Rift Rivals 2018 LCK/LPL/LMS: Schedule, streams and results

Riot’s second annual Rift Rivals tournament is almost here again and over in Asia, that means it’s once again time for the Korea’s LCK, China’s LPL and Southeast Asia’s LMS leagues to face off against each other once again.

During last year’s tournament, the LPL shocked the world by easily taking down the LCK in the finals and claiming the title of Rift Rivals champions. And with the Chinese team, Royal Never Give Up, taking home first place at the Mid-Season Invitational, Korea’s top teams are sure to want to take the Rift Rivals crown.

Just like last year, the tournament will feature four teams from each of the three competing regions. The teams themselves were chosen based on their top four finishes during each region’s Spring Split competition.

• LCK: KING-ZONE DragonX, Afreeca Freecs, kt Rolster, SK telecom T1
• LPL: Royal Never Give Up, Edward Gaming, Rogue Warriors, Invictus Gaming
• LMS: Flash Wolves, G-Rex, MAD Team, Machi Esports

During the Group Stage, which will open the tournament, each team will face off against equally-ranked opponents from the other regions — meaning that each number one seed will play the other number one seeds, each number two seed will play the number two seeds and so on. The region that comes out of the Group Stage with the most wins will gain automatic entry in to the finals, while the other two teams will have to compete in the knockout stage.

During the knockout stage, both the finals and semifinals will be best of five blind relays. This means that each region will select a team to play in a game during the series and the first region to get three victories in the series wins. No team can play more than once in the series until all the other teams have played, meaning that game five is the only way we could see a team a second time in one series.

The 2018 LCK/LPL/LMS Rift Rivals tournament will be held at the Dalian Sports Center Stadium in Dalian, China from July 5-8. Each match will be watchable on Riot Games’ Twitch and YouTube channels, as well as on lolesports.com.

Schedule

Group Stage

Thursday, July 5

• Royal Never Give Up vs Flash Wolves, 4 a.m. EST
• Invictus Gaming vs Machi Esports, 5 a.m. EST
• Edward Gaming vs Afreeca Freecs, 6 a.m. EST
• kt Rolster vs MAD Team, 7 a.m. EST
• SK telecom T1 vs Machi Esports, 8 a.m. EST
• Rogue Warriors vs kt Rolster, 9 a.m. EST

Friday, July 6

• Edward Gaming vs G-Rex, 2 a.m. EST
• KING-ZONE DragonX vs Flash Wolves, 3 a.m. EST
• Rogue Warriors vs MAD Team, 4 a.m. EST
• Invictus Gaming vs SK telecom T1, 5 a.m. EST
• Afreeca Freecs vs G-Rex, 6 a.m. EST
• Royal Never Give Up vs KING-ZONE DragonX, 7 a.m. EST

Semifinals

Saturday, July 7

• Machi Esports vs KING-ZONE DragonX, 4 a.m. EST
• SK telecon T1 vs Flash Wolves, 5 a.m. EST
• G-Rex vs kt Rolster, 6 a.m. EST

Finals

Sunday, July 8

• kt Rolster vs Invictus Gaming, 4 a.m. EST
• Royal Never Give Up vs SK telecom T1, 5 a.m. EST
• Afreeca Freecs vs Edward Gaming, 6 a.m. EST
• Rogue Warriors vs KING-ZONE DragonX, 7 a.m. EST
• Royal Never Give Up vs Afreeca Freecs, 8 a.m. EST

Winners: LPL