On February 7th (PST), Riot announced the schedules, locations, and new changes coming to the 2017 League of Legends World Championship and the Mid-Season Invitational.

MSI will be held from April 28 to May 21 in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, while Worlds will be held from September 23 to November 4 in Wuhan, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing, China. The Worlds finals will be held at the Beijing National Stadium (with a seating capacity of 91,000), which was used as the main stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Starting this year, several changes will be made to the MSI and Worlds, in order to better reflect their status and character as global competitions. The major changes include the removal of the International Wildcards and the implementation of a Play-In Stage that precedes the Group Stage.

Previously, eight regions with a relatively short eSports history like Southeast Asia, Japan, Oceania, the Commonwealth of Independent States(CIS), Brazil, Northern/Southern Latin America, and Turkey went through separate International Wildcard Qualifiers to decide which teams will advance to major international tournaments like MSI and Worlds. With the growth of eSports in those areas, however, Riot said that they will no longer hold Wildcard tournaments coming this MSI and that there will be no more Wildcard classification.

Instead, the winners of the Spring Split from each region will participate in MSI, which will decide the best region, while Worlds will gather top teams from each region to decide the best team of the year, so that talents from all 13 regions shall be included.

The 13 regions include the eight regions mentioned above as well as Korea, China, Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macao(LMS), Europe, and North America. Each region will be receive MSI and Worlds seeds based on their performances at the international tournaments in 2015 and 2016. As such, MSI will have 13 Spring Split winners, and Worlds will see a total of 24 teams representing the 13 regions.

It is worth noting that there will be a Play-In Stage before the Group Stage in the upcoming MSI and Worlds. Both Play-In Stages are the same in that they take place before the Group Stage, but they differ in format and participating teams.

Specifically, 13 Spring Split winners from 13 regions will compete in MSI, and six teams will enter the Group Stage after the Play-In Stage. The teams from Korea, China, and Europe, which have achieved relatively good results at MSI and Worlds for the past two years, will be auto-seeded to the Group Stage. The other 10 regional teams will go through the Play-In stage, and three teams will ultimately advance to the Group Stage.

The MSI Play-In Stage consists of three rounds in total. North America and LMS, which achieved relatively high scores in last year's global tournaments, will automatically move on to the second round. The other 8 regional teams will be divided up into two groups of four to take part in the full-league formatted best-of-one series. Based on the results of the first round, the top team in each group will advance to the second round and face teams from North America and LMS. The second round follows a double elimination format with a best-of-three series. Two winners from the second round will advance to the Group Stage, while the losers of the second round will face off in the third round to secure the last remaining Group Stage ticket. Finally, the Group Stage will have 6 teams, including Korea, China, and Europe with secured seeds, as well as two winners from the second round, and one winner from the third round. They will play a best-of-one series twice with each team in full-league format. From there, the top four teams will move on to best-of-three series tournament round to decide the final victors.

On the other hand, 24 teams representing 13 regions will participate in Worlds 2017. Considering overall performance of past global competitions, LMS will receive three Worlds seeds, one up from the two seeds last year. Korea, China, Europe, and North America are given three seeds each, same as the last year. In this Worlds, a total of 16 teams will participate in the Group Stage after the Play-In Stage. However, three teams from Korea, which have achieved unparalleled results over the past two years, will automatically move on to the Group Stage, while two respective teams from China, Europe, North America, and LMS will be assigned to each group. Additionally, the one team from within SEA, Japan, Oceania, CIS, Brazil, Northern/Southern Latin America, and Turkey with the highest placement in MSI will receive an automatic seed to the Group Stage. In other words, the regions of 12 teams out of the 16 teams participating in the Worlds Group Stage will be determined when MSI concludes.

The remaining 12 teams will compete in the Worlds Play-In Stage for the last four Group Stage spots. In the first round of the Play-In Stage, 12 teams will be divided up into four groups of three and go through the best-of-one series twice with the same team. The top two teams of each group then advance to the second round of the Play-In Stage and undergo a best-of-five series. The first place team of each group will be randomly selected to compete against the second place team of another group, and four final victors will advance to the Worlds Group Stage.