Stage teams
The main event of MSI will feature a six-team group stage with a double round-robin format, with the top four teams advancing to the playoffs.
Three teams are directly seeded into the group stage based on their region’s past results in international competition, with three more will qualify through the play-in stage.
The teams already qualified for the main event are:
- G2 Esports – LEC Champions
- Invictus Gaming – LPL Champions
- SK Telecom T1 – LCK Champions
Play-in Stage teams
The other three teams for the main event will qualify through a Play-In stage featuring 10 teams. Round one of the Play-In will feature eight teams from the emerging regions, of which two will advance to a second round featuring the champions of the LCS and LMS. Three of the round two teams will advance to the main event.
Round 2 teams
- Team Liquid – LCS Champions
- Flash Wolves – LMS Champions
Round 1 teams
- 1907 Fenerbahçe – TCL Champions
- Phong Vũ Buffalo – VCS Champions
- Vega Squadron – LCL Champions
- MEGA – LST Champions
- Bombers – OPL Champions
- DetonatioN FM – LJL Champions
- INTZ e-Sports – CBLOL Champions
- Isarus Gaming – LLA Champions