Get PremiumEight teams enter playoffs this Saturday, fighting for two MSI spots
The LPL 2026 Split 2 regular season closed on May 17. Bilibili Gaming
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LPL Split 2 Playoffs Preview — BLG paces the field, NIP rewrites the bracket
Eight teams enter playoffs this Saturday, fighting for two MSI spots
The LPL 2026 Split 2 regular season closed on May 17. Bilibili Gaming
The top 4 of Group Ascend — BLG, JDG, AL, TES — are seeded directly into the eight-team Knockout Stage. The 5th to 8th of Ascend (NIP, WBG, IG, WE) drop into Knights Rivals, where they face the top 4 of Group Nirvana (LNG, TT, EDG, LGD) in single Bo5s with Hard Fearless Draft. The four winners advance to the Knockout Stage and the four others are eliminated. The two grand finalists qualify for MSI 2026 in Daejeon — both with a direct bye to the Bracket Stage, courtesy of BLG's First Stand title.
Bilibili Gaming is the most complete roster in the region. Knight has been in MVP form and is arguably one of — if not — the best player in the world right now. Support ON has been a regular in the league's All-Pro discussion alongside him — an angle that gets overlooked because the spotlight stays mid.
The two series BLG dropped to NIP during the regular season read as careless rather than diagnostic — a regular-season team coasting through Bo3s it did not need to win. In Bo5 with playoff stakes, no roster in the region projects to match them. One of the two MSI seats is effectively spoken for.
Anyone's Legend lines up Flandre, Tarzan, Shanks, Hope and Kael. Flandre has been the team's most consistent piece, anchoring the top side with the form that carried AL to a Worlds 2025 quarterfinal. Bo5 experience matters here, and AL has the most of it among the contenders.
JD Gaming finished second at 9-5. JunJia has been the engine in most wins. A team that had finished second on the first split, JDG are still one of the most credible challenger for the second MSI seat.
Top Esports weathered the worst-case scenario. Losing naiyou to a lifetime ban on March 27 should have collapsed the project. Signing Tian — a Worlds 2019 champion — stabilized the jungle, and TES locked 4th in Ascend to avoid Knights Rivals entirely. Whether the chemistry holds across five Bo5s is the open question.
Ninjas in Pyjamas were promoted into Group Ascend for Split 2 and widely expected to struggle. Instead they took a 2-0 series off Anyone's Legend, a 2-0 off Bilibili Gaming, and pushed BLG again in the rematch. The mid-jungle pairing of Care and Guwon has matched Knight and XUN on multiple occasions. The botlane of Assum and Zhuo has been the most underrated duo in the league. NIP face EDG in Knights Rivals on May 24 — a series their form should reward, not punish.
Weibo entered Split 2 with one of the most decorated rosters on paper — Elk, Jiejie, Xiaohu. They finished 6-8, sixth in Group Ascend, below NIP. The team has not converted his form into series wins. The Knights Rivals matchup against LGD on May 24 is closer to a coinflip than the roster sheet would suggest — the kind of cliff a “superteam” is not supposed to face.
Team WE (1-13) and Invictus Gaming (5-8) round out the bottom of Ascend. WE is in functional collapse. IG sit far below the team that won the Demacia Cup in preseason.
Thanks to BLG winning First Stand 2026, both LPL representatives skip Play-Ins and head directly to the Bracket Stage in Daejeon. No Play-In for the Chinese region. BLG is the heavy favorite for one of the two seats. The second is genuinely contested — AL, JDG, TES, and the four Knights Rivals survivors.
The wider question is what this LPL is worth internationally. The region's top four is the most credible the league has fielded in two years. It is not, yet, ahead of the LCK's top four of Gen.G, HLE, KT and T1. But it can match them.
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