Malmö to host LEC Summer finals

The League of Legends European Championship has announced that the league’s Summer split Finals will be held in the Swedish city of Malmö.

The event will mark the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic that the LEC will be played outside the league’s Berlin studio.

LEC road trip

In a tweet posted on June 28, the LEC announced that the Summer Finals would be held in Malmö.

The Finals, which comprise the upper and lower bracket Finals as well as the Grand Final, will take place across the weekend of September 10 and 11. This coincides with the League of Legends Championship Series Finals, which will take place on the same weekend at San Francisco’s Chase Center.

The LEC has a long history of taking their split Finals on the road. However, due to the pandemic, all splits in 2020 and 2021, as well as the Spring 2022 split, were held exclusively in Berlin. The last time the LEC left Germany was Summer 2019, when the split Finals were held in Athens.

Return to Sweden

It has been a number of years since the LEC traveled to Sweden. Stockholm, the nation’s capital, was the site of the Summer 2015 Finals.

Malmö is a city in the far south of Sweden and is home to the Øresundsbron, a bridge that connects Sweden and Denmark. Like many Swedish cities, Malmö has its own esports history. Most notably, the city played host to a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive DreamHack Masters event in October 2019. Malmö’s top-flight soccer club, Malmö FF, is also home to Sweden’s first FIFA esports academy. Outside of esports, the city has twice been the host of the Eurovision Song Contest.

The event also highlights Malmö as a “gaming city”, according to Mats Schöld, Head of Events at the Department of Leisure, Recreation and Sport for the City of Malmö.

“We are incredibly proud to have the League of Legends European Championship in Malmö. This again shows that Malmö is an event and gaming city to be reckoned with”

Swedish is the third most common nationality in the LEC for the Summer split, behind German and Polish. There are currently four Swedish players in the LEC — Finn “Finn” Wiestål (Excel Esports), William “UNF0RGIVEN” Nieminen (MAD Lions), Emil “Larssen“ Larsson (Rogue), and Erik “Treatz” Wessén (SK Gaming). Of the four, Finn is currently in the best position to play in the Finals in his home nation, thanks to Excel Esports’ white-hot 4-1 start to the LEC Summer split.

Long road to Malmö

However, despite the announcement, there is still a long road to go until LEC Summer Finals. The league is only entering the third week of its summer split, with 13 matches left in the regular season for the league’s 10 teams.

Tickets for the LEC Finals will go on sale at 1700 CEST on July 1st. The Summer Finals will be held at Malmö Arena on September 10 and 11.

Header: Albin Olsson, LEC