League of Legends LCS 2021 playoffs: Qualified teams and schedule

LCS is the American championship series within the League of Legends esports scene.

The LEC finished a week ago and revealed the top six teams that made it into the playoffs. The same is true for LCS as well, as eight teams will compete against each other for a chance at League of Legends Worlds 2021.

In all honesty, the North American scene in League of Legends has been struggling quite a lot. They have failed to compete against the best of Europe and Asia. This has resulted in a community-wide joke where anything bad is correlated to America. However, this time it seems that could change as the American teams have been working very hard to bring forth a new direction at the competition.

League of Legends LCS 2021 playoff schedule, teams and format

The eight teams that managed to qualify for the playoff phase are TSM, 100 Thieves, Evil Geniuses, Cloud 9, Team Liquid, Dignitas, IMT and GG. All of these teams will have a shot at winning the LCS Summer Split and from there, move on to the Worlds stage as the representatives of North America.

In the Spring Split of 2021, Cloud 9 were the victors; however, it seems that TSM and 100 Thieves have been the more dominant teams this time and they are the favorites to win it all the way. The first two matches will be played on August 7 and August 8. The finals will take place on August 29, even though the brackets here are much more complicated due to the number of teams present.

TSM and 100 Thieves have already made it to the second round and will await the results of Cloud 9 vs Team Liquid and EG vs Dignitas to find out who their opponents are. The winners of these matches will pitch against each other until one remains to progress to the finals. The losers of the upper bracket games will move on to compete against the winners of the lower bracket matches. Lower bracket matches will have elimination and only one will remain to play the finals against the winner of the upper bracket.

As usual, the top three teams will make it to the League of Legends Worlds stage. It is expected that the performance of North America will be better at Worlds as compared to how it was at the Mid Season Invitational.