Jeong "Chovy" Ji-hoon won four straight LCK titles and back-to-back MSI crowns in 2024 and 2025. He still isn't going to the Asian Games. The Korea eSports Association left him off the six-man roster in May, reportedly over ongoing hip problems, and the snub is still the first thing most fans mention when Team Korea comes up.
Instead, KeSPA built its roster around Choi "Zeus" Woo-je, Kim "Canyon" Geon-bu, Kim "Zeka" Geon-woo, Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok, Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong, and Ryu "Keria" Min-seok, under head coach Kang Dong-hoon. Three of them, Zeus, Faker, and Keria, already have a gold medal from Hangzhou 2022. The other three are making their Asian Games debut in combinations nobody has actually fielded together before. That roster now heads into a group draw that puts South Korea in the tougher of the tournament's two brackets, at a tournament where, as Insider Gaming reported when the roster was confirmed, a gold medal can mean exemption from mandatory military service for the players involved.
Eight nations, one stacked group
The League of Legends field at Aichi-Nagoya 2026 comes down to eight national teams. South Korea and Chinese Taipei qualified automatically as the gold and silver medalists from the 2022 Hangzhou Games. The other six, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, India, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia, earned their spots at a qualifier held in Kuala Lumpur back in June.
Group draws for the tournament came out on September 17, and according to Sheep Esports' breakdown of the bracket, organizers didn't bother seeding the two groups evenly. South Korea and Chinese Taipei, the previous edition's gold and silver medalists, landed in the same group. Group B pairs them with India and Hong Kong, whose bot lane of Li "1xn" Sau Nam and Ling "Kaiwing" Kai Wing already competes at Tier 1 level. Chinese Taipei brings its own credible threat in the JD Gaming duo of Tsai "hongQ" Ming-hong and Yu "JunJia" Chun-chia, both playing in the LPL.
Group A looks more lopsided on paper. Vietnam fields five players pulled from the LCP, all of whom already qualified for Worlds 2026 with GAM Esports or Team Secret Whales, and Sheep Esports flagged them as the clear favorite to top the group without much resistance. Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are left fighting for the second qualifying spot, with Saudi Arabia coached by Edward "Edward" Abgaryan, a former Gambit Esports and Moscow Five support player.
For readers who want the rest of the qualification story, EGamersWorld portal has been tracking every national roster reveal since the Kuala Lumpur qualifier wrapped in June, which is worth a look if the jump from "who qualified" to "who's actually favored" feels sudden here.
How the bracket actually plays out
The format hasn't changed much from Hangzhou. Full bracket history and result archives for the event live on Liquipedia's tournament page, which lists it as an A-Tier event. Group Stage runs September 29 and 30 at the Aichi Sky Expo, with all eight teams playing a single round-robin in best-of-one matches. The top two finishers in each group move on to a single-elimination Knockout Stage on October 1 and 2, played in best-of-three up through the semifinals, with a best-of-five gold medal match and a separate bronze medal match closing out the event.
That format punishes a bad Bo1 more than it rewards a strong roster on paper. South Korea's new combinations have never played a competitive match together, and a round-robin day against Hong Kong or India leaves no room to adjust after an early draft mistake. Chinese Taipei, by contrast, is fielding a duo that already scrims and competes together in the LPL every split, which is a real coordination edge even against a roster with six world championships between its players.
What actually decides the medal round
None of this is a guess about talent. It's a question of which team's chemistry catches up fastest inside a four-day tournament with almost no room for error. Vietnam walks in with the most experience playing as a unit, since its LCP core has scrimmed together as club teammates for most of 2026. South Korea walks in with the most individual pedigree and the least shared match history among its bot lane and mid lane options. Chinese Taipei sits in between, with one proven international duo and questions everywhere else on the roster.
The group stage settles all of that on September 29 and 30. Whoever survives it moves into the knockout bracket on October 1, and the bronze and gold medal matches close out the tournament on October 2, Japan Standard Time. It's the last international LoL event before Worlds 2026 opens in Los Angeles two weeks later, so whatever chemistry does or doesn't show up at Aichi Sky Expo will carry straight into how each region's storylines get read heading into October.