Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) Announces New Divisions For UK and Nordics

By Tit Krajnik

18 Jul 2023

Tit Krajnik 18 Jul 2023

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The Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) announces a new competitive format
Regional LoL leagues return and replace NLC Division III and IV
Sign-ups start today

League of Legends competition (Getty Images)

The Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) announced an expansion for its lower divisions to create more opportunities for players and improve the environment of the Nordic and UK League of Legends competitive ecosystem. The news got announced on Tuesday, July 18, and will come into effect following the conclusion of the summer split.

Following the conclusion of this split, the Northern League of Legends Championship (NLC) will move to a new tournament structure featuring five regions in Northern Europe with separate lower-division leagues.

As a result, the third and fourth divisions of the NLC will be dissolved, with the teams who previously competed in them needing to apply to compete in one of the five new NLC National Leagues – in Ireland, the UK, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. Meanwhile, the current structure of NLC Divisions 1 and 2 will not change.

With the new tournament system, League of Legends teams will fight in their regional leagues and work their way through the NLC ranks. This change comes two years after the NLC scrapped the national leagues in favour of NLC having its own division.

LoL National Leagues:

UK/Ireland – UKEL
Finland – Finnhouse
Sweden – Svenska Online Ligaen
Denmark – Leagues.gg
Norway – GoodGame.no

The regional leagues will work similarly to the current NLC structure. Currently, there are eight teams in NLC Division 1, ten in Division II, and 40 in Divisions III and IV. The returning regional leagues will also be divided into two divisions, with the second division featuring more teams to accommodate the expected high number of groups that'll sign up to compete in the league.

The national leagues will feed into the NLC Division 2, which is the primary path into Division 1 and the EMEA Masters, which is the highest level of LoL competition in Europe, outside of the LoL EMEA Championship (LEC).

After each split, the top two teams from NLC Division 2 will get invited into NLC Regional Promotion Series, where they'll fight with the top two teams from each regional league for two tickets leading into NLC Division II for the next split.

Along with the announcement of the new competitive format, NLC also revealed the sign-up dates:

Norway and Sweden – start on Tuesday, July 18
Finland and Denmark – start on Wednesday, July 19
UK and Ireland – start on Monday, July 31

"Our aim is to give players towards the bottoms of the pyramids additional flexibility with timings for games so that players can organise, play and compete on a schedule that works better for them," said Will Attwood, Competitive Experience Manager at Riot Games.

"This new competitive system means that teams who want to play together can also compete together. We hope that by doing so, we can help foster these growing communities and local competition."

The regional leagues' first split (Autumn) is set to start in late August.