// News // 24th Jan 2026 — 2 days ago // By Artura Dawn

League of Legends Patch 26.2 Notes — Buffs, Nerfs, New Events, and More

The second patch of 2026 is officially here, as Riot Games begins adjusting from the gargantuan changes that arrived for the beginning of the season. It's worth noting that this patch isn't going to make major changes to gameplay systems, as the team is looking to check more how this affects the overall Summoner's Rift.

Larger changes will be coming for Patch 26.3, but for now, here's everything you need to know about this latest patch.

Riot Games' Thoughts on 26.1

As mentioned above, 26.2 won't be addressing anything of what came in 26.1, but instead, evaluating it all closely. There won't be changes yet, but Riot Games has openly stated how some of these effects have affected the gameplay.

Here's a quick overview on the team's thoughts:

Faelights and Vision: The team is looking into jungler impact and general vision uptime, with several options to address them come 26.3
Snowballing and Game Length: The metrics don't show what players are feeling — the game length is, on average, cross-regionally higher than before, and it's likely tied to the faster game pace rather than it being over-tuned. There are no plans to address this currently.
Aegis of Valor: Aegis of Valor had a bug fix that woudln't trigger on eligible players, and it won't be awared to any player who goes AFK during the game.
Role Balance: So far, Riot Games is gathering information on which roles are most and least powerful, but the Role Quest system is working as intended, allowing each role to have unique impact on the map in the way it was implemented.
Tower Durability: The current early metrics don't show any urgent issues — first tower is falling at around the same time relative to lane start as it did last year, and later towers are falling later than before. The team will be looking into it a bit more with detailed data throughout 26.2.

Support Quest Usability

The only major change coming from the findings of 26.1 is the Support Quest and its usability as a whole. There are three changes coming to make sure that it's more user-friendly and it isn't as uncomfortable based on the feedback:

The Role Quest slot can now be double-bound, so that control wards and the Role Quest can both be the same button once supports have completed their Quest.
The Role Quest Hotkey is being added to the client keybinds menu so that it can be changed before entering the Summoner's Rift.
At the start of the match, the Control Wards will be moved to the Support Role Quest slot to help players build muscle memory.

Arena

CC chaining continues to be a bit of a problem during Arena, where heavy CC comps are discouraged from affecting cooldowns too much due to Combo Break, but it's an unenjoyable mechanic to fight against. Not moving for five out of seven seconds can make it unengaging, but reducing the timer would invalidate those playstyles even more.

To this end, the Combo Breaker system has been reworked — the victim of CC will receive the effect if they have been chained for four of the last seven seconds, but the combo breaker triggers damage. This should give CC players the opportunity to use it as an alternative to damage-dealing, as it'll do 10% max HP true damage to the CC victim, increasing by 5% for each time Combo Breaker has been triggered.

With this, Riot Games is reverting Mystic Punch to its previous system, reducing the Cooldown of all abilities by 1.25s On-Hit. The following systems also had changes, ranging from buffs to nerfs:

Zaahen
Bel'Veth
Zyra
Master Yi
Taric
Gangplank
Lulu
Mystic Punch
Hold Very Still
Mad Hatter
The Brutalizer
Statikk Shiv
Bandle Pipes

ARURF

For 2026 Season 1 Act 1: For Demacia, the featured game mode of the season will be ARURF (All Random Ultra Rapid Fire)! The release date was moved to a week earlier a while back, with no announcement of the official ending being nudged with it, which means that players will have plenty of time to play ARURF and enjoy it.