League of Legends: What is the Fearless Draft and how does it work?
Image credit: LEC The 2025 League of Legends season is in full swing, with most regional competitions already completing their first split of the year. For the majority of top-tier League of Legends competitions, Riot Games has implemented the Fearless Draft, a new system designed to add another layer of strategy into the pre-game draft. … Continued The post League of Legends: What is the Fearless Draft and how does it work? appeared first on Esports Insider.
The 2025 League of Legends season is in full swing, with most regional competitions already completing their first split of the year. For the majority of top-tier League of Legends competitions, Riot Games has implemented the Fearless Draft, a new system designed to add another layer of strategy into the pre-game draft.
First introduced in China’s League of Legends Pro League (LPL) in 2024, the Fearless Draft now appears throughout the highest level of competition. Here, find everything there is to know about the League of Legends Fearless Draft ahead of First Stand.
What is the Fearless Draft?
Used across the first splits of all regional leagues and the upcoming First Stand tournament, the Fearless Draft prevents teams from using the same set of champions twice in a row. Once a champion is selected, it becomes unavailable for the remainder of the series.
Teams have access to 10 additional Fearless bans on top of the 10 bans from the standard pick-and-ban phase.
The system is typically featured in best-of-three and best-of-five series, resulting in teams having to expand their champion pool to adapt when the stronger choices are out of action. This creates more variety in strategy for fans to watch and pros to master.
A Fearless Draft can be split into Soft and Hard variations, with each one having slightly different criteria than the other.
Soft Fearless Draft
The Soft Fearless Draft sticks to the concept of a traditional League of Legends Fearless Draft.
During the draft, teams are unable to pick a champion that was used in the previous game. However, their opponents are able to use any champion used by the opposition.
Teams can only select a champion once for the remainder of the series but still have the choice of their opponent’s champions, resulting in an expanded pool.
A Soft Fearless draft doesn’t force teams to use a total of 50 different champions across a five-game series.
Hard Fearless Draft
Compared to a soft Fearless Draft, a hard variation is significantly more challenging
Teams can only use a champion once in the series, with both being unable to use it for the rest of a series.
As a result, teams are utilising the entirety of the League of Legends champion pool as they choose new champions every match.
During matches using a hard Fearless Draft, 50 different champions are guaranteed to appear if a series latest five games.
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