T1 won the 2026 MSI Play-In: It was the most pointless competitive stage I’ve ever seen

It’s finally over, and after four days of utterly pointless games that did little but manage to humiliate three separate regional fan bases, the 2026 Mid-Season Invitational Play-In Stage is over with T1, in the least exciting outcome ever, claiming victory.

While LoL as an esports whole cries out desperately for more international competition, instead of its isolated islands of regional scrapping, it’s a sad fact that more often than not when these balkanized regions actually do meet in a competitive setting, they enact brutal stomps of little consequence. T1 won, and even managed to secure a highlight-reel Penta Kill, giving fans in person at least something to cheer for.

But after all is said and done, this was a stage with no result other than a 3-0. A stage where the only team not from the top-four regional leagues reportedly struggled to find scrims. The only interesting outcome at all was a 3-0 where we discovered that the Karmine Corp that we’d all be confusing for a top-tier team let the mask slip away to reveal its true self as mostly a regional power. A poor stage and not a great omen heading into the rest of MSI. But what’s there to do?

MSI has always struggled, and if it’s already broken, you can certainly break it some more

The Mid-Season Invitational was added to the LoL esports calendar in 2015 as a kind of vague admission that international clashes were indeed the height of competition, but seemingly without much thought beyond that. The rough idea of MSI was that it would be some kind of litmus test for each region in the middle of a season (hence the name), and not all the teams that would eventually go to Worlds that year would make it.

Perhaps because of its vague concept, a need for another date on a calendar rather than some solid part of an overall competitive scene, MSI has never had a coherent form. It’s never had the same format for more than two consecutive years. And about nine years into its existence they added the wrinkle that the winner would get a qualification to Worlds, an absence that made the preceding years even more bizarre to think about.

But the worst victim of this lack of actual competitive identity has to be the Play-In stage. A couple of years into its existence, Riot Games decided not all the regional teams could compete against each other as this would be bad, for some reason. So regional lower seeds, leagues not in the top-four most-viewed, etc. would be part of a separate Play-In to earn a spot at the main event.

For most years, two or three teams advanced from this Play-In. But for whatever reason in 2025, there were even less spots, and only one team could qualify. What’s resulted has been the most dull and predictable bracket of competitive LoL I’ve watched in years. A stage of competition best viewed on a second screen while doing something else (perhaps watching highlights of Doublelift's retirement home tournament, which was far more exciting viewing).

What’s perhaps most frustrating about this is the fact that in other aspects, Riot Games is finally kowtowing to common sense to make this event better. In 2023, for MSI, the company finally gave up its perverted obsession with single elimination brackets (if only it adopts the same for Worlds going forward, we might be onto something special). But for now, all they’ve managed to do is take one of the few opportunities for international competition in LoL esports calendar and make it the viewing equivalent of melatonin.

Ideally the rest of the event picks up steam. As a viewer we can only hope.