The League of Legends World Championship, 2011 onwards

The SK Telecom years

Three titles in four years, with Faker in the mid lane for all of them, is the closest thing League has to a founding myth. The 2013 roster (Impact, Bengi, Faker, Piglet, PoohManDu) and the 2015 one (MaRin, Bengi, Faker, Bang, Wolf) share only Faker and Bengi, which is the detail that separates people who watched from people who read about it.

The run ended in 2017 with a reverse sweep in the final by Samsung Galaxy — a roster largely rebuilt from the 2014 Samsung Blue and White line-ups, which is one of the era's neatest circles.

China's breakthrough

Invictus Gaming in 2018 and FunPlus Phoenix in 2019 ended six consecutive Korean titles, and both did it by beating a European finalist. Those two years are the reason the 2018 Fnatic and 2019 G2 rosters are so heavily quizzed: Europe's best modern teams are defined by finals they lost.

The modern superteams

DAMWON's 2020 title introduced the roster template still in use — Nuguri, Canyon, ShowMaker, Ghost, BeryL — and DRX's 2022 run remains the most improbable, a fourth seed that qualified through play-ins and beat T1 in a five-game final with Deft and BeryL.

T1's back-to-back wins in 2023 and 2024 with the same five (Zeus, Oner, Faker, Gumayusi, Keria) closed the loop: eleven years after his first title, Faker was on the most dominant roster in the game again.

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