Top Esports beat BLG from a game down to reach Worlds quarterfinals

What happened

League of Legends is a team video game played five against five, and its World Championship is the sport’s biggest annual tournament. Chinese fans call it “S” plus the season number, so 2026 is S16. China’s top professional league is the LPL, and both Top Esports (TES) and Bilibili Gaming (BLG) play in it.

The two teams met in round four of the Swiss stage, each with two wins and one loss, in a best-of-three match where the winner would qualify. BLG took the first game, with their jungler Xun named MVP. TES levelled the series in game two, with their top laner 369 named MVP, and then won the deciding third game. The hot-search phrase 让一追二 means coming back after losing the first game.[1][2][4]

The players

TES fielded 369, Tian, Creme, JackeyLove and Zhuo. BLG fielded Bin, Xun, Knight, Viper and ON. According to the report carried by The Paper, TES also knocked BLG out at last year’s World Championship, and have now won all three of their meetings across the two tournaments.[1][2]

How the tournament works

Sixteen teams play in the Swiss stage. A team that reaches three wins goes through to the quarterfinals and a team that loses three times is out. Matches that decide qualification or elimination are best of three; the others are single games. Gen.G and Dplus KIA, both from South Korea’s league, were the first to qualify with three straight wins.

With a 2–2 record, BLG play one more best-of-three match: a win sends them to the quarterfinals, a loss ends their tournament. The quarterfinals and semifinals are played from 3 to 8 November in Allen, Texas, and the final is on 14 November at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.[3][4]