The latest news from the world of League of Legends, to be honest, resembles a real roller coaster — either intrigues with streams, or alarm bells from the Tier 2 segment. But the most interesting thing, of course, is the sudden comeback of the legendary women’s tag, which many had already managed to bury at the end of last year.
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The return of G2 HEL before the launch of LoL Game Changers 2026
It seems that women’s esports in the “League” is getting a powerful injection of adrenaline — Armand Lucke from Sheep Esports on April 20 rolled out an insider about the resurrection of G2 HEL.
In fact, the team was considered almost the most powerful in the women’s division until G2 Esports suddenly shut down the project in December last year. The situation then looked as strange as possible — the organization referred to a lack of money, although the squad just had the best season in its history. The girls not only took silver at the debut LoL Game Changers (LGC), but also managed to be the first among women to break into the second division of the mixed European league — it was a real breakthrough.
Many then, in truth, were upset by this decision. A logical question arose: if such a giant as G2 does not pull the support of the top line-up, then who does the female scene hold on to?
And now justice itself is triumphant — Sheep Esports sources confirm that G2 HEL is back in the game. Of the “old guard”, only two remained in the roster — Shiina (Marta Garrido) and Caltys (Maya Henkel), but the rest of the positions will be closed by newcomers. The updated squad will probably include Wiosna, Lumi and Izzeeri, and Emtest will lead the process as a coach. There is no official announcement from the Samurai themselves yet — it is worth considering this — but everything has already been decided on the sidelines.
If these rumors are confirmed, then at LoL Game Changers 2026 we will see a very angry and motivated team. Former LGC coach Joshua Keller, known as Burnt Sanctuary, has already enjoyed this news — according to him, the return of G2 HEL to the company of Vitality Rising Bees and SK Avarosa makes the season incredibly promising. I would like to believe that other LEC clubs will improve their women’s squads — competition is never superfluous, in principle.
T1 defeat by KIA’s Dplus and Keria’s stellar Game on Soldering
We are currently in the midst of 1-2 rounds of LCK, and the past week has been, to be honest, extremely ambiguous for Ryu “Keriya” Min-seok from T1 — perhaps it was the most bittersweet match of the entire tournament.
On April 17, T1 clashed with KIA’s Dplus, who recently pushed them out the door to the 2026 LCK Cup playoffs, closing the series 3-2. The debut card was taken by Dplus KIA — T1, however, they quickly responded with a victory in the second game. And in the third, the most interesting thing began: fans saw Keria literally “walking” Pike on the map.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a performance — it just moved around the lines and pulverized everyone,” co—streamer Mark “Caedrel” Lamont shared his emotions on the air, impressed by how Keriya provided the line-up with a huge lead at the start.
Cadrell and the casters of the match, in fact, spent half of the early stage of the game admiring Keriya’s individual skill and how she controlled the map — it looked like a perfect rout. But, as often happens, everything fell apart — the KIA Dplus in the dragon’s lair just rolled over T1, and the Baron was also taken from above. Keriya, in fact, was left with nothing: even his 100% participation in the murders on Pike did not save the base — he just watched the nexus collapse.
“Keriya, brother, I would have already taken a shower — it was just destroyed,” Kadrel exhaled after the game.
This tragic “master class” instantly turned into a meme — social networks literally exploded, discussing how cruel team disciplines can be. The classic holivar has appeared again: does it make sense to pick a Pike if even such an “exorbitant” level of the game does not guarantee victory?
On the other hand, it’s a great lesson: KIA’s Dplus comeback proves once again that literally anything is possible in LoL, even at the highest esports level. You can’t relax, in short.
Streaming in LoL: a dispute between streamers and official leagues
The coverage situation on the official channels of the regional LoL leagues, including the LEC and LCS, is rapidly falling, and this, frankly, has long turned joint broadcasts into a major topic of controversy.
Streamers are taking the audience.
This week, the North American club FlyQuest added fuel to the fire by rolling out a video that provoked a powerful wave of hate online. In the video, to tell the truth, a lot of sensible thoughts were voiced, but the authors clearly did not have enough depth of study — instead of a serious analysis, the audience played an advertisement for a new contract with a content maker for several minutes.
As a result, let’s just say that excessively harsh phrases only inflamed the situation and added poison to the discussion, where in fact you need to deal with it as coolly as possible.
FlyQuest quickly realized the mistake and renamed the video: first it was called “The Hidden Cost of streaming in esports,” and now it has the headline “Content creators (don’t) save esports.”
Therefore, joint streams are just a symptom of the disease, and not the root of all the troubles that have been accumulating for years under the industry’s wrapper. The industry has long suffered from crooked monetization models, poor production of official broadcasts, and the inability of clubs to independently build personal brands for their players.
Everything is very meaningful.
However, if you look at it more broadly, then everything is much more confusing.
It seems to me that the new rules from ESL regarding streaming are a step in the right direction, so that both event organizers and top streamers can coexist with benefits in the long term.
If you want to monetize someone else’s broadcast for free, then be kind, my friend, and show the entire product — with all the brands, sponsored inserts, and plots. Otherwise, in principle, the content on which you are parasitizing will simply degrade and die.
“I have said more than once that we were very lucky with Kadrel — he is the best English—speaking commentator for LEC, who knows how to catch up with HYPE even where there is none,” Efye “Sjokz” told the Reporter. “At the same time, of course, I understand broadcasters who want people to watch their original product.”
EMEA Masters 2026 remained without an English broadcast
In addition, if we talk about global facups on the airwaves, the Grand Final of the winter EMEA Masters 2026, which took place the other day, was a bold confirmation of this. Did you manage to take a look? It is unlikely, because the official broadcast in English, in fact, simply did not exist. To be honest, I didn’t immediately believe that such a thing was possible in modern realities.
The tournament, which is in fact the peak of the tier-2 scene in our region and gathers 36 top teams from the ERL leagues, was left without a full-fledged English-language stream for the first time since bearded 2018. This, it is worth considering, is happening against the background of how other “second divisions” in League of Legends are generally breathing heavily — the picture looms, to put it mildly, frightening.
Moreover, pro players and experts alike say that the death of the second tier will inevitably affect the stability of the major leagues in the future.
“We built one of the coolest systems in the world, and now it’s been stupidly abandoned to its fate. There is a sea of culture, talents and unique stories here, which now, apparently, will remain untold,” wrote Troubleinc, known as Georgia Paras, on social media. By the way, she’s absolutely right — the EMEA Masters has always been the main showcase for scouts and a forge for new stars, but now it just seems to have been abandoned.
But the trouble here is not only the loss of young talents. The wallets of producers, analysts and observers are under attack, for whom the shooting gallery-2 scene was a ticket to the profession and, in general, the main source of income.
Jake Hiprain Mathews, who works as a freelance commentator, emphasized that the tournament had been losing reach and attention from the publisher for years. It was this show that once allowed him to quit his regular job and fully enter esports – now such prospects look extremely vague.
Riot Games Resets Apex Ranks in League of Legends
Anyway, it’s time to discuss the upcoming chaos in the League of Legends ladder — Riot Games have officially confirmed the rank reset for those who have reached the top of Apex. It’s about time, to be honest.
Based on the latest press release, all owners of Master, Grandmaster and Challenger on the NA, EUW, EUNE, BR, LAN and TR servers will face a hard rollback – both the visible rating and the hidden MMR will be reset to Masters 0 LP immediately after the deployment of patch 26.9 at the start of season 2. By the way, the developer plans to overhaul the scoring system and change the limits themselves — in fact, there will be even more thresholds in Apex in 2027.
Such a drastic reset in the middle of the season looks wild, of course, but it is a direct reaction to the barrage of criticism that has been flying at Riot in recent months. This year, the studio has done a decent job of rank—based LoL battles – remember at least the return of duo cue to Apex or the autocomplete edits.
However, in the end we got a strange situation — a bunch of hi-elo players started whining because of the inflated rating. It seems that the system has become too easy to abuse, and many have climbed to peaks that, in fact, do not correspond to their real skill.
The publisher took a risk — the quality of the selection of players may drop in the near future, but this is the price for trying to return the competitive spirit to the LoL table. From the point of view of image, the move is, let’s say, competent — Riot clearly shows that they hear the community and are ready to admit their mistakes.
“I can’t believe they decided to do this — just thank you,” the famous streamer Dantes reacted to the news. Apparently, top content makers are quite satisfied with this developer’s decision.
