/dev: Ranked 2026

Hi everyone, today we are going to talk about some updates coming to Ranked in 2026. We’re taking on some of the areas of Ranked that have been your biggest pain points, including matchmaking, autofill, queue times, and skill distribution. So, let’s get into it. A reality of League is that some roles are just more popular than others. Autofill exists to keep your queues going, otherwise we’d see extremely long queue times for mid lane especially. That said, we know that getting a role you didn’t choose is frustrating, especially when you tried your best and lost LP for something out of your control. So, we’re making some changes to ensure these matches feel more balanced and give you extra rewards for playing your best. We know it’s a bad experience to be autofilled against someone who mains that role (especially jungle). So, in the new Season we’ve made several changes to improve (and sometimes eliminate) that experience. Our new approach to autofill will first attempt to match an aut