The 2026 LCS Spring Playoffs are one weekend in and there’s still a lot more League of Legends to play before the end of the one team has locked their place for a chance to win the whole thing on Sunday June 14th. Here at Thunderpick, we’re covering the information you’ll need to know before the next two weeks of LCS wraps up, and North America will have its MSI representatives going into June and July.
LCS PLAYOFFS FORMAT
As the LCS Spring Split wraps up one of the big questions that viewing audiences had throughout the course of the season was whether or not the gap between the most competitive organizations in North American League of Legends had started to narrow or if teams like LYON which represented North America at first stand were the exception and not the norm. To test the worthiness of these teams to represent North America in South Korea later this year at MSI, the results of the spring split placed teams into a 6 team double-elimination format where the top 4 regular season finishers would start in upper bracket with 5th and 6th place teams going straight to a lower bracket. The first weekend’s results have seemingly answered the concerns that fans of the region had been having by delivering consecutive, and most importantly competitive, 5 game series to discuss.
THE UPPER BRACKET RECAP
1st seed Cloud9 ended the regular split with an unbeaten 7-0 record and faced high expectations ahead of the playoffs, being ranked as frequent favorites to win the whole split and become the first LCS champion since 2024. The team lead the league in teamwide KDA ratios and Gold, while Vulcan and Blaber are 1st and 2nd respectively with regards to their individual KDAs. Part of what has led the team to success is in their draft strengths, where Zven and Vulcan are afforded earlier pick priority to increase their efficiency to stabilise or win lane outright and contribute to the teams’ focus on map objectives.
They face FlyQuest, who had as a team looked to patch up some of the rocky start they took to the split, and whose only loss in the past month was to Cloud9 themselves. Despite a convincing display of aggression early into the series, the match went to 5 games off the back of a rallying games 3 and 4 from FlyQuest. As a team, FlyQuest’s drafts are composed of more unconventional picks, even notably a Quinn top lane as a counterpick into Renekton, a pick that had only been brought twice across the last 2 years of LoL Esports.
The 2nd match of the weekend was between LYON at the 2nd seed and Team Liquid at 3rd. LYON’s only losses throughout the split were to C9 and FLY, and with their time at First Stand earlier this spring they were the roster with the most playtime throughout the season so far. Their performance throughout the match was much like you’d expect if you’d been following the team, with an emphasis on strong macro gameplay and very selective mid-to-late game team fighting driven by their star Jungler Inspired. Team Liquid were no slouches though, and in their 2 wins throughout the match came in part thanks to the strength of Yeon and CoreJJ in bot lane, where in games 1 and 4 they would both finish the match deathless and far ahead in gold and damage alike. Game 5 of the match ended with a climactic baron fight at 35 minutes which ended with a smite steal from Inspired thanks to a clutch Bard ult from Isles.
With these winning teams waiting for their next round on Sunday June 7th, the top seeds of the LCS have a lot to prove in their upcoming games about the depths of team strategies and drafts. With the lower bracket underway throughout the next few weeks, this weekend’s matches are invaluable for the organisations to study ahead of their clash to earn their ticket to the Mullett Arena.
