Games at the League of Legend (LoL) World Championship are held on Sept. 29, 2022, in Mexico. (LoL Esports Photos' Flickr page)

By Lee Jihae

Korea will hold this year's League of Legend (LoL) World Championship, the world's largest esport competition.

Yonhap News quoted LoL developer Riot Games as saying on Jan. 10 that Korea will host this year's event.

This international competition has top teams play in Lol regional pro leagues worldwide as the world's largest esport event in the number of viewers. An estimated 5.14 million people worldwide excluding China watched the finals in November last year in the U.S. between the Korean teams T1 and DRX.

Competing in this year's tournament are 22 teams that earned seeds through regional league play and qualifiers.

All but one of the squads are determined based on the number of seeds assigned to each region.

LoL Champions Korea and the Chinese league LPL will each send four teams to the tournament. The league for Europe, the Middle East and Africa called LoL European Championship and North America's Lol Championship Series will each send three.

The Vietnamese Championship Series and Pacific Championship Series will each send two and Latin America's Liga Latino America, Brazil's Campeonato Brasileiro de LoL and Lol Japan League one each.

The 22nd team will be selected through the tournament's new Worlds Qualifying Series.

This year's LoL World Championship is the 12th edition since its inception in 2011. Korea is hosting it for the third time following the 2014 and 2018 events.

The 2018 tournament was held in Seoul, Busan and Gwangju and the finals at Incheon World Cup Stadium in Incheon.

jihlee08@korea.kr