LoL ranked is broken so Riot is resetting the entire Apex ladder

Naerlyn Published April 23, 2026

Amid uncontrollable LP inflation, Riot announced a complete ranked reset of the Apex tier of the ladder. On patch 26.09, every player in Master, Grandmaster, or Challenger will return to Master 0 LP. This reset will apply to EUW, EUNE, NA, BR, LAN, and TR at the start of Season 2 of 2026.

The LP inflation in League of Legends ranked in 2026

In 2026, Riot made changes to the ranked ladder in League of Legends. These changes made the climb smoother and gave quality of life improvements to the Apex tier. A bit too much, in fact.

Three months later, the top of the ladder is running further and further away from the rest. The difference between the top of the leaderboard and Master 0 LP is currently wider than the gap between Iron IV 0 LP and Master 0 LP.

The best players keep going up and up with each play session thanks to a combination of duo queue, great win rates, and a high MMR. Gaining 30 LP per win and losing 10 per loss, the best players currently increase the Challenger threshold by about 100 LP a day.

In 2025, only a handful of players reached 2,000 LP in EUW, and they barely crossed that barrier. Right now, 2,000 LP isn’t even enough to reach Challenger on the same server and Rudy “SkewMond” Semaan is more than 1,200 above that.

3,000 LP was a faraway mark, not one passed by 12 players and even smashed by a few. In 2024, the best player was only at 1,660 LP.

While ranked is in a better state than ever, the Apex leaderboard is far from it and its problems only grow by the day.

LoL ranked reset 2026: Apex tier players will have to work for their Victorious chroma. Image source: Riot Games

The ranked reset of the Apex tier ladder on patch 26.09

As a result, Riot decided to nullify the Master+ ladder at the start of Season 2 2026. The company is happy with the changes to ranked, but the environment from the first few months created unsolvable problems.

Riot ran a poll among the top-ranked players to ask whether they did want a reset, and the answer was yes. For them, the causes of the issues are now resolved, but the people’s current LP isn’t representative of their skill.

On patch 26.09, every single Master, Grandmaster, and Challenger player will be brought back to Master 0 LP. They will have the MMR of a Master 0 LP player. People who decayed below Master while keeping an Apex MMR will retain their current rank. The rank reset will also bring their MMR to Master 0 LP, though.

This reset will apply to the EUW, EUNE, NA, BR, LAN, and TR servers.

Featured image source: Riot Games