MSI 2023: Location and New Format Finally Revealed
LoL Esports has finally disclosed the location of the Mid-Season Invitational and is giving their fans even more reasons to look forward to the competition with a whole new format.
The Mid-Season Invitational (MSI) is the annual international League of Legends tournament hosted by Riot Games halfway through the LoL Season. It is the second-most important tournament in League of Legends.
Besides the glory of winning the tournament, everyone attending gets to experience the forces outside of their own region, which gives them an excellent opportunity to test their skills before the League of Legends World Championship.
Today, LoL Esports have finally announced they are making some significant changes to the MSI format, adding some spice with even more teams attending, and the long-awaited double-elimination format is coming to the tournament as well.
MSI 2023 Will Take Place in London
Last year the MSI took place in South Korea, and today Riot Games announced that the tournament would be heading back to Europe for 2023.
For 2023, the Mid-Season Invitational will be held in London. With fewer COVID-19 restrictions this year and lots of big arenas available in London, we can expect quite a show coming for the mid-seasonal event.
Do you want to watch the MSI in the arena this year?
MSI 2023 New Format Explained
A long-awaited change to the international format is finally coming to League of Legends. After much reflection about the international events in League of Legends, Riot Games have decided to reformat both the MSI and Worlds to ensure top entertainment for the community while maintaining competitive integrity for the player's sake.
The new changes to the MSI work to eliminate games that have no competitive stakes and create more cross-region competition also in the higher stages of the game. Additionally, they wish to maintain full regional representation while inviting more teams from the major four regions.
More Teams Competing
The first change in the MSI format to be excited about is the addition of even more teams. For the first time ever, Riot Games will invite two teams each from every major region (LCK, LOL, LEC, and LCS). For the minor regions, only the top team will be invited. In total, we will now see 13 teams invited for MSI 2023.
With the new format, we now will see two stages in the MSI: The Play-In Stage and the Bracket Stage. The top teams of every major region and both teams from the LCK will already be locked into the Bracket Stage, whereas the rest of the teams have to compete for their way through Play-Ins.
The LCK gets to lock both teams into the Bracket Stage because they won the League of Legends World Championship last year.
MSI 2023 Play-In Stage
In the Play-In Stage, we will now see the second-best team in the LPL, LEC, and LCS and the top teams from the smaller regions, CBLOL, LLA, VCS, PCS, and LJL, compete to make it all the way to the second and last stage - the Bracket Stage.
The Play-In Stage now consists of eight teams in total, divided into two groups of four, competing in a best-of-3, double-elimination bracket.
The two teams that go 2-0 in their groups will immediately advance to the Bracket Stage. This allows the best Play-Ins teams to get higher up in the competition faster. Considering the format, two teams going 0-2 and 1-2 will be eliminated, and the two teams going 2-1 will face each other in a best-of-five, where the winner will be the last team to qualify for the Bracket Stage.
MSI 2023 Bracket Stage
The Bracket Stage will be a best-of-five, double-elimination format, finally determining the winner of MSI 2023.
The stage will consist of eight teams, five of them already locked in before Play-Ins. Two spots are already secured for the region of the 2022 World Champions, the LCK.
Unfortunately, at this point in time, we have no information about how the seeding in the Bracket Stage will look nor the formatting of the Play-In groups. However, we are still very excited about the new changes and cannot wait for the season 2023 League of Legends season to begin.
Now that you have gotten a brief introduction to the new format coming to the MSI, are you looking forward to the upcoming season?
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