Patch 26.2

Patch 26.2 Notes

Page officielle

Patch Highlights

// PATCH_HIGHLIGHTS

Buffs, Nerfs & Adjustments

Every change in this patch, grouped by impact.

Adjustments

Reworked, retuned or shifted around

Aatrox

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Aatrox has struggled to find a place on the Rift in the new season with split pushing on the rise and fewer chances to flex his team fighting strengths. We're giving him some additional power this patch, primarily in the"

Passive - Deathbringer Stance

Bonus Magic Damage based on Target Max Health: 4-8% (based on level) ⇒ 4-10% (based on level)

Q - The Darkin Blade

Bonus Damage to Monsters: 15 ⇒ 25

Ashe

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Ashe is underperforming in the new season so we’re here to bring her back up near her former power level. We like that she has a strong affinity for buying attack speed, so we’re just making those purchases multiply a li"

Base Stats

Attack Damage Growth: 3 ⇒ 3.5

Gwen

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Gwen jungle has skyrocketed in both pickrate and winrate. While we're excited to see her loving the new season and snipping from dusk til dawn, we need to make sure she's not turning all opponents (especially jungle camp"

Passive - A Thousand Cuts

Monster Damage Cap: 5 (+10% AP) ⇒ 3 (+5% AP)

Jayce

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Jayce jungle (AKA Jungle Jayce) has become extremely popular and is also much too strong. One of those two things is awesome and the other isn’t. We’d like to retain JJ as a viable option in the jungle, but without him d"

Q - To the Skies / Shock Blast

Bonus Damage to Monsters : 50 ⇒ 25

Lillia

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Lillia has been in a dream since the changes to Rift. Unfortunately we need to wake her up as it’s become a nightmare for her opponents. We want her to maintain her spot as our premier in-and-out skirmisher in the jungle"

Passive - Dream-Laden Bough

Heal Against Large Monsters: 39 (+15% AP) ⇒ 39 (+9% AP)

Q - Blooming Blows

AP Ratio: 35% AP ⇒ 30% AP

Malphite

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Malphite’s been a frontrunner on the Rift for a while, both in top and in the jungle. We’re actually very happy that he’s found a real audience in the jungle! That said, he’s still overperforming, so we need to bring him"

W - Thunderclap

Monster Damage: 2x ⇒ 1.8x

E - Ground Slam

Damage: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 60% AP) (+ 40% armor) ⇒ 60 / 95 / 130 / 165 / 200 (+ 60% AP) (+ 40% armor)
Mana Cost: 50 ⇒ 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70

R - Unstoppable Force

Cooldown: 130 / 105 / 80 ⇒ 130 / 115 / 100

Master Yi

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Master Yi has been struggling as a result of the changes in the new season. We’re looking to return some of his power so that he can keep up with other junglers and better live up to his full hyper carry potential."

Base Stats

Armor Growth: 4.2 ⇒ 4.5

Q - Alpha Strike

On-Hit Damage Mod: 65% ⇒ 75%

Nunu & Willump

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Nunu & Willump are devouring the competition in the new season, so we’re here to bring them back to a fairer level of power. To do that, we’re reducing a mix of the PvP and PvE power out in their kits to give opponents a"

Q - Consume

Cooldown: 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 / 8 ⇒ 13 / 12 / 11 / 10 / 9 seconds

W - Biggest Snowball Ever!

Maximum Damage: 180 / 225 / 270 / 315 / 360 (+ 150% AP) ⇒ 150 / 195 / 240 / 285 / 330 (+ 150% AP)

E - Snowball Barrage

Damage per Hit: 16 / 24 / 32 / 40 / 48 (+ 15% AP) ⇒ 14 / 21 / 28 / 35 / 42

Sivir

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Sivir has become an extremely dominant ADC pick, regardless of whether or not she buys Essence Reaver, so it’s time to bring her down a notch. Since she has very strong wave control and great damage scaling, we’re lookin"

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 2% ⇒ 1.6%
Armor Growth: 4.45 ⇒ 4.0

Smolder

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"As expected Smolder has become much more powerful with the new Essence Reaver and increased minion counts. Since we’ve tuned our systems to our liking for now, it’s time to take stock of individual champions, Smolder bei"

Base Stats

Armor Growth: 4.7 ⇒ 4.0

Taliyah

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Taliyah’s been missing from the jungle as of late and the gameplay changes for the new season didn’t help her, quite the opposite actually. To that end we want to get her rocking and rolling in the jungle again so we’re "

Q - Threaded Volley

Bonus Damage to Monsters : 20 ⇒ 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40 (Note: Empowered Boulder damage is still increased by 80% to primary target.)

E - Unraveled Earth

Monster Damage Modifier: 190% ⇒ 225%

Varus

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Varus isn’t doing very well in the new season so we’re here to lift up his two primary builds, on-hit and AD caster."

Q - Piercing Arrow

Maximum Charge Base Damage: 80 / 150 / 220 / 290 / 360 ⇒ 80 / 160 / 240 / 320 / 400

W - Blighted Quiver

On-Hit Base Damage: 6 / 14 / 22 / 30 / 38 ⇒ 8 / 17 / 26 / 35 / 44

Viego

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Viego is performing worse this season due to direct adjustments and overall game-wide changes. As a result he needs some power added back in, both compensating some crit scaling that he lost and generally just making him"

Base Stats

Attack Speed Growth: 2.25% ⇒ 2.75%

Q - Blade of the Ruined King

Percent HP On-Hit Bonus Crit Damage Mod: 50% ⇒ 70%
Active Bonus Crit Damage Mod: 50% ⇒ 60%

Zed

Adjustment

Champions · 0 changes

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"Zed’s recent jungle changes didn't affect him as strongly as we had anticipated, and players have noticed, resulting in a resurgence of pick and ban rate. We’d like to slow his clear and lower his potency, this time with"

Passive - Contempt for the Weak

Monster Damage: 1.8x ⇒ 1.2x

Bandlepipes

Adjustment

Items · 0 changes

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"The pipes are sounding good on the rift but they're crowding out other support options due to their low price point. While we’re excited for their newfound popularity, we don’t want them to completely steal the spotlight"

General

Price: 2000 ⇒ 2300 gold
Combine Cost: 500 ⇒ 800 gold

Fiendhunter Bolts

Adjustment

Items · 0 changes

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"Fiendhunter Bolts is doing what it's supposed to do, but it's not quite well enough to get picked over its competition. We’re buffing up a little bit all around on the Bolts to help it hold up better against the other Ze"

General

Attack Speed: 40% ⇒ 45%
Damage Multiplier for Guaranteed Critical Strikes: 75% ⇒ 80%
Bonus True Damage for Critical Strikes: 10% ⇒ 15%

Hexoptics C44

Adjustment

Items · 0 changes

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"Hexoptics has found a place in some situational builds for longer range champions, but is a bit too niche and a little weaker than needed for it to function for most of the marksman roster, so we’re giving it a general a"

General

Attack Damage: 50 ⇒ 55
Distance Required for Max Damage Amp: 700 ⇒ 600

// MORE_FROM_THIS_PATCH

More From This Patch

New skins, chromas, bugfixes and everything else Riot shipped this patch.

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Revenant Reign Viego

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Seven blades. One king. No mercy.

A mad king betrayed by his most trusted knights, Viego has returned from the Land of Death to slay those who turned against him and his beloved. And he’ll use their seven traitorous swords to do it.

Revenant Reign Viego will be available in the Sanctum starting this patch and will be available until Patch 26.5 ends. There will also be an animated "Crowned as King" Emote available in the Mythic Shop for the same duration.

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Thoughts on How 26.1 Landed

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Faelights and Vision

We've read a lot of feedback about these changes, but at this point we're still gathering data and analyzing these change’s impacts on how games are playing out. We’re hesitant to make large system changes at this time while everyone is learning how to navigate these changes, but right now we’re seeing the way everyone is playing around these updates rapidly evolve across all skill levels/ranks as all of you have more time to get reps in with them. That said, jungler impact and general vision uptime are both topics we're watching closely, and we're considering options to address them in 16.3.

Snowballing and Game Length

For the most part, our metrics around snowballing have come in and they're not looking any higher than last season (and for average play are lower). This is pretty much the same across every region. Game time is also looking slightly longer in each region, and even more so given that the game starts earlier.

At the same time, players have reported that games feel a lot faster. We’ve looked into this a bit and have a few hypotheses:

Less downtime with more frequent minion spawns and homeguards can contribute to feeling like there's constant action happening.
Hitting towers and getting those chunks of damage from crystalline overgrowth both feel more rewarding (and more confronting on the receiving end), so it feels like progress is being made faster, even if it's not actually that much faster.
Barons are being taken earlier, since they're spawning at 20 minutes again. That said, Baron takes are a bit weaker than they were before (gives +150G instead of +300G), so games don't typically end after the first Baron push. Players have often associated the first Baron take with the game being over, but that is proving to be a bit less of the case this Season.

For now, we're not going to make any changes to Snowballing and Game Length, but will continue to monitor how things play out.

Aegis of Valor

Aegis of Valor has landed in a pretty good spot and we have resolved a bug that was affecting <2% of cases where players would be eligible for Aegis, but not receive it.

We’ve heard a lot of the concerns about abuse cases here, but the best thing to do for Aegis is always going to be to try to win the game. We will continue to evaluate disruptive behavior and players will continue to not be eligible for Aegis if they AFK the game.

Role Balance

We're going to hold a little bit on taking a definitive stance on which roles are most and least powerful, as we don't feel any are so out of line that we need to act now. There’s been a lot of debate on which roles and most and least powerful.

There are a lot of things we think require some time for players to learn, adapt to, and optimize, but so far, we've been pretty happy with how the game, especially in the mid-game which feels a bit more strategic; should I greed tempo to get an Overgrowth proc here, or should I push next wave to try and get that turret chunk for gold.

One of the other things that we think has been working well is how each role feels a lot more individualized and distinct. When a role feels powerful, we want it to feel powerful for a unique reason, not just because it has more gold, and we feel pretty good about how that’s trending. (eg. Top being higher level, Bot having more items, Support controlling vision, Mid having a lot of broader impact, Jungle controlling objectives, etc.)

Tower Durability

While we've seen many comments about turret squishiness, early metrics aren't suggesting any urgent issues for now. First towers fall at a similar time relative to lane start as they did last year, and later towers fall somewhat later than before (while rewarding partial pushes with Crystalline Overgrowth and Plating gold). There are of course many factors besides the tower destruction timestamp, so we'll revisit this as we get more detailed data over 26.2.

Support Quest Usability

We’ve seen feedback that it’s confusing to switch control ward hotkeys mid game and it’s disruptive for control wards to move from your inventory to the new quest active slot halfway through a match. It’s also been mentioned that it’s annoying to have to start a game in order to change this new hotkey. And we 100% agree. So to address these issues, we’ve included a few fixes in this patch and another coming in the following one.

First, you can now double bind the role quest slot. So you’ll be able to set your preferred hotkey to both the role slot and the item slot where you used to hold it in your inventory.
We’re also adding the role quest hotkey to the client keybinds menu so you can make your changes before you hit the rift.
Finally, in the following patch, we’re moving control wards to the support role quest slot at the start of the game instead of halfway through the match when the quest completes. This change should allow support players to more easily build up muscle memory.

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ARAM

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Bug Fixes - ARAM & ARAM:Mayhem

Fixed a bug where Hexgates did not allow players to teleport behind the turret.
Fixed a bug where players were interrupted when trying to use the Portal's in Koeshin's Crossing Map.

Bug Fixes - ARAM:Mayhem Only

Fixed a bug where Glass Cannon prevented Bloodthirster from triggering.
Fixed a bug where Smolder’s Q did not work with ReEnergize.
Fixed a bug where Flashy and Flash 2 would cancel Fiddlesticks’s R channel.
Fixed a bug where Empyrean Promise’s range was smaller than intended.
Fixed a bug where Sword of the Blossoming Dawn’s passive could target the wrong ally.
Fixed a bug where snowball damage from Snowball Upgrade and The Biggest Snowball was triggering Aurora’s and Zaahen’s passives.
Fixed a bug where First Strike was not tracking gold correctly in From Beginning to End.

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Arena

Expand

We’re taking a swing at the Combo Breaker system with the goal of letting the CC victim break free a little sooner, while also giving the CCer a bit of a reward for triggering Combo Breaker on their opponent. This also lets us revert our previous Mystic Punch changes that we think you’ll find exciting. Last patches Zaahen nerfs were meaningful but Arena is still a bit too favorable for his kit so we’re looking to tap him down while bringing up a few others that are underperforming.

Systems

Combo Breaker

We’ve heard your frustration with long CC chains, and we’re making some changes to Combo Breaker so that it will save you more often, without invalidating tanks and CC heavy comps. Our hope is that this allows the target of CC a little more of a chance to fight back, while giving those dishing out the crowd control a path to victory.

Reduced CC chain duration from 5 of the last 7 seconds ⇒ 4 of the last 7 seconds.
(NEW) When combo breaker triggers you take 10% + 5% for each time this has triggered max HP true damage. This resets on death and on combat end.

Champions

Zaahen

E Cooldown 10-8 ⇒ 12-10
R Armor Pen 10/20/30% ⇒ 5/15/25%

Bel’Veth

P Stacks per round reduced from 12 ⇒ 10
Bonus HP reduced from 250/400/550 ⇒ 250 / 350 / 450

Zyra

Plant Duration reduced from 8s ⇒ 6s

Master Yi

Q cooldown now starts when the spell ends (just like in URF).

Taric

Remove P Damage mod || 12.5 – 46.5 (based on level) ⇒ 25 – 93 (based on level)

Gangplank

P CD 15 ⇒ 10
R CD 160/140/120 ⇒ 130/100/90

Lulu

Q: Second bolt damage increased from 50% ⇒ 75%

Augments

Mystic Punch

With the above changes to Combo Breaker we feel like we can revert Mystic Punch back to its flat reduction.

Reverted to its old version || Now reduces the Cooldown of all abilities by 1.25s On-Hit.

Hold Very Still

Hold delay 1.25s ⇒ 0.75s
No longer goes into stealth when you’re unable to move, and stealth is disabled on crowd controlled.

Mad Hatter

Adaptive Force per hat increased from 10 ⇒ 12

The Brutalizer

Moved from Gold ⇒ Silver

Items

Statikk Shiv

Bounce Range reduced from 1500 ⇒ 750
Bonus AD ratio reduced from 0.65 ⇒ 0.5

Bandle Pipes

Attack Speed Aura increased from 30% ⇒ 45%
MS increased from 20 ⇒ 35

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ARURF

Expand

ARURF IS BACK! Enjoy all the rapidfire casting action and gameplay your heart desires as your hop onto a version of the Rift where cooldowns barely exist and level 1 5v5s in the top lane kick off every game!

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Solo/Duo Ranked - Apex Duo Rule Improvements

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Last patch (26.1) we loosened up the Apex Duo restriction rules quite a bit for most of the regions, and we received feedback/concerns that the premade gap could be too wide. To address this, we are updating the rules to reduce the premade gap for Apex Duo, the new rules are:

Master can duo with D1 ⇒ GM
Master cannot duo with D2
GM can duo with Master ⇒ Challenger
GM cannot duo with D1
Challenger can duo with GM ⇒ Challenger
Challenger cannot duo with Master
D1 Visible cannot duo with [D1/Master Visible + GM MMR]
D2 or below visible rank cannot duo with any Master+ MMR
KR and CN remain unchanged as they are already on stricter rules: KR duo is allowed up to D1 and below, and CN duo is up to Master and below.
Reminder: as part of the regular seasonal ranked operation, Apex MMR duo restriction will be turned back on in 26.2, after we temporarily disabled it in 26.1 to celebrate season start climbing.

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Swiftplay

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After the changes have begun to settle we’ve seen swiftplay game length go down by roughly 6 minutes. Now, with games ending normally close to the same time you’d be able to FF, we’re going to drop the surrender time down as well.

Surrender Time: 15 minutes ⇒ 12 minutes

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Clash - Summoner's Rift Demacia Cup

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After a brief delay the Demacia Cup will be happening on Summoner’s Rift this patch! Grab your 5 stacks and get ready to rumble!

Registration Begins: January 19 @ 11:00 AM (Local Time)
Tournament Dates: January 24 and 25 (~4-7 PM Local Time, varies by region)

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.

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WASD

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We recently enabled WASD everywhere outside of ranked and have been closely monitoring it across all champions and classes. While it has remained within our overall balance expectations, melee champions on WASD have particularly struggled to perform compared to playing with Point & Click controls. As a result, we are removing the WASD specific adjustment to how fast a player can attack while holding down movement keys for all melee champions, while slightly lowering it for most non-Marksman ranged champions. The majority of Marksman champions have landed about where we wanted so we won’t be making any changes to them at this moment. We'll continue to look at both melee and ranged champions individually to see if they need further fine tuning.

Attack Delay While Moving for Melee Champions: Removed
Attack Delay While Moving for Non-Marksman Ranged Champions: Reduced
Attack Delay While Moving for Marksman: Unchanged (Note: Ezreal, Kai’Sa, and Kindred were slightly reduced)

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Bugfixes & QoL Changes

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Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s melee attack in brush to sometimes not grant him a stack of ferocity.
Fixed a bug that caused Rangar to be granted a ferocity stack on leap end instead of leap start.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar to not be revealed when starting his leap from Fog of War or brushes.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar to sometimes be knocked straight up when leaping onto a Blast Cone.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s ferocity to time out in situations where his E had landed.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s leap to time out immediately after leaving a brush.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s passive cooldown to visually reset on hitting a plant.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s leap timing to be inconsistent.
Fixed a bug that caused all of Rengar’s leap damage when using ultimate to be increased by Axiom Arcanist instead of just the R leap damage.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s empowered Q to grant attack speed on attack instead of on cast.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s Q auto attack reset to be inconsistent.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s Q and empowered Q to deal an incorrect amount of damage to towers.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s brush leap to trigger energized on leap start as opposed to upon landing on the target.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar, on activating Thrill of the Hunt (R) while inside a brush to not consume Unseen Predator (P)'s buff if he walks into melee range of his enemy target before giving a basic attack command.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’ ultimate to inconsistently grant ferocity when using an attack in melee range.
Fixed a bug that caused Rengar’s R ability damage to scale with the attacked enemy champion’s attack damage.
Fixed a bug that caused Teemo’s Q blind to not cause Rengar’s Ferocity empowered attacks to be consumed on use.
Fixed a bug that caused Serpahine to return to her idle pose when her recall was interrupted by animation pause effects.
Fixed a bug that caused Camille’s Q2 VFX to not appear correctly.
Fixed a bug that caused Annie’s passive VFX to sometimes be missing when her passive was ready.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar's W, when targeting an enemy Viego, to be ended early via Viego's EW combo.
Fixed a bug that caused Briar’s W to end early if a Twitch she was targeting entered camouflage.

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Upcoming Skins & Chromas

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The following skins will be released in this patch: