2016 NA LCS season


The 2016 NA LCS season was the fourth year of the North American League of Legends Championship Series. It was divided into spring and summer splits, each consisting of a regular season and playoff stage. Regular season games were played in the Riot Games Studios in Los Angeles, California.

Format

Teams compete in a double round robin tournament over the course of nine weeks during the regular season, with matches being best-of-three. The top six teams from the regular season advanced to the playoff stage, with the top two teams receiving a bye to the semifinals. The seventh place team qualifies for the next split of the LCS but does not participate in playoffs. The bottom three teams play in a promotion/relegation tournament against the top two NA Challenger Series teams. Playoffs were single-elimination and matches were best-of-five. The winner of the summer split automatically qualified for the 2016 World Championship, while the team with the most cumulative championship points from the spring and summer splits also qualified for World Championship. A final team, the winner of the regional finals, also qualified for the World Championship.

Spring

Offseason changes

As the team with the worst record in the 2015 NA LCS Summer regular season, Team Dragon Knights was automatically relegated to the NA Challenger Series. As the eighth and ninth team places respectively, Team 8 and Enemy eSports were obligated to play in a promotion tournament against the second and third place Challenger teams, who were Team Coast and Team Imagine respectively. Enemy was relegated after losing to Coast 3–0, but Team 8 beat Imagine 3–1 to remain in the LCS. The two teams that won the Promotion matches both sold their spots to other teams before the start of the spring split. The LA Renegades were automatically promoted by winning the NA Challenger Series.
A total of three, Team Coast, Team 8, and Gravity Gaming sold their spots, all to new esports organizations that had been created for the sole purpose of being in the LCS. Coast sold their spot to NRG eSports, Team 8 sold theirs to Immortals, and Gravity to Echo Fox. Team Impulse had announced their intentions to sell their spot, but failed to do so by the deadline. However, Team Impulse eventually sold its spot to Phoenix1 just before the summer split.

Teams

;Notes

Rosters

Regular season

Playoffs

The 2016 NA LCS Spring finals saw a rematch of the previous split's finals between Team SoloMid and Counter Logic Gaming. The finals were played in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Mandalay Bay Events Center.

Standings

Bracket

Summer

Teams

Rosters

Regular season

^ — Team Envy won the tiebreaker over Apex Gaming due to head-to-head matchup in the regular season.

Playoffs

The summer finals were held at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the first time an NA LCS match had been played outside of the United States.

Standings

Bracket

Regional finals