Riot Games has confirmed today that Worlds 2021 will take place in Reykjavík, Iceland. More specifically the event will be palyed in the Laugardalshöll Indoor Sporting Arena. Normally Worlds 2021 would have been played in China, but due to multiple participants and countries struggling to secure the correct travel documents due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything was eventually moved to Europe.
Worlds 2021 is heading to Iceland! Tune in October 5 – November 6 at https://t.co/lh1tk7wEe0. pic.twitter.com/fTFxf42yFH
— LoL Esports (@lolesports) September 9, 2021
It’s not the first time Riot Games organizes an event in Reykjavík, as they’ve previously went there to play out MSI 2021 and the VCT Masters, all with great success. “MSI 2021 was the most successful MSI to-date, with the final match between DWG KIA and Royal Never Give Up hitting a record-breaking MSI peak viewership of 23 million, and an average minute audience (AMA) of 10 million. Across the entire tournament, MSI 2021 had an AMA of 3.5 million.”
Finally Riot Games said they won’t have a live audience present at the location, to ensure the safety of everyone involved. “While maintaining our focus on ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved in hosting, producing, and competing at the event, Worlds 2021 will not host a live audience. We will continue to use guidance from various health organizations and local and national authorities to prioritize everyone’s safety.”
Also read:
What do you think of this? Join the discussion on social media or our Discord!
You can also help improve our website by submitting direct feedback!
Image Credits: Riot Games
Previous article (07/09/21)
Sources have reported that the 2021 World Championship will take place in Reykjavik, Iceland at the Laugardalshöll Indoor Sporting Arena. This part of the tournament will be featured in Iceland starting on October 5th and run until November November 6th. This venue should be familiar to fans of Riot Games esports. The Icelandic arena has played host to MSI and Masters Reykjavik.
This familiar location will likely decided on out of convenience. Undoubtedly, the transition of Worlds from China to Europe brought on logistical issues with it. Reykjavik, Iceland is one of the few places to recently hold successful LAN esports events generally. This made it an ideal spot to at least begin the World Championship. With rising concerns over the delta variant, Riot is returning to the spot which gave it two COVID-free events thus far.
It has been projected that Iceland will also host all stages of the Worlds 2021 event. This is a far cry from the 5-city tour originally projected to take place in China. Of course this is in response to the recent, reoccurring threat of COVID-19. The play-in stage will take place from October 5th to the 9th, followed by the Group stage running from 11th through the 18th. Quarter finals will be played between October 22nd and 25th while the semis will be on October 30th-31st. The finals will be played on November 6th.
Unfortunately, it seems that no crowd will be allowed to attend the event. This will mark the second time Worlds, for at least a majority of the event, will have no live audience. Though in Worlds 2020 finals there was a crowd, the prior stages were only spectated by production crews.