Season 16 (2026) Patch Briefing: Demacia Era, Role Quests, and Ranked Overhauls

Season 16 (2026) begins with Demacia as the headline theme: the Rift gets petricite-and-gold styling, and Riot’s annual January cinematic is set to feature Demacian champions. Act 1’s Battle Pass also includes Demacia-themed skins for non-Demacian champs, plus a Prestige Morgana.

• Season 1 theme: Demacia (map visuals + January cinematic featuring Demacian champions).
• Summoner’s Rift starts faster: minions and first jungle spawns are brought forward (35 seconds quicker).
• Atakhan + Blood Roses/Petals removed; Feats of Strength removed; Baron returns to a 20:00 spawn.
• New vision tech: Faelights (bonus ward vision zones), plus trinket and plant adjustments.
• New pushing tools: Crystalline Overgrowth + turret plates persist and extend to inner/inhib towers; Demolish becomes a 3-hit passive.
• Role Quests expand (top/mid/bot) and come with role-specific power spikes (including an ADC boots slot / “7th item” concept).
• Item shake-up: multiple new items teased + returning favorites (including Hextech Gunblade and Stormrazor).
• Crit baseline returns to 200% crit damage.

The big headline removals are Atakhan (and his Blood Roses/Petals) plus Feats of Strength. In their place, first-blood and first-turret gold rewards return, Baron is back to a 20-minute spawn, and several tower/minion systems are tuned to make pushing matter more throughout the game.

Role Quests are assigned by your role in the lobby and progress through the stuff you already do (CS, fights, plates, towers, epic objectives), but faster when you’re working in your intended lane.

• Top: free long-cooldown Teleport (or an upgraded Teleport if you already took it), plus XP boosts and a higher level cap.
• Mid: free tier-3 boots upgrade + an empowered faster recall (with a cooldown).
• Bot (ADC): upfront + ongoing gold boosts and a dedicated boots slot to enable “7th item” scaling.
• Jungle: tuned to be less dominant early (slower early clears) while Smite/monster rewards get adjusted; harder for non-junglers to steal epics.
• Support: a dedicated control-ward slot + discounts and more passive gold generation.

• Autofill parity: matchmaking attempts autofill-vs-autofill by role (or balances autofill counts across teams).
• New “Aegis of Valor”: LP protection or double LP for autofilled (and priority-role) games if you score C or higher.
• Dodging tweaks: dodging no longer resets autofill; Master+ dodges count as a full loss.
• Faster champ select + you can’t ban an ally’s hovered champ; “Climb Indicator” shows when MMR > visible rank.
• Flex MMR is pulled closer to Solo/Duo MMR; duo queue returns at apex tiers for most regions.

• Swiftplay inherits most Rift changes, but *not* Role Quests.
• Objectives are simplified further (no Atakhan/Feats, no Grubs/Herald; limited dragons; earlier Baron/Elder timing).
• Start at level 3 with extra gold; Minion Frenzy rewards kills by turbo-charging nearby waves.

• Optional WASD control scheme is being rolled out in stages (with extended testing before Ranked/pro).
• Input/learning QoL tied to the system: expanded keybinding options, “Dynamic Locked Camera,” and last-hit indicators for unranked queues.