Riot director reconfirms NA as 2022 League of Legends World Championship host

Tom Martell, Riot Games’ director of operations for global esports, has suggested that plans to bring the League of Legends World Championship back to North America are still in place.

The Riot director reacted on Twitter to the announcement that the 2021 World Championship has been relocated from China to Europe by saying that he hopes for a “COVID-free event planning cycle for Worlds in North America next year.”

North American fans have been eagerly waiting for the return of international League of Legends to the region for several years. The last time that North America hosted the World Championship was in 2016, with a multi-city tour that included San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.

North America was granted the rights to host the 2022 World Championship after Riot decided to relocate the 2021 event from this region to China because of the global health crisis.

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However, Riot’s plans to hold the illustrious competition in China for the second year in a row – this time with a country tour after a 2020 single-city bubble format in Shanghai – ended up being scrapped over fears that not all teams would be able to attend the tournament.

Riot has not yet announced where exactly the 2021 event will be taking place. With the event just a month away, John Needham, Riot’s head of global esports, says that more information will be released in the coming weeks.

With the 2021 event being moved away from China, there were fears that this would impact the 2022 stop. But it seems that, at least for now, North American fans have reasons to be optimistic.