(Update 4:11 PM PST: Riot Director of Esports Whalen Rozelle confirms five separate venues, tournament taking place over five weeks)
Today, Riot Games announced additional location and format information for their 2014 League of Legends World Championships. The event, which had previously been said to occur in South Korea, has now been extended out to both Taipei and Singapore. Both newly added Southeast Asian locations will host the tournament’s group stages in September. Quarterfinals will take place in Busan, South Korea in October. The coastal city has hosted numerous esports events in the past.
The semifinals will move to Seoul, culminating in the 2014 World Final on October 19, hosted in Sangam Stadium, also known as the Seoul World Cup Stadium. The venue was originally built for the 2002 FIFA World Cup and has a capacity of over 66,000 seats–a number over three times larger than that of Staples Center in Los Angeles, the location for the 2013 World Finals. Sangam Stadium is the largest football-only stadium in Asia.
This year’s format has been changed to a sixteen team group stage. Three teams will qualify from North America and Europe respectively, while Korea and China will also receive three spots each (up from two last year, not including Korea’s extra slot from All-Star). Each team will be placed into one of four different groups and the top two teams will move on to the quarter finals.
Taiwan and South East Asia will each have a spot, while last year’s wild card regions will also have an extra chance to qualify. Latin America and Brazil will compete at this year’s NA LCS Regional Finals while EU LCS will host a fight between Oceania, CIS, and Turkey for each spot.
Riot promises additional information to be revealed regarding news, dates, and ticket information in the coming weeks.
This story originally appeared on GameSpot sister site onGamers.com.
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