TSM, EDG, Immortals among teams named to IEM Oakland roster

There’s only one major non-Riot sponsored League of Legends tournament each year — IEM, now entering Season 11. This year’s tournament comes with a new format, to better represent each region’s best teams by having a qualifying system for entry rather than one decided by fan-voting.

Well, that seems to be working. Friday, IEM officially announced five of the eight teams participating at IEM Oakland, and it’s a loaded group of top-tier teams.

From North America, regional champions Team SoloMid and third-place Immortals will be represented. The champions from China’s LPL (EDward Gaming, the last team to finish above SKT in an international tournament) and Taiwan’s LMS (Flash Wolves, who beat SKT twice at MSI) will also be there. From Europe, second-place Splyce fills out the teams that we know of now.

Those five teams will be joined by one Korean team to be determined and the top two qualifiers from the International Wild Card Tournament.

There will be two stages before the finals — Oakland and Gyeonggi. Each stage will have eight teams, split into two groups of four, with the top two teams from each group qualifying for that stage’s playoffs.

The tournament will take place November 19 and 20.