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League of Legends World Championship comes to Shanghai in 2020

The site of next year's League of Legends World Championship has been decided, with Riot Games set to bring Worlds 2020 to Shanghai.

Ozzie Mejia

November 11, 2019 10:40 AM

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The League of Legends World Championship for 2019 came to a close over the weekend. FunPlus PhoeniX held up the Summoners Cup once it was all over, wiping out G2 Esports in a one-sided affair. Now all that's left is for teams to start preparing for next year. But where will next year's Worlds take place? Riot Games answered that question on Sunday, revealing that the 2020 League of Legends World Championship would be held in Shanghai, China.

Shanghai Stadium will be the official site of 2020 Worlds. The venue is capable of seating over 55,000 people, having housed top sporting events, such as the 2008 Summer Olympic soccer preliminaries. This means next year's World Championship is in line to be the biggest one in League of Legends history. It'll also fall in line with the World Championship's tenth year, a milestone that Riot Games will look to celebrate throughout the 2020 LoL Esports season. This will be the first time that Worlds has been held in China since 2017, when it was held at the Beijing National Stadium. Of course, Shanghai has played home to multiple esports events since that time. Most notably, it was home to Dota 2's The International 9, which unfolded a few short months ago.

FunPlus PhoeniX will look to defend their newly-won World Championship at next year's event. They're already looking like the team to beat based on their performance this year. Their path to the world title included a major win over then-defending champion Invictus Gaming. Behind the play of jungler Gao "Tian" Tian-Liang, FunPlus PhoeniX was able to sweep G2 Esports 3-0 to claim this year's championship.

Locations for the Play-In, Group, and Knockout Stages are set to be revealed at a later date. Hit up the League of Legends website for more information.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?