The 2022 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational will take place in South Korea, sources confirmed to Upcomer on Saturday.
MSI will be the first international tournament in South Korea since the League of Legends World Championship in 2018. It is the first time the mid-season tournament will take place in South Korea. The exact dates and host locations for the event are not yet confirmed. The news of MSI’s debut in South Korea for 2022 was first reported by Dot Esports.
The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated planning for major Riot Games events over the past couple of years, including needing to move the 2021 League of Legends World Championship from China to Europe and shifting between in-person and remote play at both international and domestic events. This past weekend, the League Championship Series in North America transitioned back to in-person play and media availability, but the virus continues to be a cause for concern in regard to travel, transmissibility and the adaptations coronavirus has made during the course of the pandemic.
South Korea has seen a spike in cases in the past month, with 360,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the week of Feb. 13 alone, according to the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. For the week of Jan. 16, the country reported just around 28,000 new cases. It’s unclear if the spike in cases will affect Riot’s plans for MSI 2022.
Alejandro Gomis contributed to this report. This story will be updated.
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