Mon Dec 01 13:40:00 UTC 2025: ## League of Legends Ranked Overhaul Set for 2026: Autofill Mitigation, Queue Time Improvements, and Rank Recalibration Headline Changes
[City, State] – Riot Games has announced a comprehensive series of updates aimed at improving the Ranked experience in League of Legends, slated to arrive in 2026. The changes target long-standing player pain points including autofill, queue times, matchmaking fairness, and rank accuracy.
A key focus is addressing autofill, a system designed to maintain reasonable queue times but often a source of frustration. The new system prioritizes matching autofilled players against others in the same role and ensures teams have a similar number of autofilled players. In instances where imbalance occurs, the team with more autofilled players will receive a slight MMR advantage.
To further mitigate the negative aspects of autofill, Riot is introducing “Aegis of Valor,” a reward system that grants autofilled players double LP or full LP loss protection for achieving a C or higher mastery score in the assigned role. Dedicated support and jungle players will also receive Aegis of Valor rewards periodically.
Dodging, a common tactic to avoid unfavorable matchups, is also being addressed. Dodging will no longer reset autofill status and, at Master tier and above, will now count as a full loss. The goal is to reduce instances of chain dodging and promote more stable champion select environments.
Several measures are being implemented to decrease queue times. Riot is removing the ability to ban allies’ hovered champions and shortening animation and timer sequences in champ select by approximately 30 seconds.
Rank accuracy is receiving a significant overhaul. Riot acknowledges that the skill level of players within each tier has increased since Ranked was introduced and is recalibrating lower tiers to better reflect the current player base’s abilities. A new “Climb Indicator” will appear when a player’s visible rank lags behind their MMR, addressing concerns about mismatched skill levels within lobbies.
Finally, Flex queue matchmaking is being adjusted to better align with Solo/Duo ranks. And in a significant change, duo queuing is being re-enabled in Solo/Duo for all ranks, including Challenger, in most regions, thanks to improved boosting detection and matchmaking systems.
Riot Games emphasized that these changes aim to improve the overall Ranked experience and that they will be closely monitoring player feedback and queue health to refine the system as needed.
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