

Every change in this patch, grouped by impact.
Reworked, retuned or shifted around

"We had always anticipated that Ambessa would have a jungle audience and we're happy to see that she's taken root there, but she also needs to be equally balanced across her two primary roles, so we're lightly nerfing her"

"Annie has all but disappeared from the current game so we'd like to bring her back up to viability. While her primary player base is likely to be in mid lane, she's often enjoyed success at support as well, so we're also"

"Even after our hotfix nerfs in 26.1, Aphelios remains as one of the most dominant marksmen in the game. We're lowering his damage to make him a little less powerful at all stages of the game."

"Brand jungle has been smothered as of late, so we're giving his clear speed some additional firepower to see if he can find his place again."

"We undershot our Braum nerfs last patch so we're delivering another similarly-sized nerf to get him to the right spot. We're happy that he can reliably remain his team's front line, but that doesn't mean he needs to be a"

"Though Camille is statistically balanced, she's so feast or famine that she doesn't feel like it. We're giving her some extra reliability this patch by granting her Hookshot's attack speed any time she successfully dashe"

"Last year Darius was tearing up the jungle so we nerfed his monster mod to keep him from taking over. This year, after the changes, Darius is very weak in the jungle, so we're going to split the difference so that he can"

"Fizz jungle made a splash in our big jungle patch last season, but his pick rate quickly dwindled. We know he'll need more than just clear speed to stay afloat, though this change will help us test the waters before maki"

"Graves has a moderately successful lethality burst build right now, but it means he doesn't have much of a fallback pattern if he doesn't high roll a crit. We'd like to reintroduce his more durable builds of old by rewar"

"With all the extra experience and/or gold scaling in Gwen's primary roles, she's become a total monster in the new season. While her recent jungle nerfs brought her two roles to similar power levels, they're both equally"

"After Hwei's adjustments late last year, he's a little weaker than he ought to be. We don't want to buff his wave clear back up as that was the original problem he had, so instead we want to reward him for using his whol"

"Illaoi is having trouble staying above water in the new season so we're here to throw her a lifeline. Considering level scaling is all the rage in top lane right now we're giving her more strength in the role she calls h"

"Jinx is currently one of the big winners of the new season. It turns out when your primary output is crits, and they get stronger, you do, too! Considering explosive basic attacks are core to her identity, we're leaving "

"Kassadin's been having a great time now that he's able to stack multiple Tear of the Goddess items. Seriously, get on the Seraph's + Muramana train! But because this newfound power has taken him over the edge, we need to"

"Just about everyone had Kayle on their “winners of the new season” Bingo card due to her reliably reaching level 16 more often. As those assumptions have proved true, it's time to tune her more appropriately. Players hav"

"Kennen's so sneaky that he snuck under players' radars for a while, but as the new season has dawned, many of you have come to understand that small shurikens can pack a big punch. We want to create windows of opportunit"

"Right now Lee Sin's W2 is the only ability in the game that grants both Life Steal and Spell Vamp. We're looking to combine those into Omnivamp along with a couple other systemic changes to maintain similar gameplay with"

"Lux is straightforward to play, which means she should look quite strong in the hands of most players. Unfortunately, she isn't doing particularly well, especially as a support. Our changes this patch are a mix of skewin"

"Maokai was able to find much more comfortable roots in the Top and Support roles, but his ability to Jungle is still lagging behind other tanks. With this clear speed buff, we're looking to keep him in line with the othe"

"Naafiri is pretty evenly split between mid and jungle now, but is too powerful in mid lane at the moment. We'd like her to still hit as hard when she lands her bread and butter Q and uses her mobility to effectively trad"

"Qiyana's mid lane performance among experts is one of the strongest in the game and is due for a nerf. We're happy that she's a lethal assassin, we just want to make her less generically strong."

"As the dust has settled around Rengar's bug fixes and affinity for new items (hi Umbral Glaive!), we're now certain that Rengar is simply too strong when piloted by players who know what they're doing. Overall he gained "

"Rumble is not in pro jail. I repeat, Rumble is not in pro jail! After fixing a long-standing bug that substantially reduced his damage when played on the red team and associated follow-up, he's just a very strong champio"

"You've seen it, we've seen it. We've revisited Ryze's ult and an unintuitive interaction causing champions to not warp when they'd otherwise expect to. This was an intentional mechanic that aimed to anticipate players' n"

"Samira is already a solid performer every way we can measure it, so this change isn't meant to be a significant buff. Instead, this change is more an acknowledgement that Bloodthirster should be competitive with Endless "

"Senna has found herself in a weird state where she can be quite powerful, but not when playing her more popular offense-focused builds. So we're shifting some power around with the goal of maintaining her viable supporti"

"Swain is running rampant through bot lane right now and doing quite well in mid, too. His bot lane playstyle is more strongly tied to Malignance and his role as a bot laner is more about his damage output. Meanwhile in t"

"Syndra has been rising through the ranks recently, with high CDR builds performing especially well. We don't want to hit how she feels with her Q poke and main defensive tool in Scatter the Weak, so instead we're going t"

"Teemo has been struggling in the jungle ever since season start, even for the most dedicated scouts. Though we can't make him sneakier in a world of Faelights, we're giving him some more clear speed to help him do his jo"

"Twitch really benefitted from the new items introduced this season, and players are really gravitating towards his glass cannon playstyle. With that in mind, he's a bit too resilient to be considered glass, so we're maki"

"We want both Q-max and R-max Udyr to be viable builds, but right now they're quite far apart in power. Similarly, maxing W or E second should also be comparable but regardless of build, W is weaker. We'd like to rectify "

"Xayah appears statistically balanced, but players feel like she lacks agency. We're looking to make her base spells more available, giving more access to her spellweaving fantasy and more juicy W-auto uptime. These chang"

"Zac has been truly explosive in the new season, and while his ability to tank and engage are meant to be core strengths, he's also too lethal for a tank with deep backline target access. So to give everyone a fair shot a"
New skins, chromas, bugfixes and everything else Riot shipped this patch.
We hope you’ve all been enjoying the winter-y spirit of competition as we celebrate everyone’s favorite sports for two weeks every four years!
Curling Veigar, Festival Kassadin, Ice Toboggan Corki, Vancouver Amumu, Whistler Village Twitch, Team Spirit Anivia, The Mighty Jax, and Union Jack Fiddlesticks will be available from February 19 until February 26, 2026, so make sure you pick them up while they’re here!
We like to make rules consistent when we can, as it helps players understand our beloved complex game that little bit more. We've generally maintained that summoner spells do not interact with other systems such as applying spell effects or lifesteal style effects. With Omnivamp making its return this season and being added to Lee Sin's W this patch, we're further consistifying this rule to our two damaging summoner spells: Smite and Ignite both do not trigger Omnivamp.
In this week's patch notes we've got a mix of changes that went live in 26.3 included here for posterity plus some additional changes coming in 26.4.
The Ionia Cup will be happening in ARAM this patch! Grab your 5 stacks and get ready to rumble!
If you have any questions or you're just looking for the full 2026 Clash schedule, make sure to check out our Clash FAQ support page.
It looks like our Hellfire Hatchet changes helped curb some of the abuse cases, but still ended up a bit too powerful in the average case. Rite of the Forge God has also been very weak so we're bringing it up a bit more, while our champion changes focus on the extreme ends.
Several bugfixes for combat-related issues and music problems introduced with the 26.3 patch. These changes should help you clear out the last few Settlements of Act 1 and be better able to handle Dangerous Threats as they attack your kingdom.
Known issue: Several Research items have incorrect text, including:
Pings are used for a wide variety of reasons, and they don't always need to be strictly “productive.” Using them to communicate, hype up a teammate after a kill, point out something funny, or just have fun are all totally fine.
That said, repeatedly spamming pings at teammates throughout a game as an expression of frustration can cross the line into disruptive behavior, and that's what we're targeting here. Starting this patch, we'll begin detecting and penalizing extreme cases of sustained, disruptive ping spamming, where a player's ability to ping may be temporarily reduced.
Normal ping usage, whether it's strategic, playful or celebratory, is not intended to be affected. We'll be monitoring the system closely and iterating as needed to ensure that only players consistently using pings in a clearly disruptive way are penalized.
The following skins will be released in this patch:
The following chromas will be released this patch:
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