We’re really happy to see Zaahen picking up a sizeable audience in both Top and Jungle, but now that regular players, in addition to experienced players are starting to demonstrate that top end mastery performance, he’s looking too strong across the board. Currently, we think his Jungle is a bit stronger than Top, so the nerfs are mostly focused there
Skarner has been out of the spotlight for a while and since we’ve tapped down a few of the things that were causing him to be overbearing in Top (especially W max and the E point blank kidnaps), we think he can get a bit more power there
Jungle Olaf has fallen a little behind the pack so we’re adding some power back
Systems
Chempunk Chainsword has been one of the weaker Grievous items for a while. While we don’t want Grievous items to become too commonplace, as it subtly degrades champion kits when too common, it is still just a bit weak for even that purpose
The support item minion penalty has been a pain point for support users, and with role quests, the risk of funnelling (why it was there in the first place) has been reduced pretty significantly, so we’re removing that drawback
Are you wondering what the best champions are for Arena right now in League of Legends patch 26.5? Well, look no further! We’ve got you covered with our most up-to-date data with patch-by-patch differences!
Disclaimer: This tier list is updated daily using data from thousands of ranked Arena matches on U.GG.
Biggest Movers
Here is a list with th biggest movers in patch 26.5. We compared the data with the previous patch and here are the results:
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We now have enough data to look at how the ARAM tier list has changed in the latest 26.5 update compared to the previous League of Legends patch!
ARAM Tier List
The following list contains the top 100 champions in ARAM right now. The rank, tier, and win rate changes are indicated by green/red arrows as seen below.
The latest League of Legends 26.5 update is now live, and with it, we’ve started receiving new match data! Let’s check out how the ranked tier list changed compared to patch 26.4!
Disclaimer: We’re updating this tier list daily, check back often for updates!
Biggest Movers
Here are the top risers and fallers in 26.5 so far:
Announced back in 2025, the Last Hit Assist feature has made its way into the live League of Legends client. Though it has very limited use for now, it acts as a training feature for players.
Last Hit Assist is Live
After months of testing on the PBE, the Last Hit Assist feature is now live with Patch 25.5. The feature aims to help new players get to grips with the game, allowing them to see when a minion is low health and able to be “last hit.”
Any initial worries from LoL fans about it ruining the game have been put to bed, however. The feature will only work in a few modes:
Tutorials
Co-op vs AI
Custom Games
Practice Tool
Swiftplay
Rotating Game Modes on Summoner’s Rift (Brawl)
The new feature will be turned off by default, so you will need to be turned on in-game via the Settings – Interface – Show Last Hit Assist. However, new accounts will have the feature turned on by default. This will then show you a white indicator when the minion is able to be killed by you.
The visual will also show the area as you get closer to it. The area will scale as you level up and increase damage against mobs. So if you buy a Long Sword or level up an ability that impacts your base damage, it will take that into account. Things such as Sheen or Jax W won’t alter it. This is to avoid any temporary buffs to your damage, causing the bars to jump around too much.
Speaking about the feature, the developers explained:
After a very long time on PBE, we’re excited to bring Last Hit Indicators live! These are primarily aimed at players who are still learning the game (Summoner’s Rift specifically). Because let’s be real, we all used to just randomly hit minions in the hopes that it would kill them without knowing when to do it. We’re going to be letting the indicators sit in queues that newer players are mostly playing and will be monitoring how they’re going before thinking about whether we should extend them further.
The aim is to help new players, alongside such features as the “WASP” movement. The feature does not currently work for Azir (W) or Graves due to their unusual attack patterns. The feature is not likely to roll out into Ranked or Draft.
A number of new skins arrived on the League of Legends PBE. Skins for the upcoming April Fools line, alongside a number of other skins, have all landed. We also get our first look at the Season 1 Victorious Skin, which will feature Braum.
The dates for these skins vary, with the April Fools skins coming first and the rest coming later. We also get a first look at the full Shyvana Rework skin changes.
April Fools Skins 2026
Starting off is April Fools’ Day, which will arrive on the Rift on April 1st. Four skins will be availible Vex, Blitzcrank, Tahm Kench, and Sejuani. There is no theme connected to the styles of the skins outside of them being “silly.” Thanks to LeagueOfLeaks for the PBE images.
Other PBE Skins
A number of other skins have also joined the PBE that are due to drop across the next few patches. Starting off is a Mythic Variant of PROJECT: Master Yi, coming April 15th. This skin will be joined by a Space Groove Zac and PsyOps Vladimir skin coming on the same day. The skin for Vladimir has not yet been shown, but was confirmed alongside Space Groove Zac earlier in the year.
Victorious Braum
We also have our first look at the Victorious Braum skin for those who won at least 15 games during Season 1 of 2026.
Shyvana Rework Skins Updated
Shyvana’s Rework is set to release on March 18th alongside patch 26.6. Thanks to SkinSpotlight, we have a full look at all the reworked skins for Shyvana when her rework is live.
Peacemaker High Noon Yone is set to return to the game via The Sanctum gatcha mechanic in Patch 26.5. It will join the Divine Architech Porcelain Aurelion Sol skin currently on the Sanctum for the same minimum 40 Ancient Sparks.
Peacemaker High Noon Yone
As with the Sol skin, it will cost no more than $100 to unlock the new Peacemaker High Noon Yone skin. Though any bad luck protection from previous skins will carry over. As with Divine Architech Porcelain Aurelion Sol, the Yone skin will be a Mythic.
When the skin was first added to the game, it technically cost $200 due to it requiring between 100 and 150 Mythic Essence or capsules.
Patch 26.5 New Skins in Act 2 Damacian Pass
Alongside the return of the Peacemaker High Noon Yone skin, we will also get three new skins added in Patch 26.5.
The first new skins will be Corrupted Petricite Maokai and Xerath. The two skins will come included in the new Act 2 Demacian Pass, alongside the Prestige Requien Sona skin. These two Corrupted Petricite skins are an improvement on Act 1, which only had one skin, with Capsules filling in the gaps before we unlocked Morgana.
Prestige Requiem Sona and Act 2 Bundle
Prestige Requiem Sona is the final reward in the Demacia Act 2 Battle Pass. Similar to Prestige Veiled Lady Morgana from Act 1. The skin will also feature a Chroma if you purchase a higher tier of the Battle Pass, alongside borders, emotes, and icons.
The skin will feature a unique recall animation, visuals, and sound effects. As with many Sona skins, it’s incredibly detailed and full of life.
League of Legends Patch 25.6 will see the return of the Brawl game mode. Brawl was first added in May 2025, before leaving the game in June of 2025. With the recent success of ARAM Mayhem, Riot Games looks to be trying to keep fans engaged with more game modes.
Brawl Returns in Patch 25.6
Brawl Returns
Brawl is back, baby! Grab your friends, grab your enemies, they’re brawling everybody out here! Brawl will be live from March 4, 2026 through April 28, 2026.
The team-deathmatch mode will return to LoL between March 4th, and April 28th 2026. A similar period to 2025. The mode focuses on quick combat, condensing the LoL MOBA format into one lane. The draft-based format is the same 5v5 gameplay, but with an added escort element. The pre-game works much like Swiftplay does in the current client, with players picking a loadout, picking a champion, runes, and summoner spells.
Players can choose between Cleanse, Flash, Ghost, Heal, Ignite, and Barrier. If you are playing in a party, you do all of this before matchmaking, as there is no champion select screen. Once 10 players are found, the game starts after an AFK check.
Brawl Features
Set on one large lane, with terrain separating it into smaller sections, teams will fight in a team deathmatch format. The entire map is visible to both teams.
The aim of the map is to reduce the enemy team’s health to “0” by killing each other or minions.
Killing an enemy champion does 5 damage to the enemy team
Killing minions does 1 damage to the enemy team
Escorting your own minions to the enemy pandle portal will deal 1 damage
IF one team is losing by enough, they will get a buff that increases their damage by 20% and reduces the damage they take by 20%. This effect will last until the health difference has normalised.
Teams are able to surrender at 15:00, with a 4/5 requirements to pass the vote.
Champions and Minions
Brawl was first shown off in 2025 (6:19 in the above video)
As with any special game mode, it comes with a few changes to the way champions and minions work.
Champions start at level 3
Attack speed is capped at 3
0:20 into the game, Homeguard is active, granting a 165% movement increase for 2 seconds inside the spawn
On Fire is a buff awarded when players chain together takedowns. The buff gives bonus movement speed, attack speed, and HP, alongside halved basic ability cooldowns. You will take increased damage, however, and be worth a large bounty.
All champions chain the following buff
+100 summoner spell haste
Increased base mana by 100%
5 experience per second, increased to 7.5 after 5:00
Gold 150 per 10 seconds, increased to Gold 200 after 5:00
Minion gold is shared between allies nearby
Empowered Recall
Minions will also get a few changes.
Spawning starts at 0:30
Minions take 75% increased AoE damage
Minions waves spawn every 25 seconds and feature two caster and two melee minions, with a siege minion spawning every alternate wave between the sides.
As with any mode, there are hundreds of individual champion buffs and nerfs. For example, Teemo does 5% reduced damage, and his Noxious Traps recharge at a slower rate.
Patch 26.5 notes for League of Legends are here, including buffs to Mel and Lilia (Source)
“Welcome to the official patch of First Stand, the first major international tournament of the year! This patch we’re making some pro-focused changes, but not as many as we would for a larger tournament like Worlds, which means we’re re-tuning a small handful of mid laners and a single bot laner. Otherwise, we’re continuing to sweep across the roster and delivering buffs and nerfs to each role’s biggest outliers.
We also have the return of Brawl, some adjustments, buffs, and nerfs for ARAM: Mayhem, bugfixes for Arena, some fancy new skins on the Season 1 Act 2 Battlepass, updates for Demacia Rising, the arrival of last hit indicators (no excuse to miss canons now), and we have an update to how we’re punishing severely abusive chat.”
Patch Highlights
BRAWL RETURNS
Brawl is back, baby! Grab your friends, grab your enemies, they’re brawling everybody out here! Brawl will be live from March 4, 2026 through April 28, 2026.
Currently, Akali’s re-stealth timer on her Shroud scales with game time. And since we’ve adjusted Summoner’s Rift’s pacing and League now has multiple modes with varying start times, we think everyone’s favorite ninja deserves a bit more flexibility when it comes to her sneakiness.
W – Twilight Shroud
Restealth Timer: 1s / .9s / .825s / .725s / .625s after your last attack or ability (at game times 0:00 / 8:00 / 11:00 / 20:00 / 30:00) ⇒ 1s / .9s / .825s / .725s / .625s (at levels 1 / 7 / 10 / 13 / 16)
Azir marks one of a very few changes we are making specifically due to First Stand. We want to preserve Azir’s high points and core strengths of sustained late game damage while opening up late-game weaknesses to AP assassins in the hope that we see some exciting counter picks at the tournament.
Garen is moderately popular but statistically underpowered, and we’d like it if he was as powerful as other straightforward top lane juggernauts. We’re continuing on the trend of making traditional fighter items more comparable to his crit builds and giving him better trading power before he has access to tools like Stridebreaker and Phantom Dancer.
Kha’Zix has evolved with the season changes and overcame all his worthy prey to take the top spot of solo queue junglers. We think he has room to go down in clear speed as the game progresses, as well as overkilling isolated targets without hurting him where he’s already weak in teamfights. We’re also making the bug less speedy to hit higher skill brackets.
We’re in the fortunate position where Lee Sin is buffable for both regular players as well as pro, which means we’re going to deliver some simple power. We want to reinforce his primary strength of early game power and lethality, so we’re buffing his highest fantasy early game damage ability.
We overshot Lillia’s Q nerf and historically gave her power in places she’s less likely to appreciate, all of which has led to the speedy deer feeling limp. We are reverting her ultimate buffs from 25.19, which were fairly small, as well as Q nerfs from 26.02, which were much more impactful. The hope here is that this net buff lets her live out her sustained fight fantasy as we believe that weaving in and out of fights doing damage with Q is closer to that rather than needing to land large scale R’s.
Mel’s recent update and follow-up balance work has succeeded in creating more counterplay and thus reducing her frustration and ban rate with a similar win rate to the preceding patches. With the initial dust now settled, it’s time to bring her up to a more reasonable power level. We’re looking toward her proactive damage, especially with champion level, to skew these buffs strongly toward the mid lane. We’re also sliding in a small compensation to her passive’s minion mod in order to not push her Q-driven wave clear any higher than it already is.
Neeko has been a dominant force in pro play through her combination of strong laning, teamfight utility, and vision control, while also being deadly enough to succeed more than the average champion for regular players as well. We like her explosive and high-spectacle teamfights, with the occasional 7th minion engage or wolf flank, but want to tap down the utility her clone provides. This change should still let her engage in trickery, while introducing a tradeoff to when clones stare people down from a bush on repeat, as we explore the best solution that limits her vision control but retains satisfying mechanics.
W – Shapesplitter
Slightly-Less-Tricksy-Neekoses: Cooldown now starts on clone expiration, instead of on cast
Fun Eliminated: Neeko can no longer use Ctrl+5, which plays the joke expression for clone only. Neeko can still joke, dance, recall, to make their clone initiate said actions.
Nocturne’s underperforming considering how easy to pick up and play he is, so he’s made the cut for buffs in this patch. In an effort to help him succeed in moderate fight durations, we’re upgrading his ability to stick to his enemies under the Dusk Trail and run them down with basic attacks.
Orianna is arguably the defining mid pick of the current pro meta, receiving the highest total picks and bans in First Stand-qualifying leagues. As with Azir and Taliyah this patch, we’re hoping to broaden the top-tier pool and allow teams to have different takes on mid lane. In the hands of a true expert, her laning phase can feel unassailable, so we’re focusing on her early game in the hope of opening up some weaknesses.
We’re giving Samira some love in the form of QoL and minor bugfixing around her Q! Sometimes Q doesn’t do what you want which can be a bit frustrating, and we’re hoping to fix some of the extreme end of feels-bad cases by adding some additional logic on the decision of when to use her Sword and when to use her Gun.
Q – Flair
The Right Tool for the Job: Samira Q will now do multiple additional checks to see if there are units on both the right and left of her. If there are, and importantly if there are no units far in front of her, she will use Sword Q. If a unit is far in front of her, she will still use Gun Q regardless of units on the right and left.
Itchy Trigger Finger: Samira Q is now properly sealed during her passive. This resolves a case where Samira Q can go on cooldown despite not being used if pressed during her passive’s animation. This also applies to an instance where her ultimate was cast after her W.
Can’t Out-Walk Me: Samira Q will now do a check to see if the enemy is walking away from her and in the very last part of her Sword Q’s range. If so, she will instead use Gun Q. This should resolve the extreme cases where champions can simply walk away from her Q at very low move speed (higher move speeds will still likely be able to do so, rightfully.)
Taliyah joins Azir and Orianna as pro-focused mid nerfs for First Stand with the goal of opening up the mid lane pool to more than just control mages in the first games of a series. In an effort to pro-skew her nerf this patch, we’re attacking her early wave control, making it less likely she can always be first to every Scuttle Crab fight. We’re also compensating her monster damage to keep her jungle clear at similar speeds.
Oh, Varus. Look, canonically you’re kinda three people at once, so having three times the balance changes of other champions is only fair, right? We’re nerfing Varus’s lethality build as it’s the most pro-dominant ADC in the current patch. However, because on-hit Varus in bot lane is weak, we’re compensating AD on-hit Varus to keep that build afloat.
Volibear’s last set of nerfs were effective at hitting jungle harder than top, but ended up a bit over the line still. We’re aiming to make laning a bit more satisfying for top Volibear with mana changes, and still trying to open up some bruiser builds so it’s not always wizard bear.
Wounded bonus: + 15% per 100 bonus AD ⇒ + 25% per 100 bonus AD
E – Sky Splitter
Mana cost: 60 ⇒ 50
Items
Hubris
Hubris appears to be the weakest AD assassin item, especially when you consider it should look amazing statistically due to being a situational snowball item. We’re continuing the slow and steady trend of letting assassins spike their items earlier, and especially in the case of Hubris, get the snowball rolling early on.
Combine cost: 950 gold ⇒ 750 gold
Total price: 3000 gold ⇒ 2800 gold
Locket of the Iron Solari
Bandlepipes has been a well received addition for first-slot support tanks (and others who don’t really want AP) but it’s overshadowing first-slot Locket more than we’d like. We’re choosing to front-load some of Locket’s power so that it looks more attractive as the first purchase, while keeping its later-game power pretty similar.
SHIELD: 200 – 360, scaling after level 1 ⇒ 290 – 360, scaling after level 8
Players who were eligible for the Aegis of Valor rewards have those rewards voided if they’re reported for disruptive behaviors and the reports are validated.
Autofill and Secondary Matchmaking Improvements
“As we mentioned at the start of this year, we’re going to start rolling out improved positional matchups in game for autofills and secondaries, e.g. trying to match autofill jungle vs autofill jungle. We’ll be starting with EUW.
We’ll keep an eye on how it’s performing, and will let you know when we feel like it’s ready for a global rollout.”