Worlds 2026 ticket chaos sparks outrage as “Fan First” tickets scalped

Bad news for those planning to watch the League of Legends World Championship 2026 live in the US this year as the amount of tickets for the event has shrunk dramatically in just a few days.

That’s because a series of issues with the presale and general sale of tickets has meant that a large portion of tickets have been snapped up by scalpers, and only a tiny amount have been released for general sale. Here’s how the ticketing disaster shaped up:

Worlds tickets disaster as scalpers hawk "Fan First" spots

Riot Games released details of their ticket sales for Worlds 2026 on May 28, or as we reported, Remember to sign-up a month before to get a Worlds 2026 ticket because nothing is ever simple. And while the details of sale process claimed to be designed to combat bots and scalpers, the reality was far different.

“Fan First” signups began on June 1 and continued for the entire month, with fans able to link their Riot Account with a Ticket Master account, verify said account, and potentially be locked in for a ticket.

However, when Fan First tickets went live on July 22, long queues and a near instant sell out were reported by fans. Within hours, tickets appeared on Stubhub and other resale sites for over $1,000, a dramatic increase in price.

It appears that Riot’s Fan First program hadn’t taken into account elements such as account age in its verification allowing large numbers of scalpers into the system. In response, Riot Games released a statement explaining why many fans who applied for the Fan First system didn’t even receive an invite to buy a ticket:

“Rather than placing every verified fan into a single queue, we distributed ticket access through a draw system among verified accounts. We also should have communicated the outcome to all registered fans, rather than leaving many of you waiting and refreshing your inbox for an eligibility email.

We’ll have a second wave of tickets available at the end of August. We're currently reevaluating the ticket distribution process based on your feedback and we plan to share more information on any updates to the process along with when tickets will go on sale.”

However more chaos emerged at the general sale on July 24. During that, it emerged that only around 450 tickets were released for this sale, with customers claiming that in a queue of around 300-500 people they weren’t able to get one.

Unconfirmed reports from ticketing insiders have painted a dismal picture. Thousands of tickets allocated for hidden presales to devs, Tencent corporate partners, and influences. Influence presales were also reportedly abysmal.

The ticket fiasco has created a lot of frustrated fans, and many have pointed out that Riot Games could simply ban or revoke tickets linked to scalping (especially given the Fan First sale explicitly made fans link their accounts).

Thankfully for fans seeking tickets, there’s reportedly a second sale happening at the end of August. With the above reports suggesting around 7,000 tickets were allocated for these July sales, over 50% of the tickets remain unsold. At the time of writing no date for this second sale was given. Hopefully fans will be able to secure tickets given this second chance.