Month: December 2025

League of Legends 25.24 Patch Notes are here and include a handful of buffs, nerfs and adjustments. Check out the full patch notes for additional details from Riot (source).

Season 3 Ranked Ending Soon

The Summoner’s Rift Ranked Season for Season 3, 2025 will end 2026-01-07 23:59:59, according to your local server time, which is the last day of 15.24 patch cycle.

Similar to previous years, Summoner’s Rift ranked queues will be disabled for 12 hours for preparation of Season 1, 2026 start, which will begin on 2026-01-08 12:00:00 (noon) local server time at which point LP and ranks will reset for the new year.

The end of season 3 2025 also means the 2025 ranked season is coming to an end. The end of season year rewards will include not only Victorious Draven Skin and Chromas, but also accessories that celebrate your highest rank achieved during the year! Rewards will be as follows and will be distributed in patch 26.1 next year: 

• Victorious Skin Border that is compatible with all 3 Victorious Skins of 2025 (requires owning all 3 Victorious skins of the year)
• Season 2025 Ranked Emote
• Season 2025 Ranked Icon

 We’ll have more details about the 2026 ranked season in the 26.1 patch notes, but for now good luck on your end of year climbs! 

WASD Launches in Limited Queues

WASD will go live in most unranked queues across all regions this patch. Draft and Ranked queues will not support WASD at this time. We will roll out on OCE, and slowly scale to all regions. Given WASD is still in a beta state and that we are in active iteration, we might disable certain queues or champions in case of a degraded player experience. In cases where we disable WASD for specific modes or champions, your keybindings will return back to Point and Click while playing those champions/playing in those queues. For 25.24, both Briar and Taliyah will have WASD disabled. When enabled again, your control scheme will default to the player selected choice.

Please make sure to report to Player Support any issues found, and to learn more about WASD, read here!

WASD will be enabled in the following queues: 

• Normals: Customs, Swiftplay, ARAM
• Game Modes: Arena, ARAM: Mayhem, ARURF

 WASD New Features: 

• Dynamic Camera – New Camera that follows your mouse, with speed settings!
• Scout Ahead Button – Middle mouse click to freely move your camera while in Dynamic Camera, release to snap back.
• WASD Remapping – Remap your keybinds as you wish

 We will be using balance data from live to further iterate on the WASD experience, prior to considering enabling it within Ranked queues, so please let us know what you think and report any bugs! We will be continuing to release additional promised features in the next year. 

Champion Select

After a successful pilot and positive player feedback following the introduction of disallowing champions allies hover from being banned as well as faster champion select timings, we’re fully releasing both updates. On a similar note, the QoL improvements to speed up champ select have also been well received and, as a result, we’ve decided to roll them out to all regions globally. 

• You are no longer able to ban champions hovered by your teammates.
• In patch 25.23, we introduced improvements to speed up champ select for Summoner’s Rift (Solo/Duo, Flex, and Normal Draft) to 2 pilot regions in NA/OC. These improvements are now being rolled out to all regions.

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Champion Buffs & Nerfs

Runes

Riot’s giving Swiftplay a serious overhaul in 2026, changing everything from dragon timing to lane pressure to jungle flow. The changes will make the mode feel completely different. And if you want to look at all the changes from Riot’s last big dev update of 2025, don’t miss our dedicated rundown.

Here is the official blog post by Riot goig over all the changes planned for Swifplay:

Hey everyone! I’m Bryan “Riot Axes” Salvatore, the Director of Design for League, overseeing the overall gameplay experience, from the Summoner’s Rift Ranked experience to game modes. If it involves gameplay, it’s my job to ensure we’re making the right strategic choices. Today I’m here to share some updates to Swiftplay, so let’s get into it!

Swiftplay’s Place in League

Maybe you find yourself barely having enough time for a quick match. Or you’re looking to try out a new champion without investing time in a full game. Or you’re a new player looking to get your footing on the Rift. Swiftplay is meant to be a fast queue that still allows you to experience the full arc of what League can offer. It’s a faster paced, but still substantive, bite of what “League” is.

We believe that Swiftplay has a lot of potential to be that queue, but we haven’t quite reached that goal. So we’ve identified three pillars that we want to improve based on your feedback, testing, and surveys: pacing, laning, and jungle. 

Let’s Talk Pacing 

Swiftplay has been out for nearly a year now, and in that time we’ve identified some opportunities to improve its overall pacing. As we’ve studied how matches play out, a few themes have become especially clear.

To start, despite Swiftplay being shorter (by about eight minutes on average) it’s still a bit longer than we’d like. Swiftplay also inherits a lot of the slower, more methodical pacing of regular SR: a drawn-out early laning phase, long death timers and runbacks, and generally low action density. Then, on top of that, the mode compresses every single neutral objective from SR into a shorter timeline. This all leads to a game that is not only a slower pace than SR, but is strategically more dense.

The biggest “feel” impact on game pacing is objectives. While things like how minions scale or your gains of gold/experience can impact game length, objective changes can have an impact on how the pacing actually “feels” and plays out.

So we’re primarily targeting objectives to get that correct feel that we want Swiftplay to have (deep breath): Like in other queues, Atakhan and Feats of Strength are removed from the game. In addition, in Swiftplay only, Void Grubs and Rift Herald are also removed. Elemental dragons now spawn no more than twice, and you have to kill both in order to claim Dragon Soul. Baron Nashor spawns at 12:00. Elder Dragon now always spawns at exactly 15:00 and every 6 minutes thereafter, and if there’s a dragon in the pit, it’ll despawn to make room for Elder.

We’re aiming to hit a few goals with these changes: First, we want to ensure that the pacing of objectives actually promotes shorter game lengths–you should have more time to spend doing things that actively push the game forward, like hitting towers, and less overall time playing around objectives. Second, we want to ramp into game-ending power faster. And third, we want to make the jungle less stressful (more on that in a bit.)

There are a few more odds and ends worth calling out: The Elemental Rift transformation now happens after the first dragon is killed since there are only two; if none are killed by 15:00, then no Elemental Rift transformation will occur. Baron buff now persists through death, empowering you to comfortably leverage that power to progress games. And Sudden Death happens 5 minutes sooner (at 25 minutes) to ensure that we’re pulling down that upper ceiling of game length.

All of these changes as a whole will drastically cut down on the pacing issues that Swiftplay is suffering from, while also opening up a lot of space to actually engage in moment-to-moment champion combat.

Gotta Go Fast… to Lane

Another area that we’ve examined is laning. Specifically, the time it takes to get to, and advance, lane. Fundamentally, the structure of Summoner’s Rift means that killing champions doesn’t directly drive the game towards a conclusion. They indirectly advance the game because they allow you to build a lead and give you the opportunity to push turrets and win lane while they stare at a grey screen only to slowly run back. 

However this is Swiftplay, and who wants to wait around forever? We want to give you more momentum in those windows to progress, as well as get you back to lane faster to contest being pushed.

In order to help push lanes in those windows, we’ve created a new mechanic: Minion Frenzy. Whenever you kill an enemy champion, your nearby minions will frenzy, gaining a large amount of movement speed, attack speed, and damage to enemy minions and turrets, and sharing any minion kill gold with nearby allied champions. (You don’t have to compete with them for last hits!) If you get a kill in the jungle, you’ll gain a buff that applies Minion Frenzy to the next group of minions you encounter.

Swiftplay will also be receiving the new Crystalline Overgrowth mechanic that we’re adding to the Rift. We covered it in the Season One Gameplay Preview, but the gist of this is that slowly over time, crystals will grow on a tower that hasn’t been hit, and when hit will consume to deal an extra burst of damage. Think “Demolish for everyone,” giving everyone the power to actually push or progress a lane when it’s in a state for pushing. If you’re a Demolish fan, don’t worry, it’s not going away. We’re just changing it to a time-honored tradition… a three-hit passive.

This means that winning lane much more readily leads to damaging enemy turrets, which in turn progresses your game state. And that means no more long grey screens and runbacks: Death Timers are significantly reduced, and Homeguards go much faster and farther in Swiftplay now, even more so than the new Homeguards in other Summoner’s Rift queues. 

Besides Minion Frenzy, you’ll be able to dive right into the action at the start of each game now, starting at level 3, with 1400 gold—like ARAM—and Doran’s Blade, Shield, and Ring have been replaced with Guardian’s Horn, Orb, Blade, and Hammer. Just as with Norms and Ranked in the new Season, minions spawn at 0:30, but in Swiftplay we’re also adding a cannon minion to every wave after the third, ensuring that every wave is worth pushing (especially with Minion Frenzy!)

Welcome to the Jungle

It’s no secret that jungle is by far the least popular position in Swiftplay. There are two major causes that we want to tackle right now: First clears are just as punishing as they are in Norms and Ranked, leading jungle to be the least forgiving to off-meta champions, and the strategy game of playing for neutral epics is even more frenetic than other queues despite the goal of Swiftplay being lower stakes.

When we started this project, we set out to address first clears by tuning the jungle monsters to be more forgiving—dealing less damage, taking more damage from your pet, and so on, ensuring that the jungle would be easier to clear for more champions. We’ve since pulled back on most of those changes, however—it turns out that starting at level 3 with 1400 gold is already a massive buff to clear speed and safety, even though the first batch of jungle monsters also spawn in at level 3 now.

The only major jungle clear changes you’ll see are that most jungle camps respawn 15 seconds faster, and it takes only 15 treats for the first upgrade to your jungle pet, and 25 treats for the second. Our intent is that early clears are much more forgiving for off-meta junglers, and we’ll continue to monitor to make sure that’s actually the case.

The other major pain point we were aiming to address here was how overwhelming neutral objectives have been. Swiftplay has had almost the same number of neutral objectives, but compressed into a much shorter time, leading to the feeling that the game was just leading you around. As noted above, we’re thinning out the objective game by removing Grubs, Rift Herald, and Atakhan—you’ll only have dragons and Baron to worry about now, and you’ll have plenty of time to farm up (or, you know, gank, if that happens to be your thing…) in the meantime.

We’ll be continuing to monitor the jungle going forward, but we think that these changes, simple as they are, should make the experience of playing jungle noticeably less stressful and more forgiving, especially for off-meta picks.

Outro

That’s all we have on Swiftplay for now, so be sure to check it out when we kick off the new year. We’re looking forward to seeing you all get to try out these updates and seeing all your feedback.

Source: Riot News

Riot has dropped the last Dev Update of 2025. Join Pabro and Meddler as they talk about Season 1 2026, including the theme, Ranked changes, Swiftplay, and more.

Dev Update Highlights

If you don’t have the time to watch the whole video, don’t worry, we have you covered with a recap!

Season 1 2026 Theme: Demacia and a “Hope Era”

• They’ll continue to find the right balance for thematic Seasons moving forward.
• Season 1 starts with themes of unity, justice, and the classic Demacian blue-and-gold shine, which means new Demacia-inspired map elements and a skill line featuring champions reimagined as Demacians.
• Riot will drop a cinematic in January that goes “old-school Demacia,” set during what they call its golden age.

Core Gameplay Changes

• Riot said the game has leaned way too hard into “fight every objective every 2 minutes.” They will shift away from that philosophy.

Faster Game Start

• Minions and jungle camps spawn 35 seconds earlier, which means the game begins at full speed the moment you load in. Early invades will still work, but you will need to commit faster.

Vision Overhaul with Faelights

• Riot wants pushing solo laners to matter more by adding Faelights, special zones that give bonus vision to wards. Some will exist at game starts, others will appear when the Elemental Rift kicks in.
• With this change, they hope to give mid and top laners more vision tools that reward pressure.

Objectives Are Being Pulled Back

• Atakhan has been removed.
• Baron returns to its 20-minute spawn.
• Epic monsters are beefier.
• Teams behind have more room to contest or trade.
• Feats of Strength have been removed, replaced by normal rewards like First Blood and First Turret gold returning.

Sledging & Pushing Are Getting Buffs

• Riot is pushing the meta toward split-pushing and turret pressure.
• Hitting towers will unleash bonus damage, giving the every team real pushing windows even without insane DPS.
• Plates have been added to inner and inhibitor towers and stay on outer towers permanently.
• Minions spawn faster and late-game Homeguards take you straight to your furthest wave.
• Nexus turrets respawn with missing health.

The changes above should bring back macro, the part of League many players miss.

Role Quests: The Biggest Changes of 2026

• Top, mid, and bot are getting their role quests, similar to jungle pets and support upgrades.
• Your quest is tied to the role you were assigned in lobby.

Top Lane Changes

Riot’s making some changes to the top lane to ensure top laners can influence the game outside their island.

• Once you complete the quest, you will get a free teleport
• You will receive a stronger teleport if you already took TP
• Gives more XP now
• A raised level cap

Mid Lane

Mid players will unlock:

• A free Tier 3 boot upgrade
• Faster recall times, very useful for assassins, battlemages, and other weird picks

Bot Lane

ADC’s are getting:

• A big gold boost from quest completion
• Bonus gold from CS, kills, and assists
• A new seventh slot holding boots permanently resulting in 6 full legendary items total

Jungle & Support Updates

Jungle early influence is being nerfed via:

• Slower early clears
• Epic monsters harder for laners to steal
• Smite dealing more damage
• More gold/XP from large mobs after quest completion
• Bonus jungle movement speed

Support gets:

• A dedicated control-ward slot
• Discounts on control wards
• Buffs to passive gold regeneration
• Lane Swap Detected is getting permanently removed

Ranked 2026 Changes

We have a separate article covering the Ranked 2026 changes.

Item Shake-Up: 9 New Toys and Returning Favorites

• Scepter of Bonking: empowers Spellblade to double your on-hit effects
• Blood Sphere: Omnivamp + Ability Haste scaling for AD fighters
• Snowbow: bonus range on takedown for precise ADCs, plus distance-based damage amp
• Crit damage returns to 200%

Swiftplay Changes

Riot made the following changes to Swiftplay to make the games faster:

• Players start at level 3 with bonus starting gold
• Death timers have been reduced
• Cannon minions spawn every wave after wave 3
• New “Minion Frenzy” effect when you score kills around your wave
• Earlier Baron and Elder spawns
• Dragon Soul at two dragons
• Grubs or Rift Herald have been removed from this mode

WASD Controls Go Live in Unranked Queues

• WASD controls are going live in all unranked queues except Normal Draft

New features include:

• Auto-attack weaving has been optimized for WASD users
• Better navigation around minions
• A dynamic locked camera with speed tuning
• A new Scout ahead free-camera mode
• Accessibility options like 45-degree directional movement

All of this information comes from Riot’s official /dev blog, which can be found here.

Autofill Parity

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“A reality of League is that some roles are just more popular than others. Autofill exists to keep your queues going, otherwise we’d see extremely long queue times for mid lane especially. That said, we know that getting a role you didn’t choose is frustrating, especially when you tried your best and lost LP for something out of your control.”

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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Autofill Parity is Riot’s new approach to matching autofilled players in games. While Autofill isn’t going away in 2026, it’s gotten a big upgrade. Being autofilled into a role you’re not comfortable with (especially against someone who mains it) can be rough, so the updated system changes things up to make the experience better:

• Autofill now attempts to match autofilled players vs autofilled players in the same role, e.g jungler vs jungler.
• If that isn’t possible, it aims to have the same number of autofilled players on each team.
• In the worst case, the team with more autofilled players will have slightly higher MMR players.

Aegis of Valor (LP Protection)

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“Aegis of Valor will reward you with either double LP or full protection from LP loss on an autofilled game if you get a mastery score of C or higher.

When you get into a lobby, you’ll be notified that the Aegis is in effect, and that you’ll be protected (or rewarded) for your effort in that game if you meet the requirement.”

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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Support and Jungle mains will automatically get Aegis rewards around the same rate that Autofilled players do, though they won’t be notified before going into a match.

Dodging

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“Another pain point we want to address this year is the awful experience of experiencing chain dodges, and the lobbies that result from them. Aside from the time wasted getting back into new lobbies, your opponents might be able to predict your picks and target ban you, and trust between teammates may start off on the wrong foot. So, we’re implementing several changes to cut back on dodging.”

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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• Dodging will no longer reset your autofill status. If you dodge, your autofill will carry over to your next match.
• For Ranks Master+ a dodge will count as a full loss, in addition to the autofill change, and dodge timer penalties.

Faster Time to Game (Pre-game Lobby Changes)

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“Another pain point we’re looking to address is how long it takes to get into a game. Before a successful game even starts, there are all sorts of things that could go wrong, including dodging, lobby hostaging, or more. And all of these things cause your queue time to be extended. We know that lobby hostaging is an area that needs improvements, and we’re working on a suite of changes to help address this early next year, but for now let’s talk about what’s changing now.”

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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• To start, we’re removing the ability to ban an ally’s hovered champion, to eliminate one of the first reasons that folks may tilt before they even get into the game.
• Also helping you get in-game faster, we’re cutting down on animations and timers in Champ Select by roughly 30 seconds.

Ranked Skill Distribution & Climbing Indicator

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“Another place that we’re trying to make changes is how MMR and ranks line up at the lower end of the ladder. Over time, the distribution of players across different ranks has drifted out of alignment with their actual skill. Simply stated, you’ve all gotten much better since we introduced Ranked years ago. Where a Bronze player of the past might not know much about the game at all, today’s Bronze player is often familiar with wave management, champion matchups, and objective timing.

If a new player entering Ranked ends up in a match against opponents with that degree of knowledge, it’s just not a great experience for anyone involved. So, we’ll be recalibrating some of those lower tiers to more accurately reflect the skills of the players within them. This update is about realigning the tiers with actual skill, not inflating ranks, to properly match today’s level of play.

Speaking of the climb, we’re adding a Climb Indicator that appears when your visible rank is lagging behind your current MMR. A frustrating experience is being in a Plat lobby and seeing a Silver player in your games—it often feels like you have someone who shouldn’t be on your team. But the reality is that very often this player just started their climb a bit later than everyone else and actually does belong in that lobby. So this indicator will help show when someone’s rank just hasn’t caught up to their MMR.”

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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Other Changes

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“Lastly, we’ve got two more quick updates.

First, we’re making changes to how Flex and Solo MMR are determined. An incredibly painful experience is playing Flex with your friends in a Gold lobby and being absolutely stomped by someone who’s Gold in Flex and Master in Solo/Duo. So, we’re going to be bringing Flex ranks more in-line with Solo/Duo ranks (Flex will never pull Solo up, however.) We think this change will make Flex games feel a little more fair, while still allowing you to play with friends (within reason.)

And finally, we’re re-enabling duoing in Solo/Duo at all ranks, including Challenger, for most regions. We previously disabled Apex duos due to concerns around Rank manipulation, but with recent boosting detection and matchmaking improvements, we’re confident it can return without fear of exploitation.

That’s it for our changes for this year. We hope you’re as excited for Ranked in 2026 as we are. We’ll be monitoring queue health, match quality, and your feedback closely and refine where needed. Good luck on your climb! “

/dev: Ranked 2026 – Riot Dev Blog

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