Riot Games has finally confirmed that the next League of Legends champion will be Demacian comic character Locke — accidentally revealing this through an April Fools’ joke.
Riot’s LoL game director Pu ‘Pupulasers’ Liu confirmed that all the rumours about Locke being the game’s 173rd champion are true.
In a now-deleted tweet, Pupulasers joked:
“Some players believe that League of Legends has too many champions. Turns out they’re absolutely right, and 172 is the maximum number of champions we can have in League. When Locke releases, one champion will be deleted from League forever.”
This is the first time that Riot has directly mentioned Locke as a champion. He was introduced as a Demacian character through the “For the Fallen” motion comic released by the publisher earlier this year.
This sticks with the Demacian theme for the season, and follows on from the release of the Shyvana VGU rework.
What We Know About New League of Legends Champion Locke
Not too much is known about Locke so far.
There have also been plenty of rumours, including one that Locke will be an AP jungler or mid laner who uses giant nails as part of his kit, which supposedly leaked images seemingly confirm.
In the aforementioned comic, a hooded figure, believed to be Locke, speaks with a bartender who warns him that “no one that goes into those woods comes back, at least not the same as they were.”
This could relate to the dark shadows that Sona fought off in a forest during this year’s cinematic and would tie in nicely with the leaked theme for LoL’s next season.
Other than that, a fact we know about Locke is that he will be the only new LoL champion released in 2026.
And we also know it’ll probably be a bit longer until the new champion releases, with Locke expected around halfway through the year.
This information comes from League Studio head Andrei ‘Meddler’ van Roon, who said as much in a Reddit comment earlier this year:
“One new champ this year, around the middle of the year. Most of the team that normally make new champs are helping out with the large update that we’ll talk about post-MSI or so.
“2027 will depend a lot on how progress on said large update goes and how players respond to the different parts of it.”
This could also be the mystery project Phreak stepped away from LoL’s live design to work on. Many are presuming that this could be the previously announced League Next update, which will upgrade the game’s client and redesign the Summoner’s Rift map amongst other major changes.
Would you rather Riot focus on new champions or more reworks and VGUs? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord.
And in another upcoming update, the LoL Worlds 2025 champions skins may now be confirmed.
