LoL Pickems is the official prediction game Riot Games runs alongside its two biggest League of Legends tournaments - the Mid-Season Invitational and the World Championship. You predict which teams will advance and which will go home, your bracket is scored as the tournament plays out, and you earn in-game cosmetics based on how well you read it.
It is free, it takes about ten minutes, and it does not involve money at any point. Below is what the game actually consists of, what you are being asked to predict, and how the scoring turns your guesses into rewards.
- Free. No entry fee and nothing to buy - a Riot account is the only requirement.
- Played on the LoL Esports website, not inside the game client. Rewards arrive in the client afterwards.
- Two events a year: MSI around May and June, Worlds around September to November.
- Rewards are cosmetic only - emotes, icons, capsules and skins. No cash, no wagering.
The short version
Pick'Em runs on the official LoL Esports website. You sign in with the same Riot account you use to play League, fill in a bracket for the upcoming stage, and submit it before that stage begins. When the stage finishes, Riot compares your bracket against the real results and awards points for everything you got right.
A tournament is not one single bracket. It opens in stages: you predict the group phase first, and once those matches are done, a new set of predictions opens for the knockout rounds. This matters, because it means missing the first deadline does not lock you out of the rest of the event.
Which tournaments have Pickems
Riot runs Pick'Em for its two international events:
- MSI (Mid-Season Invitational) - usually around May and June. The smaller of the two, with fewer teams and a shorter bracket.
- Worlds (World Championship) - usually around September to November. The main event, the largest field, and by far the most-played Pick'Em of the year.
Regional leagues such as LCK, LPL and LEC do not have an official Riot Pick'Em. Prediction games for those exist, but they are run by third parties, not by Riot, and they do not award in-game rewards.
What you actually predict
The exact questions depend on the tournament format, and the format has changed several times. As of the current Worlds structure, there are two things you fill in.
The group phase
Worlds uses a Swiss stage: every team keeps playing until it has either won enough matches to qualify or lost enough to be eliminated. You predict which teams make it through - and, for bonus points, the exact record they finish on. Calling that a team advances is worth something; calling that it advances without dropping a single series is worth more.
This is the part most people underestimate. A Swiss stage has no fixed schedule of who plays whom - pairings are generated from current records as the stage unfolds - so you are predicting outcomes without knowing the matchups in advance.
The knockout bracket
Once the group phase resolves, a second set of picks opens for the playoff bracket. You choose the winner of each series through to the final. Later rounds are worth more points than early ones, so the champion pick carries the most weight of any single decision you make.
The Crystal Ball
The Crystal Ball is a separate set of predictions that runs alongside the main bracket, and it is not about who wins matches. It asks about the tournament as a whole - questions like which champion will be picked most often across the entire event, which player will finish with the highest KDA, or whether some specific unlikely thing will happen at all.
A few practical differences from the main bracket:
- It locks once, before the tournament starts, and cannot be revised later.
- Its questions resolve at different times - some after the opening stage, the rest at the end.
- It is scored on its own, with its own rewards, separate from your bracket score.
- Individual questions are weighted by difficulty, so the long shots pay more.
Because it locks earliest and never reopens, the Crystal Ball is the one part of Pick'Em people most often miss entirely. If you only do one thing on the day the game opens, do this one.
How scoring works
Every correct prediction is worth points, and the totals feed a global leaderboard. The principle is consistent across years:
- Correctly picking a team to advance earns a base amount.
- Correctly picking the exact record or scoreline earns a bonus on top.
- Later knockout rounds are worth more than earlier ones.
- Crystal Ball questions are worth more per question, and scale with difficulty.
The specific point values change from event to event, along with the format. Riot publishes the current numbers when the game opens, and we track them on the event pages rather than here - a guide that hardcodes last season's scoring is a guide that quietly becomes wrong.
What you can win
Every reward in Pick'Em is cosmetic. There is no cash prize, and nothing you win affects gameplay.
Rewards are tiered by how you place against everyone else, not against a fixed score. A typical structure looks like this:
- Taking part at all - an emote or icon, simply for locking in picks before the deadline.
- Finishing in the upper percentiles - additional emotes and event capsules, with thresholds such as the top half, top quarter, and so on.
- A high but achievable score - an event skin, historically limited to a fixed number of top finishers.
- A perfect bracket - the headline reward, usually a set of legendary or ultimate skins.
A perfect bracket is vanishingly rare. We break down every reward tier and what recent events actually gave out separately. Treat the participation and percentile tiers as the realistic targets: the emote for showing up costs you ten minutes and is guaranteed.
Who can play and what it costs
Anyone with a Riot account can play, and it is free. There is no entry fee, no purchase, and no separate registration - the account you already play League on is the account you use.
Reward delivery has historically required an account in reasonable standing, and rewards arrive in the client within a couple of days of the tournament ending rather than instantly. If your rewards have not appeared the moment the final ends, that is normal.
Pickems is not betting
This distinction matters, and it gets blurred constantly by sites that cover both.
Pick'Em is a free prediction game published by the developer of the game being played. You stake nothing, you cannot lose anything, and the rewards are cosmetic items inside League of Legends. There is no payout, no odds, and no wager.
Esports betting is a separate, regulated activity, restricted by age and by jurisdiction, in which real money is at risk. The two share a subject - predicting match results - and nothing else. If a site presents Pick'Em and betting as versions of the same thing, that is a marketing decision on their part, not a description of the game.
Frequently asked questions
Is LoL Pickems free?
Yes, completely. There is no entry fee and nothing to buy. You need a Riot account, which is also free, and that is the only requirement.
Where do I actually make my picks?
On the official LoL Esports website, in the Pick'Em section, while signed in to your Riot account. The game is not filled in through the League client itself, though rewards are delivered there.
Can I change my picks after submitting them?
Yes, until that stage locks. Locking happens shortly before the first match of the stage begins. After that your picks for that stage are final - but later stages open separately, so a locked bracket does not end your participation.
What happens if I miss the first deadline?
You lose the points available in that stage, but you can still play the remaining stages. The exception is the Crystal Ball, which locks once before the tournament and never reopens.
Do I need to watch every match to score well?
No. Your picks are submitted before each stage and scored automatically from the results. Watching helps you predict the later stages more accurately, but it is not a requirement.
Are the rewards worth anything in game?
They are cosmetic only - emotes, icons, capsules and skins. Nothing affects gameplay or competitive standing. Some of the event skins are not obtainable any other way, which is where the appeal comes from.
Is there a Pickems for LCK, LPL or LEC?
Not an official one from Riot. The official Pick'Em covers MSI and Worlds only. Third-party prediction games exist for regional leagues, but they do not award in-game rewards.
Is the Esports World Cup Pick'Em the same thing?
No - it is a separate game run by a different organisation, and the differences matter.
Riot's Pick'Em covers League of Legends only and pays out in cosmetics. The Esports World Cup runs its own prediction game across all of its titles at once - Valorant, Dota 2, League of Legends and others - and it pays out in real money, with a prize pool reported at $300,000 and a five-figure sum for the top overall score. It also layers on a fantasy draft and quest system that Riot's version does not have.
Because real money is involved, entry conditions such as minimum age and eligible countries apply to it, and they are set by its organisers rather than by Riot. If you are looking for the free, cosmetics-only game attached to Worlds and MSI, that is Riot's Pick'Em and it is the one this site covers.