Every LEC rookie award winner from 2019 to today

Europe has handed out a rookie trophy in every season since the league rebranded in 2019. Eleven players have won it. The format behind the award has changed twice in that time, and the bar for winning it has moved with it — here is every winner, most recent first, and who is in line to become the twelfth.

How the LEC rookie award works

The award began as Rookie of the Split. Between 2019 and 2022 the LEC handed one out at the end of Spring and again at the end of Summer. The three-split calendar arrived in 2023, and the LEC switched to a single annual Rookie of the Year.

Riot tightened the criteria ahead of 2025 and kept them for 2026. A player must be active in the LEC at the time of the vote, must have competed in at least two of the season's three splits, and must have played at least half of each split's scheduled games. They can only appear in one rookie vote in their career, cannot have been eligible for one in another region, and must not have competed in more than four splits overall. Anyone debuting in Summer rolls over to the following year's ballot, since the vote closes as soon as Summer ends.

A panel of pro players, team staff, journalists, broadcast partners and on-air talent ranks the candidates, and the totals decide the winner.

Every LEC rookie winner, from the most recent

2025 — Caliste "Caliste" Henry-Hennebert, Karmine Corp

Caliste won an LEC title in his first split and became the youngest champion in the league's history doing it. Karmine Corp then reached the First Stand final. He closed the year with a 60.6% win rate, a 5.4 KDA, 9.8 CS per minute and 741 damage per minute.

The most contested vote of the eleven, and still a landslide: 28 first-place ballots out of 38, ahead of a Rudy "SkewMond" Semaan who finished the same rookie season with the Summer MVP, the Summer title and a Worlds quarter-final. On trophies alone SkewMond had the better second half.

2024 — Adam "Jackies" Jeřábek, GiantX

Jackies won an annual award, meaning he was judged across three splits, while carrying a team that gave him nothing back. As a signal of individual quality it is one of the strongest cases on this list. As a debut year it comes with no team result attached.

2023 — Martin "Yike" Sundelin, G2 Esports

The biggest raw haul of any winner here. Yike took Winter, Summer and the Season Finals in his first year, and G2 were the best Western team at MSI 2023. Théo "Sheo" Borile at Team BDS and Óscar "Oscarinin" Muñoz Jiménez at Fnatic finished behind him, neither close enough to make it a debate.

2022 Summer — Lee "JeongHoon" Jeong-hoon, Astralis

The most circumstantial winner of the eleven. JeongHoon only entered the roster after the mid-season break, the field was down to four rookies across the whole split, and Astralis moved from tenth to ninth. He beat a thin field over a short sample.

2022 Spring — Lucjan "Shlatan" Ahmad, Misfits

The Spring was strong. Misfits finished third in the regular season at 12-6, and Shlatan took the ballot comfortably at 107 points to the 85 of G2's Victor "Flakked" Lirola, with William "UNF0RGIVEN" Nieminen and Mertai "Mersa" Sari also in the field. Then Summer fell apart. Judged over the full year rather than the split that won him the trophy, it reads thinner than the vote did at the time.

2021 Summer — Adam "Adam" Maanane, Fnatic

Adam arrived from Karmine Corp in LFL for a reported €240,000 and walked into a Fnatic side mid-rebuild, with Gabriël "Bwipo" Rau moving off top lane and into the jungle to clear the seat for him. He finished the split with more kills than any other top laner in the league and ended the year at Worlds. The big picture is thinner than the seasons above, but the level was real.

2021 Spring — Javier "Elyoya" Prades Batalla, MAD Lions

No debut year in LEC history comes close. Elyoya won both LEC titles available to him in 2021, reached the MSI semi-finals, then survived the first four-way tie in Worlds group stage history to reach the quarter-finals. He was doing it on a young roster with no veteran to lean on. The trophies and the individual level arrived in the same twelve months, and SK Gaming's Erik "Treatz" Wessén finished second without ever threatening the result.

2020 Summer — Labros "Labrov" Papoutsakis, Team Vitality

Labrov won the award despite his team's poor record across the split, on the role where individual impact is hardest to isolate from the players around him.

2020 Spring — Iván "Razork" Martín, Misfits

A solid year on a playoff team, with no peaks and no collapses. That consistency is rarer on this list than it sounds. Misfits never reached an international event, which caps how far the season can be pushed.

2019 Summer — Kacper "Inspired" Słoma, Rogue

Half a season, on a Rogue side that made playoffs without threatening anyone. Inspired became one of Europe's best junglers soon afterwards, and it is worth separating that from the year in question. The debut itself was promising rather than dominant.

2019 Spring — Oskar "Selfmade" Boderek, SK Gaming

The first winner, and immediate. Selfmade took the MVP in the opening match of the LEC era, beating Fnatic with SK, and dragged a modest roster into Spring playoffs through a sixth-place tiebreaker. Fnatic signed him at the end of the year, which tells you what the market thought of him. No international run to point to.

Who wins LEC Rookie of the Year in 2026

Thirteen rookies made their LEC debut in the opening event of 2026, a figure inflated by the two ERL sides invited to LEC Versus. Two names carry the race.

Rhilech is the frontrunner. NAVI's Turkish jungler lost two seasons to visa problems before reaching the LEC, then took the game MVP on his opening day in Spring against Movistar KOI. He plays a carry-first style and NAVI hand him the map.

Jopa has carried himself at SK Gaming. He produced in Versus and again in Spring, on a roster that gave him very little to work with — Mihael "Mikyx" Mehle included, with the veteran support well below his usual standards.

Riot crown the rookie of the year in the closing days of Summer, before the split has run its course.