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The Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC), an EMEA Regional League (ERL) for the Nordics, UK and Ireland, has announced changes to the league for 2025 and 2026.
These changes, which include a new format and an adjustment to its pyramid, were detailed in a video posted on X.
The first change will see the league change to a three-split system that will end in a season finale, a change that has been applied across all Riot Games ERLs. The league will also adopt the fearless draft system, which will be introduced to the NLC in the Winter Split 2025.
In addition to the new format, the number of teams competing in the NLC will increase from eight to 10. According to the NLC, this is to ensure that all the regions included in the competition are represented in the league.
Splits will now be broken up into two stages over a seven-week period, the first of which is a seeding stage and the second is a playoff stage. The first stage is a two-group round-robin format with teams seeded based on the last split, then the second stage will take place from week two to seven and is one double-elimination bracket.
The biggest change is that Division 2 of the NLC has been completely removed. The idea behind this is to make the National Leagues, which now sit directly below Division 1, more impactful. To compensate for the lack of Division 2, the NLC has announced a yearly promotional tournament.
On the back of some rather big changes for the league system, the announcement also stated that 2025 will be a transitional year and in 2026 current NLC teams will compete in each of their respective National Leagues alongside NLC Division 1.
The final announcement was the introduction of NLC roadshows, which see the league have in-person events across the involved countries.
This announcement comes less than two years after the announcement of the new divisions in the NLC and follows the recent news that Bulldog Esports will be returning to the NLC after acquiring Irish esports organisation Nativz’s spot.
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