League of Legends 2 Could Arrive as Early as 2026 With a Next-Gen Engine and Full Tech Overhaul

League of Legends might finally be getting a full-on sequel. Not a mega-patch, not a fancy client update — an actual second game built on new tech. Nothing official from Riot yet, but a very specific (and very odd) leak just dropped, then vanished.

Here is the setup: Park, the biggest venue for League tournaments in South Korea, posted and then deleted a note suggesting a 'League of Legends 2' is in the works. Yeah, a tournament venue leaking your sequel is not how these things usually roll, but Park is a major player in that ecosystem. If the post was legit, the plan sounds like this: keep the game’s soul, rebuild the tech, and make it easier to bring in new players without losing the veterans.

What the leak actually claims

• New engine: The sequel would run on a completely new engine. The current game runs on Riot’s older proprietary tech that has been stretched for years to support an absurd number of skins, animations, champion kits, and visual reworks. A fresh engine would unlock features that were previously impossible or just too expensive to implement.
• Core gameplay, upgraded: The core League loop wouldn’t change, but the tech and gameplay systems would get a sweeping overhaul. Champion abilities and broader mechanics would be tuned and optimized to make matches feel smoother and flow better.
• Think Dota 2’s Source 2 moment: The comparison made in the leak points to what happened when Dota 2 moved to Source 2 — the game still felt like Dota, but the foundation became way more flexible for future content and performance boosts.
• Release window: As early as the back half of 2026. That’s the target mentioned in the leak.
• Phased migration: Instead of flipping a switch, Riot is expected to roll this out in phases. The idea is to give players time to adjust, preserve cosmetic investments, and keep competitive seasons stable. The leak even hints we could see early migration steps in the coming months, well before a full launch.
• Big unknown: Will the original League and a sequel run side by side for a while? No answer yet. If every champion is being rebuilt, expect a transition period where not everything moves over at once.

Why this would matter

League’s current engine has been doing heavy lifting for a long time. If Riot actually shifts to new tech, they can finally add systems and features that have been stuck on the wishlist for years. Better performance, cleaner animations, more complex mechanics that don’t break the whole house — it’s the kind of backend work you rarely see but absolutely feel.

Also worth repeating: this is not official. It’s a deleted post from a major Korean venue, not a Riot announcement. But the details line up with where you would expect Riot to go next: keep the feel, modernize the guts, and avoid detonating a decade of skins and esports infrastructure.

If the leak pans out, the goal seems pretty clear — keep the old guard happy and bring new players in without the pain of a hard reset. That’s a tall order, but if there’s a MOBA that can pull it off, it’s the one that has owned the space for the last decade-plus.