The League of Legends World Championship 2019 Group Stage is complete, and the Knockout Stage is set to begin this weekend.

Here’s everything you need to know about the biggest LoL tournament of the year.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of the article incorrectly listed Funplus Phoenix as a LCK squad. It’s now been fixed.

The teams

From 24 initial teams, there are just eight teams remaining in this year’s tournament. Three teams come from Korea’s LCK, three are from Europe’s LEC, and two teams are from China’s LPL:

League of Legends Champions Korea (LCK)

  • Damwon Gaming
  • Griffin
  • SK Telecom T1

League European Championship (LEC)

  • G2 Esports
  • Splyce
  • Fnatic

League of Legends Pro League (LPL)

  • Invictus Gaming
  • FunPlus Phoenix

Group Stage recap

If you missed the group stage, here’s a quick recap of what happened in each group:

Group A

Group A looked like it would come down to a three-way battle between LEC Summer champions, G2 Esports, LCK Summer second-place team, Griffin, and LCS Summer second-place team, Cloud9. LMS Summer third-place team, Hong Kong Attitude, rounded up the tough group.

However, Cloud9 struggled early, losing 0-2 to both G2 and Griffin, and with Hong Kong Attitude losing all of their games, the group ultimately became a race for first place between the European and Korean teams.

After splitting their series 1-1, G2 and Griffin played a tiebreaker to determine the group winner, with Griffin walking away with the victory.

Group B

Group B featured an eclectic mix of teams, headlined by LPL Summer champions, Funplus Phoenix. Joining them were LMS Summer champions, J Team, VCS Summer champions, GAM Esports, and LEC Summer 5/6th place team, Splyce.

Despite having to go through the play-ins knockout tournament and only barely qualifying for the Group Stage, Splyce was the surprise of the group, tieing 1-1 with both Funplus Phoenix and J Team, and winning 2-0 over GAM Esports to finish with a 4-2 record.

Funplus Phoenix also split their series against J Team, and defeated GAM Esports 2-0 to also end with a 4-2 record.

Surprisingly, J Team ended up tieing against GAM Esports, and were eliminated with a 3-3 final record.

A final tiebreaker between Funplus Phoenix and Splyce determined the overall winner of the group, with the Chinese team narrowly taking the tightly-contested game.

Group C

Known by fans as the “group of death”, Group C featured powerhouses SKT T1, Fnatic, Royal Never Give Up, and Play-In winner Clutch Gaming. It was a tough outing for CG, who had to face three really strong teams, and it showed.

CG lost all of its games, and between the three powerhouses, it was SKT T1 who came out on top, with European squad, Fnatic, in second place.

Unfortunately for Royal Never Give Up, despite taking one game from Fnatic, it just wasn’t enough and they were eliminated from Worlds along with Clutch Gaming.

Group D

Korean squad DAMWON Gaming took the top spot in Group D, beating out Chinese powerhouse and reigning Worlds 2018 champions, Invictus Gaming, 2-0. This followed their amazing run in the Play-In tournament where they won seven games to advance.

Meanwhile, IG secured the second spot, beating both Team Liquid and ahq Esports Club 2-0. With IG advancing, both Liquid and ahq are eliminated from Worlds 2019.

The schedule

The remaining eight teams will battle it out in the Knockout Stage, starting with the quarterfinals, which take place this weekend.

Here’s the full schedule for the entire knockout stage:

Quarterfinals

  • Griffin vs Invictus Gaming — October 26, 7 p.m. GMT+8 (1 p.m. CEST).
  • FunPlus Phoenix vs Fnatic — October 27, 12 a.m. GMT+8 (October 26, 6 p.m. CEST).
  • SK Telecom T1 vs Splyce — October 27, 8 p.m. (1 p.m. CEST).
  • DWG vs G2 Esports — October 28, 1 a.m. (October 27, 6p.m. CEST).

Semifinals

  • Winner of quarterfinal 1 vs winner of quarterfinal 2 — November 2, 8 p.m. (1 p.m. CEST).
  • Winner of quarterfinal 3 vs winner of quarterfinal 4 — November 3, 8 p.m. (1 p.m. CEST).

Finals

  • Winner of semifinal 1 vs winner of semifinal 2 — November 10, 9 p.m. (2 p.m. CEST).

The format

The quarterfinals will be played as a single-elimination best-of-five series. After this weekend, only four teams will advance to the semifinals, which will also be played as a best-of-five series.

On November 10, the last two teams remaining will face each other in the grand finals.

The prize

37.5% of the US$2.225 million prize pool will be taken home by the Worlds 2019 champions.

How to watch

The League of Legends 2019 World Championship will be broadcast live on the Riot Games’ Twitch channel and the LoL Esports YouTube channel.

More information can be viewed on the official League of Legends Esports website.

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