Back in May of 2021, Riot Games announced that the next iteration of the Teamfight Tactics World Championship would be held in person in China. However, due to the increase in COVID-19 cases and the Delta variant, the TFT Reckoning Championship will take place online, instead of on LAN, according to a press release by Riot Games.
The TFT Reckoning Championship was set to be the first in-person live World Championship in the game’s history. Over the past few months, regions from across the world have held regional qualifier events. The top placing players at each event would end up punching their ticket to the TFT Reckoning Championship. Some regions, like Europe and Japan have already wrapped up their regional finals. Those players will still be playing at the TFT Reckoning Championships but will not be flying to China to do so.
History of online TFT events
The two previous world championship events — The TFT Galaxies Championship and the TFT Fates Championship — were also held online, both due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The hope was that the TFT Fates Championship would be the last online event, thanks to the vaccine rollouts. However, the prominent Delta variant has been shown to infect those that have already been vaccinated. This has halted the return to live events across the world, and TFT has now been added to that list.
Online events have proven to be difficult but manageable for TFT. One drawback of hosting online events for TFT is the lack of a Spectator mode in-game. Because of this, streaming problems have occurred in the past. However, TFT Lead Designer Stephen “Mortdog” Mortimer has said that an esports spectator mode will be ready for the TFT Reckoning Championship.
Additionally, though plans have changed, it seems that the event itself won’t be delayed. The TFT Reckoning Championships will still take place in October of 2021.
