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World Championship
An upset needs two things: a heavy favourite and a result nobody had modelled. That second part is why the list below is shorter than most. Beating a first seed is not an upset if the region was in decline that year, and a five-game series between two evenly matched sides is a good series rather than a shock.
These four clear the bar. Each one removed a team that was expected to win the tournament.
1. DRX, Worlds 2022
DRX did not look like a Worlds team in September and won the whole thing in November. They arrived as the LCK's fourth seed, through the regional qualifier.
They went undefeated through the play-in stage, then topped their group at 4-2 on a tiebreaker against Rogue. That set up a quarter-final against EDward Gaming, the defending world champions. DRX lost the first two games, including one where EDG's inhibitor respawned with Deft a single auto-attack from ending it. They won the next three. It was the second reverse sweep in the history of the tournament.
The semi-final was supposed to be a formality for Gen.G, the LCK's first seed, who had beaten DRX in thirteen straight games that year. Most predictions had it 3-0. DRX lost game one and took the next three.
They beat T1 in the final, with Hwang "Kingen" Seong-hoon named tournament MVP. No team that started in the play-in stage had ever reached a Worlds final, let alone won one.
2. G2 Esports 3-2 Royal Never Give Up, quarter-finals 2018
Royal Never Give Up had won everything available to them in 2018: the LPL, MSI, the Asian Games. They were the favourites to take the title, and became the outright favourites earlier that same day when KT Rolster went out to Invictus Gaming. G2 came in as Europe's third seed and had never made it out of a Worlds group stage.
RNG won game one comfortably, with Jian "Uzi" Zi-Hao dominating the bot lane exactly as expected. G2 took game two, RNG took game three, G2 forced a fifth. In the decider, Luka "Perkz" Perković was left the last pick and took LeBlanc into Ryze. He finished 11/0/4 in a 39-minute win.
It sent G2 to the first semi-final in the organisation's history, where Invictus Gaming beat them 0-3.
3. KT Rolster, Worlds 2025
Gen.G came into Worlds 2025 having won the LCK, MSI and the Esports World Cup, on the back of a season that had them one trophy away from a clean sweep of everything they entered. KT Rolster came in as the LCK's third seed, with the lowest power-ranking grades of any Korean team at the event.
KT went 3-0 through the Swiss stage, then swept CTBC Flying Oyster 3-0 in the quarter-finals to reach their first Worlds semi-final. The semi-final against Gen.G was expected to end their run. It ended Gen.G's instead, 3-1, with Gwak "Bdd" Bo-seong finishing the series at 24/9/24.
It was KT's first Worlds final since the organisation entered League of Legends in 2012. They lost it 3-2 to T1, who took a third consecutive world title and a sixth overall.
4. Albus NoX Luna, Worlds 2016
Albus NoX Luna barely qualified. The CIS side had to get past Lyon Gaming in the International Wildcard qualifier, and the draw then put them in a group with the ROX Tigers, G2 Esports and Counter Logic Gaming — the Korean first seed, the European first seed and North America's second.
ROX Tigers beat them in under thirty minutes on day one. ANX then beat CLG and G2 in the same week, and went into week two level at the top of the group. The rematch with ROX ran 66 minutes. ROX stole two Barons. ANX kept taking inhibitors anyway, and finished the game with support player Likkrit as the last man standing against four opponents.
Before that tournament, no wildcard team had won more than two games at a World Championship. ANX won four, finished 4-2, and became the first wildcard side to reach the quarter-finals — against the team most analysts had ranked as the best in the world. The run ended there. H2k swept them 3-0.
Why Worlds keeps producing them
Three of these four runs ended in defeat one round later. Albus NoX were swept by H2k, G2 were swept by Invictus Gaming, KT lost the final. Upsets rarely produce champions — they produce a hole in the bracket that somebody else walks through.
DRX are the exception, and the reason their 2022 run sits at the top of every list of this kind. Beating the defending champions, the first seed and the tournament favourite in consecutive series has been done once.
The format keeps the door open. The Swiss stage that replaced groups in 2023 gives underdogs multiple routes to the knockouts, and a best-of-five is short enough that a single draft advantage can decide it.
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