League of Legends Ranked Changes Coming 2026 Season 1 Act 1: For Demacia

Ranked has always been a big part of League of Legends, as players love the capability to play competitive modes, especially in such an esports-heavy videogame. To this end, Riot Games tends to focus Ranked changes, trying to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

In the latest Dev Update released on the official League of Legends YouTube channel, Meddler shared some over-the-top positive results for changes to queue times made back in September. With this, he says that the team is hoping to make 2026 an even faster experience as a whole.

It's not just faster queue times, however, as Riot Games hopes to tackle two of the biggest issues present in League of Legends Ranked today: autofill and mismatched teams. Some big changes are coming to ensure a more satisfying experience, even if you're unfortunately auto-filled into a less-favourable role.

For mismatched teams, Riot Games first talks a bit about visual rank disparity in lobbies, wherein higher-ELO matches see members from significantly lower ranks partaking. To this, the team is going to begin revealing player MMR to show others why lower-rank players are in higher-difficulty matches, showcasing that it might be because they're climbing fast (or reclimbing from a previous season).

Meanwhile, in the autofill department, Ranked matches where players are autofilled into higher-difficulty roles (like Jungle) will be given a grace mechanic named Aegis of Valor. Essentially, the autofilled player will be given immunity to LP loss (or double LP gain on a victory) so long as their Champion rank was C or higher, showing that they did their best to assist in the match. The Aegis of Valor will also be offered routinely to players who consistently play low-priority roles as a thank-you from Riot Games for keeping queue times shorter.

This is also coming with an improved fair autofill matching system — if a team has an autofilled Jungler, the system tries to autofill both members into the same role to make it a fair playing field. Exhausting all options, the queue will instead try to match equal amounts of autofilled players in various teams.

Moving on to more miscellaneous changes coming to Ranked, Flex Queue will now take into account individual player ranks within any specific team. This means that high-ELO players should automatically skew lower-ELO games with their own ranks, ensuring that they're not stomping every match that they play.

Meanwhile, a new protection system is being put in place for those who wish to hover the champions they want to play. After an early positive result from pilot testing, players will now no longer be able to ban the champion that an ally is hovering over, ensuring that there are fewer tilt-inducing situations within champion select, before the match even starts.

This is a move being made to prevent consistent chain dodges, making queue times feel longer as you wait for a match to actually start. For those who dodge to escape autofill matches, their autofill timer will instead carry over to the next match regardless, removing the incentive to dodge at all. And finally, rounding out the queue dodge changes, players in Masters or higher ranks will receive a full loss penalty for a dodge.

In the spirit of faster matches, Riot Games is also speeding up timers and animations during the champion select stage, saving about 30 seconds from the long and arduous journey of the pick-and-ban phase.

Finally, duo queue for higher ranks is being brought back — including Challenger — in most regions. With the consistent success regarding boosting, the team is confident that most protections in place should prevent malicious boosting, returning co-op play into the mix for those who reach more challenging levels and were punished for the misuse of players.

All of these changes should come into effect sometime during 2026 when Season 1 Act 1: For Demacia launches.