League of Legends is soon going to enter Season 2 of 2026, but, unlike previous years, Riot Games isn’t planning on releasing a large-scale update to the game.
Last year, leading into MSI, Riot completely overhauled ADC items in a huge patch to signal the start of the second of three splits that year.ad
But this year, LoL Season 2 won’t see any major changes other than the release of leaked new LoL champion Locke, who will be the only new character released in 2026.
According to lead gameplay designer Matt ‘Phroxzon’ Leung-Harrison, this is to not alienate newer players.
Phroxzon Reveals Why Riot Is Implementing Fewer Big Patches
Phroxzon took to Twitter to explain that large-scale updates outside of preseason are difficult for a lot of players to keep up with.
The Rioter revealed that the publisher is trying to help a quieter group of players alongside the vocal minorities like Reddit:
“What we’ve found is that players who play a lot (streamers, Pros, social media users, etc.) will almost always want more change. They typically often play majority of Ranked SR and play hundreds if not thousands of hours a Season.
“The majority of our player base are average players that have a higher chance of finding it difficult to keep up with too many large updates (this is not all, but a significant portion). They may have lifestyle commitments like school, work, or kids.
“If we change the game too much, even if the changes are good, they can lead to a significant amount of players feeling like ‘League changes too much to keep up’ and alienating some of that longtime audience.”
Phroxzon claims that internal studies conducted by Riot have suggested this is the correct move for the MOBA’s playerbase.
The developer also acknowledged that if the large changes aren’t appreciated, like the addition of Atakhan last year, then the size of the changes doesn’t matter.
However, Phroxzon claims: “Given League’s longevity, the ‘low hanging fruit’ of good changes gets smaller and smaller every year.”
Do you like this change to smaller updates or would you rather a large LoL update in the middle of the year? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord.
The next update is also going to be smaller as Riot pulled Viego buffs from the upcoming LoL Patch 26.8 following community backlash.
Been past time Tencent shut down Riot. Go invest in Kadokawa, buy out Krafton, buy Ubisoft instead of this drain.