LPL Spring 2024 preview

LPL Spring 2024 marks the beginning of the new League of Legends season in China. This is a highly competitive region. It features 17 teams and has had either a champion or a finalist at almost every single edition of Worlds. Usually, the teams that dominate LPL end up dominating Worlds and MSI as well.

LPL Spring 2024 will be played between January 22 – April 20. This gives us three months of high-quality LoL matches. But who will rise to the top this time?

LPL 2023 results

In 2023, LPL was dominated by JD Gaming, LNG Esports, and Bilibili Gaming. Weibo Gaming was also an important name. Despite finishing both splits in 5^th – 6^th place, this team ended up placing 2^nd at Worlds 2023, which was a spectacular achievement.

In LoL, because the game is so technical and challenging, we rarely see an underdog turning into a dark horse at the biggest event of the year. But Weibo did it. Unfortunately for them, they were completely destroyed in the Grand Final by T1. But at least they qualified for it.

Worlds 2023 LPL Expedition Video

We all have reasons to win.

For that, we can go all out.

Time for #LPL to grind and take the glory. pic.twitter.com/qwGZ1r7ZHS

— LPL (@lplenglish) October 17, 2023

Expectations for LPL Spring 2024

In 2024, Weibo will compete with a modified roster. Their top and their junglers left, and were replaced by new players, who came from Anyone’s Legend. This team finished among the last in LPL last season, so our expectations from Weibo this year are very low. I personally think that they won’t even be a top 10 team. But we’ll see.

The two giants of 2023 were JD Gaming and Bilibili Gaming. They played in the Grand Final of MSI and had excellent results in both splits, finishing in the top 3. JDG actually won both splits, so they’re expected to continue that trend.

Most of their roster has not been changed and new players were brought in, probably for the purpose of having better sparring sessions. The important thing to note is that Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk is still here. So is Seo “Kanavi” Jin-hyeok. Lan “Lzq” Ziqi also chose to stay.

What’s interesting about this JDG roster is that it’s partly made up of very strong South Korean players. In a region that heavily encourages the signing of local players, some of the teams have started to incorporate foreigners as well.

Bilibili Gaming chose a more traditional path. They stole JDG’s midlaner, Zhuo “knight” Ding, and brought in a second support player, Zuo “LvMao” Minghao, from Royal Never Give Up. These moves may end up tipping the scale in their favor.

Header: Riot Games