The 2026 LEC Spring Playoffs are one weekend in and with the finals coming into view, one team has locked their place for a chance to win the whole thing on Sunday June 7th. Here at Thunderpick, we’re covering the information you’ll need to know before the next two weeks of LEC concludes, and Europe will have its MSI representatives going into June and July.
LEC PLAYOFFS FORMAT
After 7 regular season weeks and 9 matches each, the top 6 teams in the LEC (in order: Team Vitality, Karmine Corp, G2 Esports, Movistar KOI, Natus Vincere, and GIANTX) are sorted based on their results into an upper bracket of the top 4 rated teams and a lower bracket for the 5th and 6th place teams. They will then play through a double elimination Best-of-Five bracket, playing with the fearless draft system that the regular split played as well. This increase in the games played per match makes the specialist picks and compositions that teams may have been able to save even more important. To further reward the teams that were placed into the upper bracket, the round 1 winners there will be moved from round 1 straight to round 3 and on the doorstep of the finals.
THE UPPER BRACKET RECAP
Regardless of how many times it has happened or how many slips in performance they may appear to be facing, G2 Esports have won their first 2 matches from the upper bracket and will be representing the LEC at MSI 2026 in South Korea at the end of June. G2 playing from the 3rd seed beat the 2nd seed Karmine Corp in a 4 game series which could very well have been a 3-0 sweep to send KC to the losers bracket. G2’s draft leaned heavily into a hard scaling end game, with Smolder, Anivia and Cassiopeia propped up by Nautilus and Xin Zhao’s early and mid game power spikes to help get them across the finish line. KC made a strong comeback at the 29 minute mark and swung a teamfight bot lane, and then a minute later got a pick onto BrokenBlade’s Cassiopeia back top side towards Baron. This sequence erased an 5k gold lead and, while G2 did later get the Ocean Soul the damage had been done and KC’s pick heavy comp ended the game after also securing a Baron buff of their own. The margins in game 1 were narrow, but from there on G2 finished the series in a commanding fashion, with a notably near perfect game 2 and respectable performances in games 3 and 4.
MKOI finished the regular split in 4th and faced 1st seed Vitality, but they last played each other in week 2 and we hadn’t seen Vitality in the LEC in 3 weeks, as they did not compete in the Madrid Road Trip during week 7. Expectations for this match were high, but MKOI Mid Laner Jojopyun put together a playoff highlight reel throughout the series. With one death across the 3 games he controlled the map with both strong assassin and control mage gameplay which facilitated Jungler Elyoya to press these advantages, at one point in game 2 even going up a nearly 5k gold lead over Lyncas. MKOI’s clinical gameplay and aggression allowed them to seal the series in the 1st sweep of the playoffs. Unfortunately for them and despite some particularly notable performances from Supa in game 1 and a close final game of the series, G2’s pace throughout weekend 1 of the LEC Spring Playoffs was not possible to match, even going as far as to end game 4 with a more than 14k gold lead.
With G2’s progression to the finals and MKOI waiting to see who they’ll be playing from the lower bracket’s pool of teams facing elimination, the 2nd weekend of the playoffs promises to have even more exciting action to come
