Riot just dropped the official answer to every “bring back Season 3” copium post that’s clogged the subreddit for years. League of Legends Classic launches July 29 in Patch 26.15, anchored in that 2013-era framework but pulling greatest-hits items and champs from the broader early days — 60 champs at launch including all 40 originals, old Sion kits, Zz’Rot Portal, Heart of Gold, and a reskinned classic UI layered on modern pathing and netcode. Executive producer Paul Bellezza told Polygon the Thunderdome prototype last summer proved the old assets still worked and still slapped, so they greenlit a dedicated 25-30 person team of era veterans like CertainlyT and FeralPony to live-service it with community-voted champion additions via the Classic Pass.

Bellezza explained the Season 3 choice straight: different regions onboarded at different times, and Season 3 was the sweet spot where jungle pathing and the meta started coalescing worldwide. No separate client, no second account — just toggle in the Riot Client. They’re keeping jungle timers off for launch (playtests showed it felt right that way) while modern QoL keeps the thing from feeling like a janky museum piece. Riot’s also running a parallel Season 3 battle pass on the main game and an LCS Classic showdown on July 24 to feed the hype.

Fan projects like Chronoshift got the hammer, so this is the first time the nostalgia hits are coming straight from the source instead of cracked clients. Early X chatter is already split between “peak” and “cash grab with mixed models,” but the dev update with FeralPony and Phreak showing the map and kits landed exactly where it needed to. The split-playerbase worry is real, yet Bellezza framed it as giving everyone a lane: vets get their home, current grinders stay on Summoner’s Rift, newcomers dip in for the vibe.

This isn’t just a mode — it’s Riot finally owning the “game was better then” discourse instead of pretending the evolution was all upside.