Riftbound 2027 Premier Play

Source: https://playriftbound.com/en-us/news/organizedplay/riftbound-2027-premier-play/

Published: 2026-10-26

August's State of Play gave a high-level overview of the types of events that make up our 2027 Organized Play program. Today's article is a behemoth with a lot of information about the updates to Riftbound's play systems.

Here's a quick summary of what's in this article:

1. Riftbound Organized Play is continuing to grow in 2027!
2. Riftbound is getting a ranked ladder in 2027, and our top players of each year will earn the "Grandmaster" title.
3. Our four Continentals in 2027 are in Dallas, Melbourne, London, and Toronto.
4. Winners of Challenge Series events will earn a free competitor badge to a Regional.
5. You can earn a competitor badge and qualify for Day 2 of Continentals through consistent top finishes at tournaments, even if they don't earn a badge or invite directly from those tournaments.

There is a lot in this article-the above five things just scratch the surface. This article is one part primer on the system and one part introductory policy document. We've opted to go in-depth here to fully explain each change.

There is also a recurring point in this article that things are not finalized. We're estimating our status to be... roughly 92.6%. What is that number based on? Nothing scientific.

Part of the reason for this is because the Organized Play program is made up of a lot of separate parts and systems that all work together. For example, this article talks about how you can qualify for specific events, which means we have to get into both the events they can qualify for and the events they play in to earn that qualification.

Given the size of this article, we broke out a separate article to talk specifically about the Nexus Cup & Challenger Series tournaments. That article also includes more details about the plans to sunset Summoner Skirmish, and what you can do with any byes they've earned but don't plan to use at Regionals next year. We'll discuss Challenger Series here as well, but mainly with respect to how it connects to the larger play program.

Now, before diving in: if you'd like a refresher, here's a reminder about our core philosophy for Riftbound Organized Play. Skip ahead to the next section if you want to get right into the changes.

One Community. More Ways to Play.

This is our core philosophy for Riftbound's play programs.

We're just a bit shy of 11 months since we held our first RQ in Houston. It's no secret that Riftbound's first year has exceeded our expectations in the best ways possible. Where our first year was about providing events for players; next year is about providing a more robust ecosystem for playing Riftbound.

To do that, as we spoke about during State of Play, we look at our tournaments and events as part of two types of play events: Competitive and 'FUN-petitive'. The distinction between these categories is about the goal of the events and the types of players they are rewarding. All players can play on both sides of this divider, but this distinction is important for us as we design the systems around our play programs.

Competitive events are designed to attract and reward players for, among other things, competing, winning to score points, and standing in victory over their opponents.

Fun-petitive events should have systems which are, well, fun. They should attract and reward players beyond those who are grinding for points. These players want to play the game and socialize with others. Sure, they may be excited to score the winning point, but also aren't unhappy if they just got to use their favorite deck for a few games, win or lose (but probably win).

Both are completely valid reasons to play the game, and as such, we're trying to build our programs to serve both in their own ways.

The paths converge at the most popular store events each set: Pre-Rift Prerelease events and Nexus Nights. These events serve a good combination of both Competitive and Fun-petitive players. Above them, we see the paths diverge.

But, no matter the tournament or event, we get to enjoy the beautiful thing about being a physical Trading Card Game: how Riftbound connects us with others.

Sometimes that connection is fleeting, just existing for the short time that we are sitting across from each other playing a game; other times it is lifelong, such as the bond between a play group that gets together regularly and plays games while telling stories and hanging out together.

Others play as a by-product of their fandom of a certain element of Riftbound, like a specific Legend or Champion, the world of Runeterra, or another part of the League of Legends IP.

This is not to say that you are only a real Riftbound fan if you attend events in person. Far from it. We get that life, geography, and responsibility sometimes makes that difficult.

Whatever the reason you're part of the game, our goal is for there to be some tournament or event for you to enjoy.

By the nature of the program's needs for 2027, the Competitive side has more complexity going on, and we're going to spend most of today discussing it in-depth to give players a good understanding of what the competitive event landscape looks like next year.

2027's Competitive Program

To introduce our plans for 2027, we need to start with an explanation of what we're currently doing for Riftbound's competitive program and why we're changing.

2026 was built as a straightforward system of direct pathing and qualification:

• Winning Summoner Skirmish gave you a bye at a Regional Qualifier.
• Finishing Top 64 at a Regional Qualifier earned you an invite for a Regional Championship.
• Being in the Top 8 at a Regional Championship gets you an invite to the 2026 World Championship Showcase.

It is a program built out of our need for speed; getting up and running during Riftbound's first year.

One of our frustrations with this program is that it defines players' results solely by their top finishes. If you consistently finish outside of the top ranks, you're out of luck; no matter how many times you come close. Until you break through, you may as well not have played. Enjoy your set of steak knives. (This is a movie reference. Neither Riot nor UVS offer steak knives as prizing... Yet?)

For 2027 we are introducing a number of changes which improve the system, starting with two things most gamers are familiar with: Ladder Points and aRanked Ladder for competitive events.

Ladder Points

Ladders are nothing new, especially for Riot. In 2027, every competitive event you play will give you a chance to earn Ladder Points (LP), rewarded based on how you finish. Those ladder points determine your level on Riftbound's Ranked Ladder.

Let's take a look at how we're planning to distribute Ladder Points based on finishes in competitive events.

Important notes:

• We are fairly confident these point values will hold, but this is something which we may still adjust between now and the beginning of 2027.
• For multi-day events such as Regionals and Continentals, you must make Day 2 to earn any points. If they do, they will receive a minimum of 10 points.
• There is a mathematically unlikely situation where if someone finishes a Regional or Continental such that they would receive points by their standing, but it isn't enough to make Day 2, they will receive zero points instead.

The LP you earn accumulates to form your Ladder rank. The rank is not just about bragging rights; it also will bring some benefits, such as early registration for Regionals, but more on that later in this article. As soon as you attain a rank, you unlock some of those benefits immediately, and you'll have them for the current year and through the following year. However, the rank must be maintained to keep your benefits past that.

For example: If you reach Gold in June of 2027, you will immediately become Gold on the Ranked Ladder. When Ladder points reset for 2028, you will retain your Gold benefits. But if at the end of 2028 you have only reached Silver on the Ladder, you will lose Gold benefits, and you'll have Silver benefits heading into 2029 when the Ladder Points reset again.

Ranked Ladder

The Ranked Ladder has five levels (with a secret sixth one...) We aren't ready to share the Ladder Point thresholds for each rank, but to help give context on how we view this Ladder, we're sharing the estimated population size for each rank.

Two notes for the next table:

1. The estimated population in the right column speaks to our intentwith this system. It is not a cap or a definition; it is meant to show the general shape of the rank sizes we are envisioning.
2. These percentage estimates are representative of players who are actively engaging in the competitive play programs and the ladder and not the overall player population as a whole.

We aren't ready to share the complete list of benefits that each rank will receive, but you can expect to see exclusive Promos and other unique swag as the ranks grow.

One benefit that we areready to share with you comes for the top two ranks: Gold & Platinum. Gold or Platinum ranks will have access to a priority registration window for Regionals and Continentals.

Priority Registration for Regionals & Continentals

Every Regional and Continental will have their competitor badges split into two pools. (Note we're exclusively discussing competitor badges for these events.)

• Pool A: competitor badges for purchase by the full Riftbound community.
• Pool B: competitor badges used to fulfill badge needs through qualifications to the event and priority registration windows.

The general structure for this will be that the Pool B portion of the competitor badges will provide competitor badges to everyone who has earned a competitor badge for the event directly, or who has redeemed a "token" for this event.

We go into more detail about what tokens are later in the article, but we will be mentioning them a few more times before the full explanation. The simplified definition is that they are a type of invitation for those who earn them, which gives the player choices on when to redeem them.

Badges remaining in Pool B will also be made available through the early registration windows. 48 hours prior to tickets going on sale for the community, they will be sold to Platinum rank players. 24 hours later they will be sold to Gold rank players. Unsold Pool B badges will be combined with Pool A's competitor badges for the broader community sale.

The method of badge sales for Pool A badges is something we are also still working on. This is not meant to be us presenting the ultimate solution to the frustrations experienced when purchasing event badges this year.

Top Finish Races

We opted not to have your Ladder rank directly qualify you for Continentals or provide badges for Regionals, because doing so incentivizes you to play every possible event. Instead, we're introducing "Top Finish Races." Essentially, these are leaderboards which only count your top finishes at events filtered with specific restrictions.

Across specific sets of time, only certain numbers of top finishes from certain types of events are counted. There are two types of Top Finish Race: 'Seasonal' and 'Annual.' Seasonal refers to a time going from set release to set release, and Annual refers to the calendar year.

This approach promotes healthier play patterns as it allows players who achieve good results to not have to continue competing in every tournament. Essentially, it's our attempt to find the balance between these races being about quality of finish and not quantity.

So what do the Annual and Seasonal Top Finish Races get me?

Seasonal Top Finish Race

The Seasonal Top Finish Race resets with the launch of each new Riftbound set. At that time, we will award Continental Day 2 tokens to the Top 50 players in the Seasonal Top Finish Race who did not already receive a Continental Day 2 token during that same set through other means. As noted earlier, we will explain 'tokens' in more depth soon, for now think of them as an invitation which allows you some agency to choose which event you attend with that invitation.

The Seasonal Top Finish score is calculated by taking the following best results for your:

• Best 3 Challenge Series or Showdown Series ladder point results.
• Best Regional or Continental ladder point result.

Example Seasonal Point Race Result

In the following example, a player has six tournament results that award them Ladder Points, which are relevant for a Seasonal Top Finish race. The bolded rows are the ones which are counted:

Your Seasonal Top Finish score would be: (18 + 30 + 35) + (40) = 123 points.

With The Reckoning's release, the system will look at the top players in the Seasonal Top Finish race right before it resets. It will look only for players who don't already have a Continental Day 2 token, and it will award the Top 50 of those players a Continental Day 2 token.

Annual Top Finish Race

The Annual Top Finish Race follows the above framework, combining the same two groups of finishes, but extends the relevant time period and collects results from more events across the year:

• Best 12 Challenge Series or Showdown Series ladder point results.
• Best 5 Regional or Continental ladder point results.

Those 17 results are added together to determine your Annual Top Finish score, which can earn you invitations to Worlds and, potentially, a Grandmaster title.

At the conclusion of the Annual Top Finish Race:

• The Top 50 players in each Annual Top Finish Race will be awarded the title of Grandmaster.
• Additionally, starting for 2027's World Championships, the Top 50 players in the Annual Top Finish Race not already qualified for Worlds will receive an invite to compete in that tournament.

Riftbound Grandmaster

At the conclusion of each year, starting with the end of 2027, the best 50 players according to the Annual Top Finish Race will be awarded the rank of Grandmaster for the following year.

Grandmasters are a subset of Platinum rank players, and will receive additional benefits. Two of which will be:

• Free competitor badge to all Regionals
• Free competitor badge and Day 2 qualification to all Continentals

Tokens

Tokens are not physical tokens. They are a digital reward in the play system which you can redeem. They are earned for finishes that are above defined thresholds for the type of event you're competing in. Tokens are a tool for you to have some agency over which event you participate in, while keeping some predictability for participation in the event calendar as we plan the schedule.

This is essentially what we were already doing for the Top 64 competitors from each Regional Qualifier, we just didn't have a formal name for it.

There are two types of tokens:

1. Regional tokens.
   1. Regional tokens can be redeemed for a free competitor badge at one of the next 6 Regionals from when the token is earned.
2. Continental Day 2 tokens.
   1. Continental Day 2 tokens can be redeemed for a free invite to Day 2 at one of the next 2 Continentals.

Tokens can be earned by the following finishes:

We're still finalizing policy around these tokens, and there are several situations we expect you to want to understand - such as, if you earn a token at an event, could you use it for an event the following weekend? Or the inverse: If there is an event the following weekend, would that count towards one of the six eligible events you can use your token at? Our team is working on these situations, and they'll be part of the full policy we release before the end of the year.

One of the changes that we are excited for is that the Challenge Series tournaments will offer Regional tokens, where the Summoner Skirmish events provided a bye.

Updated 2027 Regional & Continental Schedule

Here's the full schedule for Continental events in 2027. Below, we'll also get into the last Regional event for Legacy, plus the full regional schedule for The Reckoning. (Past that, there are a few 2027 Regionals that we're still locking in; we'll share the full details on those events at a later date.)

Continentals

These are the marquee events of our Organized Play structure. These tournaments will also be the largest tournament we run of the year, and are being hosted in venues larger than the largest Regional Qualifier events we held in 2026.

Continentals are three-day events open to all, whereas this year's Regional Championships required players to have qualified to compete in them.

While we aren't ready to share full details on the Continentals' tournament structure, we know some of you will want to know how the open event and the Day 2 tokens will interact. The players who compete on Friday and make Day 2 will find their records reset as they are joined by players who have used Day 2 tokens.

We'll dive into this more as we get closer to the event.

Regionals

Regional Qualifiers did a massive amount of work for Riftbound this year, driving excitement and providing regular major tournaments for the community to attend, compete, watch, and rally around. We're not dramatically increasing the number of Regionals going into 2027, but we're increasing the size of these events in very real ways:

• Three-Day Tournaments - Regionals move from only Saturday & Sunday to be Friday-Sunday. (More on this after the schedule.)
• Larger Venues- Every Regional in 2027 is being held in spaces larger than regionally comparable RQs from 2026.

Here is our Regional schedule up through the middle of 2027:

Three-Day Tournament Structure

For 2026, one recurring reality was that Regional Qualifiers were long days of competition. We give huge thanks to the competitors for battling through those long days. Going into 2027, we are moving to start Regional Qualifiers on Friday.

Doing this allows us to make both Friday and Saturday 7 rounds of play, with a top cut for Sunday. You will need a 5-2 record (or better) at the end of Friday to come back and play on Saturday, where you'll compete to advance to Sunday.

The expansion of the tournament to three days does not mean Thursday now becomes an open hall day. We are finalizing logistics, but you should expect Thursday to be for picking up badges and purchasing merch (when the venue permits layouts that allow it outside the main hall).

This impacts things like the Pre-Regionals events, which were mainstays of this year's RQ schedules. We are not moving away from side events, they will remain a major part of these events. As we get closer to our first Regional in Legacy we'll share more information.

Best-Of Prizing

Recently we announced a change in prizing for the 2026 Regional Championships. This change caused many to have questions regarding both those changes and the future of Best-Of prizing.

In addition to these questions, there were also many posts understandably expressing frustration over the timing of the changes.

Regarding the timing of the news, the frustration is completely justified-it would have been better to announce these changes earlier. We regret we weren't able to make this happen and acknowledge the frustration that caused players.

As for the concerns about the future of Best-Ofs, we want to reassure you that this pivot for the Regional Championships does not signify us moving away from Best-Of prizing altogether. We still see it as a powerful element of our competitive tournaments and intend to continue it into the future.

That said, we are continuing discussions about if the implementation may change. Many ideas have been levied by the community and by our teams and we are discussing what, if any, changes we should make to these plans.

Showdown Series

Showdown Series events are continuing to grow as part of our competitive programs for next year. We are looking to dramatically increase the number of these events for each set's season, with an aim to deliver in the range of 30-40 each season, and have them provide global coverage to enable more players around the world to play competitive Riftbound and earn Ladder Points.

Additionally, the Regional and Continental Day 2 tokens system is a major step up in how we tie these programs into our larger competitive program, with roughly twice as many players each Showdown being fed into Day 2 of the Continentals than there were for Showdown invites for the Regional Championships.

The tier system for the Showdown Series is based on the number of competitors participating (not solely badges sold):

• Tier 1: 512+ players
• Tier 2: 256-511 players
• Tier 3: 129-255 players

Due to the nature of Showdown Series events, we can't unveil the schedule for next year, as they will continue to be announced on a rolling basis as we sign contracts and those partners prepare to share the events.

To stay up to date on the Showdown Series offerings, the Roadmap articles will be kept up to date, but the most frequently updated resource will be RiftboundOP.com.

Challenge Series

The foundation of our competitive ladder is the new Challenge Series, which we announced in the August State of Play. This is the only event type run by local game stores that can offer Ladder Points and Regional tokens for players. As such, these tournaments are not going to be available to every store in the Riftbound Gaming Network. UVS has been working to identify stores around the world which qualify for hosting these events.

The winner of these events will get a stamped Promo and a Riftbound Regional token. Keep an eye out for these tournaments to begin popping up on the Riftbound Gaming Network in 2027!

Region Specific Competitive Series

In Riftbound's first year, we've made an effort to launch regional events such as France's Le Rift Tour, the Korea Tour, and the Taiwan RQ.

Both Korea and Taiwan are still early in Riftbound's local launch, and not yet up to parity for set releases. The region specific programs will continue into 2027, with a limited number of invitations for the top competitors of each program to the 2027 World Championship.

China, as the country where Riftbound was first launched, occupies a unique position in the Riftbound system. We are working to more tightly link their system into the global program but, for now, we intend China's events to largely work as they did in 2026; one notable change is that Majors will award invites for the 2027 World Championship.

Riftbound World Championship Showcase

Lastly, let's talk about the peak of competition. The 2026 World Championship Showcase is happening January 23-24, 2027 in Shanghai, China. 24 of the best Riftbound players in the world will come together and compete to crown the game's first World Champion. Like our other programs, the World Championship will also be changing after its first year.

The 2027 World Championship, fueled by the more robust competitive system we've been discussing, will be a larger event and tournament. Invites will be awarded to:

• Every Regional winner.
• Every Continental Top 8 finisher.
• Every China Major winner.
• Top finishers at the 2027 China Regional Championship event.
• The Top 50 not already invited players according to Annual Finish ranking.
• Top finishers for the Korea and Taiwan regional tournaments.

We've still got a lot of time between now and crowning our second World Champion, but it'll be exciting to see the roster of competitors grow as the year goes on.

PlayRiftbound.com

2027's play program underlines the importance of the new PlayRiftbound.com and why we launched it this year. You will begin seeing elements of this new program, tracking Ladder Points, ranking on the Ranked Ladder, and more as updates are pushed to the website in 2027. While those are implemented, we will communicate in the beginning of the year how to track these in the interim. As with this entire launch, it will continue to grow as the year progresses.

We are incredibly excited to see how Riftbound's first year winds up at the Regional Championships and the World Championship Showcase next year. And we're very eager for players to begin climbing the ladder!

FAQ

Q: What if...?

An article like this is sure to drive many questions about situations that could arise. We'll look at holding some AMAs or other community engagement opportunities in the future, but please feel free to share them online.

We ask you to please be patient as there will be many more questions than we can answer, and we'll work to get your questions answered.

Q: When will we know the remaining events for 2027?

We expect to announce the complete schedule for Regionals and Continentals before the end of 2026. (It may be towards the end...)

Q: Will my finishes in 2026 carry over into a rank for 2027?

No. We considered having the events of 2026 seed ranks for 2027, but ultimately decided against it for a few reasons. First, it felt unfair to surprise you with ranks you didn't know you were playing for. Additionally, given this year's transition to the PlayRiftbound.com system, we did not want to have any part of the competitive ranks rely on migrated data which may not be correct.

However, players who do have Top 64 finishes from a Regional Qualifier or equivalent finish from a Radiance Showdown Series which occur in 2027 will be honored.

Q: What Ladder Point totals are needed for each rank?

This is one where we have not finalized the numbers, and we don't want to give the initial values for the rank thresholds only to change them in the coming weeks. We'll share more in the future.

Q: What about Summoner Skirmish byes?

We dive into Summoner Skirmish sunsetting and what you need to know about it in the other article today.