Industry · esports
China's Four LPL Teams All Lost on Day One of Worlds 2026. That Has Never Happened Before.
In Swiss Stage round one, IG fell to Gen.G, TES to Hanwha Life, BLG to Movistar KOI and AL to Karmine Corp. Korea's LCK went 3-0, including a Dplus Kia comeback from a 0-7 kill deficit.
The table this is written from: /esports-games
Four Chinese teams entered the first round of the 2026 League of Legends World Championship Swiss Stage on 24 October. All four lost. It is the first time the LPL has gone winless on the opening day of a Worlds group or Swiss stage.
Korea’s LCK went the other way. Gen.G, Hanwha Life Esports and Dplus Kia all won, and two of those wins came directly at China’s expense.
Two Korea-China matches, two Korean wins
Gen.G opened the tournament against Invictus Gaming at 02:00 KST and spent the early game behind. IG’s Rookie took first blood on Aurora, killing Canyon’s Kayn, and a fight at the void grubs cost Gen.G both Kiin’s Ornn and Ruler’s Corki. Ten minutes in, Gen.G trailed by 2,000 gold.
The turn came in the mid lane. Gen.G killed Aurora, then stacked dragons to erase the gold gap. Canyon’s Kayn and Chovy’s Akali cut down IG’s carries in sequence. With the dragon soul and a Baron buff in hand, Gen.G destroyed the IG Nexus at 26 minutes.
An hour later Hanwha Life beat Top Esports in 23 minutes, and that game was one-sided from the start. Jungler Kanavi drew first blood on Nocturne, killing TES’s ADC Jackeylove on Ezreal. TES answered a mid-lane dive to level things briefly, but the Rift Herald fight swung it back. At the third dragon, mid laner Zeka hit a triple kill on Rokro. He finished the game in double digits.
The upsets that completed the sweep
The other two Chinese teams lost to Europe. At 04:00 KST, Movistar KOI — the LEC’s second seed — beat Bilibili Gaming, a title contender whose roster includes Bin, Knight and Korean ADC Viper (Park Do-hyun). MKOI took early objectives, conceded the first elder dragon, then claimed the second to close out a long game. Their ADC, Supa, stood out.
At 05:00, Karmine Corp beat Anyone’s Legend by a 12-4 kill margin. Korean top laner Kanna (Kim Chang-dong) decided it with a quadra kill on Jax.
LEC teams went 2-0 against the LPL on the day.
Dplus Kia came back from 0-7
The fifth match was the day’s largest deficit overturned. Dplus Kia lost the opening dragon fight, lost their bottom duo in it, and watched the kill score run to 0-7 as G2’s Hans Sama killed Siwoo’s Olaf on Kalista and took another dragon.
Then one fight ended it. DK won a late teamfight at the dragon pit behind Siwoo’s Olaf, walked into the G2 base and destroyed the Nexus early in the 30th minute. G2 had led for almost the entire game and lost all of it at once.
The two teams have history. G2 knocked DK out of the Swiss Stage in round one in 2023. This year DK had already beaten them 2-0 at the Esports World Cup in July, and now again at Worlds.
What it means for round two
The Swiss Stage sends a team to the quarter-finals at three wins and eliminates it at three losses. All four LPL teams now sit at 0-1 and will be eliminated by two more losses. Gen.G, Hanwha Life and Dplus Kia sit at 1-0.
Where these numbers come from
Sources
- Jungbu Maeil — Match reports on Worlds 2026 Swiss Stage round one, published 24 October 2026 KST: Gen.G vs IG and Hanwha Life vs TES; BLG vs Movistar KOI and AL vs Karmine Corp; Dplus Kia vs G2. · https://www.jbnews.com/news/articleList.html?view_type=sm
What we checked
- All round-one matches were best-of-one (Bo1), played at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas.
- Times in this article are Korea Standard Time (KST). Texas is 14 hours behind Korea, so the matches that began on 23 October locally fall on 24 October in Korea.
- Gen.G beat IG in 26 minutes after trailing by 2,000 gold at the 10-minute mark.
- Hanwha Life beat TES in 23 minutes; mid laner Zeka reached double-digit kills, including a triple kill at the third dragon.
- Dplus Kia beat G2 after falling behind 0-7 in kills, winning a late dragon fight and destroying the Nexus early in the 30th minute.
- Karmine Corp beat AL 12-4 in kills; Korean top laner Kanna (Kim Chang-dong) recorded a quadra kill on Jax.
- Swiss Stage format: three wins advance to the knockout quarter-finals, three losses eliminate.
What we left out, and why
- The 08:00 and 09:00 KST matches (Los Grandes vs T1, Team Secret Whales vs LYON) — results were not confirmed at the time of writing.
- Round two pairings — the Swiss system matches teams on equal records, and the pairings had not been published when this was written.
- Viewership, prize money and betting figures — not measured.
- Why LPL underperformed. We report the results, not an explanation for them.
The data behind this
Written from the same data
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