Riot Games has revealed that the publisher is planning on overhauling the entire Support role in League of Legends once League Next releases.
League Next is the codename for the massive update coming to League of Legends in 2027, essentially releasing ‘League of Legends 2’.
With Locke confirmed as the only new champion releasing this year, support players are frustrated with the current lack of updates to the role.
Riot hasn’t released a new support champion since Milio in March 2023, with eight other champions released since, and Locke will be the tenth.
This means that LoL will not get any new support champions for around four years, and it possibly could be longer.
However, Riot Games’ senior vice president Andrei ‘Meddler’ van Roon has given LoL support players hope.
Meddler took to Reddit to respond to support players’ frustration, saying:
“Nothing concrete I can share right now. I play support myself more than any other role, and I do feel that lack of new champs too.”
Meddler then revealed that big plans are in place for the support role once League Next releases in 2027:
“There are some systemic changes in League Next I’m really excited about from a support perspective, that’s still a fair way out though of course.”
While League Next is primarily an update to the client and game engine, this could allow for bigger and faster changes to the game, allowing Riot to experiment more with the support role.
What is League Next?
Riot has been remaining pretty tight-lipped on what exactly League Next will be, with more news expected sometime between MSI 2026 and LoL Worlds 2026.
Most of LoL’s development team has shifted over into this project, and League Next is possibly why Phreak stepped away as LoL live designer.
The major update planned for 2027 will finally update LoL’s client to work directly with the game engine rather than as a separate thing.
Said gameplay engine, the Hextech Engine, is also receiving an update as is LoL’s primary map, Summoner’s Rift.
Medller has also confirmed that League Next will bring changes to Runes, other pre-game systems, other game modes and maps, the game’s aesthetics including champions and metagames, and an improved new player experience.
Other than a new champion, what changes would you like to see made to the support role? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord.
For now, Riot is releasing smaller LoL updates this year in order to not alienate its less vocal players.
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