Worlds 2026 quarterfinals — BLG dismantle Dplus KIA to book their semifinal spot

Better drafts, better hands

BLG won this series in two ways. They drafted better, and when the draft was not in their favour, they simply outplayed DK.

The opener showed the first side of it. DK started well, with Lucid's Qiyana building an early lead of around 1,500 gold, but their double-assassin composition had a hole in it. BLG flexed Cassiopeia to the bot lane for Park "Viper" Do-hyeon and last-picked Galio for Zhuo "Knight" Ding, giving themselves a dive core and enough peel to keep Qiyana and Akali away from their backline. The Rift Herald fight turned the game, with Peng "XUN" Li-Xun dodging Qiyana's ultimate on Naafiri on his way to a triple kill, and from there every fight became unwinnable for DK.

On Game two DK had a better draft than the previous one, with Kennen up top and three lanes with priority. It barely lasted ten minutes. Around the bot-side scuttle, Viper found a Flash and blind Q over the wall on Ezreal for first blood, and suddenly BLG's draft worked. ON's Leona engages kept punishing Lucid every time he overcommitted on Jarvan IV, and even with a modest gold lead, BLG won every teamfight that mattered.

The third game was the most brutal. Chen "Bin" Ze-Bin got Jax and turned the top lane into a chasm. DK's dive on him backfired into a double kill, and the solo kills on Siwoo's Olaf kept coming. DK did find a window when they aced BLG around the Rift Herald, but they wasted it by taking the Herald away from the third dragon, and the next fight handed BLG the dragon and three kills. A late fight around the fourth dragon, which DK chose to take instead of resetting, sealed it.

Standouts and stumbles

Viper and XUN were the two players who stood above everyone else. Viper beat Smash in all three games and showed his range from Cassiopeia to Ezreal and Lucian, mixing patience and aggression in every fight. His blind Q on Ezreal in the bot lane remains one of the best plays of the series.

XUN outclassed Lucid from the early game to the late game, sometimes giving up farm for dragons but always arriving in fights where it counted. Around them, Knight won the mid lane battle across the series, ON came up big on engages, and Bin, quiet early on, finished the series with a dominant Jax game. DK never found the level that had carried them through the Swiss Stage, a run built in part on late-game comebacks rather than full control. Lucid, already seen as the team's weak point before the series, struggled to turn his early leads into anything and forced engages that BLG punished every time. Siwoo was beaten badly in the top lane, Shin "Smash" Geum-jae, one of the pillars of DK's season, disappeared against Viper, and Heo "ShowMaker" Su won his lane in game two but never turned it into pressure elsewhere. Add a third-game draft that left DK with immobile carries against a composition built to pick them off, and the outcome was logical.

Lucid did not look for excuses. Speaking to DPM Esports after the defeat, DK's jungler took much of it on himself:

What's next

For DK, a top-eight finish remains an honourable result for a young roster, even if the manner of this exit will sting after such a strong Swiss Stage. BLG, meanwhile, have now swept aside two LCK teams in a row, after Hanwha Life Esports in Round 5, and look every bit a title contender again.

They will face the winner of tonight's quarterfinal between T1 and Karmine Corp. If T1 come through, it will be a rematch of the Worlds 2024 final, which T1 won 3-2. If it is Karmine Corp instead, BLG would face a team they already beat in the Swiss Stage, with KC looking for revenge on their first Worlds run.