Davide Xu is a freelance writer at Esports Insider focused on League of Legends esports. He covers everything inside and outside the Rift—especially when it comes to European and Asian competitive scenes. With a finance background and a multicultural lens, he loves talking about business as much as macro.
Olivia Richman is a seasoned esports journalist who has worked with Inven Global, Esports Illustrated, Esports.gg, and more. As an editor and writer at Esports Insider, she loves telling unique esports stories, especially within the FGC. When not working and gaming, Olivia loves collecting Kirby plush, eating sushi, and driving her cars at the track.
Image Credit: Liu Yicun/Riot Games For years, the script on the League of Legends esports international stage has been the same: China and Korea battle it out for the top spots, with one Western team barely keeping up.
The Mid-Season Invitational 2026 completely threw that script away, partially rewriting the storylines for the second part of the season.
Yes, a Korean team still won the tournament, and it was still an LPL vs LCK final, but both the LEC and the LCS put up some great fights and achieved results that were still unthinkable less than half a year ago. While it has been an uphill battle for so many years, the West is gradually crawling back into contention.
Introduced at the start of 2025, Fearless Draft has been one of the key changes behind the spectacular series we’ve had so far.
The increased champion diversity not only makes each match more exciting to watch, but it also forces teams to completely transform their approach to drafting.
It’s no longer required to stick to playing all the meta champions immediately: teams can take advantage of the specific themes around team compositions to make their choices, but also counter them. This is where the creative picks come into play, and having them ready means you have more cards to play in the draft.
“Fearless is definitely bringing out a new side to competitive play,” said a user on Reddit . “The West brings out so many unique picks and strategies, and it was amazing to watch the games.”
The unique picks are what allowed G2 Esports to take down T1 at MSI. By utilizing Sergen “BrokenBlade” Çelik ’s pocket picks like Yasuo, Kled, and Cho’Gath, T1 found themselves on the back foot the moment they stepped onto Summoner’s Rift. G2 had already done that earlier in the year at First Stand, when they beat Gen.G.
Image Credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games The strongest LCK and LPL teams still have strong fundamentals and the talent to play consistently at a high level, but they are also less likely to take risks with unconventional picks. In particular, Korean teams have traditionally preferred to refine what they already know works.
While this approach produces an incredibly high floor, it can also bite them back whenever there’s a major meta shift before the start of the tournament, like MSI this year.
Fearless Draft is not the only factor at play. Western teams are also slowly improving their fundamentals.
Since 2020, the West has struggled to master the fundamentals, often leading to losing game states in the first few minutes. A poor trade or a bad-timed recall could turn into a major lead for Eastern teams, which would then snowball the game out of control.
Now, most teams, including teams from weaker regions like CBLOL , can match the top Eastern teams in the first 10 to 15 minutes. While you could argu…