LCS Summer start date bumped up a week after MSI cancellation

The 2020 LCS Summer Split will start on June 13 due to the cancellation of the Mid-Season Invitational, Riot announced Monday. Riot announced the cancellation of MSI in late April, due to the impact of COVID-19. The LCS Summer Split was originally scheduled to start on June 20, but with the international calendar cleared out for now, we’ll be getting domestic League of Legends action a little earlier than expected.

The split will start with a finals rematch between Cloud9 and FlyQuest. As for whether all of this will take place at the LCS Studios or remotely — they’re not sure yet:

We’ll continue to follow the local and state guidelines around COVID-19 to determine when it’s safe to return to the LCS Studios. If we’re unable to return to the LCS Studios for the start of the LCS Summer Split, we’ll continue to have the games take place online.

One other small schedule change announced: games on Saturday and Sunday will now start one hour earlier, at 4 p.m. ET. There will still be four games on weekend days, and two games on Monday Night League starting at 8 p.m. ET.

If you need a refresher on the summer playoff format, it is also new and different from what we saw this spring:

Eight of the ten LCS teams will make the playoffs, a sprawling (mostly) double elimination bracket. The top three teams at the end of playoffs will make Worlds — there is no more Regional Qualifier tournament or Championship Points system.