China’s BLG esports club beat South Korea’s Gen.G 3–1 to win the 2026 League of Legends (《英雄联盟》, or LoL) World Championship, bringing the trophy back to a Chinese team for the first time in five years.
According to reports by Xinhua, Jimu News and the WeChat account of Dushi Kuaibao (《都市快报》), the League of Legends Season 16 World Championship final was held in New York at 3am Singapore time on Sunday (15 November). BLG, representing the Chinese league, faced Gen.G from the South Korean league, winning 3–1 to claim the 2026 world title.
One of the world’s most influential esports events, the League of Legends World Championship drew widespread attention from Chinese esports fans. Many went to cinemas in the early hours of Sunday to watch the match on the big screen and cheer on the Chinese team.
Jimu News reported that more than 500 spectators gathered at a cinema in Wuhan after 2am on Sunday to watch the final. The official ticketing system showed that more than 20 cinemas in Wuhan were screening the match live, with over 5,000 tickets sold.
The manager of a local cinema said tickets for the final sold out soon after going on sale. The cinema had originally scheduled just one screening, but after BLG reached the final, “fan interest in watching at the cinema surged, with enquiries and ticket reservations flooding in… We urgently reviewed the schedule, adjusted auditorium allocations and added a second screening.”
According to reports, the cinema viewing initiative, jointly launched by the organisers of League of Legends esports events and Yingjing Lianmeng, covered more than 300 cinemas in over 110 Chinese cities, with more than 2,000 screenings.
Developed by US company Riot Games and officially launched in 2009, League of Legends is a five-on-five multiplayer online battle arena game. Players form two teams, controlling different characters and working together to destroy the opposing team’s base.
The annual World Championship is the game’s highest-level international competition. Teams from the Chinese league previously won the title three times, in 2018, 2019 and 2021.
