If you’ve spent any time in League of Legends esports this year, you already know the story: T1 walked into the 2025 World Championship as the LCK’s fourth seed, clawed through the bracket, and beat KT Rolster 3-2 in a final for the ages to claim their sixth Summoner’s Cup — and their third consecutive title. It’s the kind of three-peat that gets talked about for years. Now Riftbound, Riot’s League of Legends trading card game, is turning that run into cardboard (and foil, and gold-stamped signatures) history.
Welcome to this week’s Thursday Spotlight! If you’ve never picked up Riftbound, this is a great week to start paying attention — the game just wrapped its first full year, and it’s celebrating with one of the most ambitious collector products a TCG has put out this year.
The Riftbound x T1 2025 Worlds Champion Collection
Each of T1’s five 2025 World Championship starters personally selected a champion card to represent them, and Riftbound built an entire premium set around the choices:
- Doran picked Ambessa, The Wolf
- Faker picked Galio, Indefatigable
- Gumayusi picked Miss Fortune, Buccaneer
- Oner picked Xin Zhao, Vigilant
- Keria picked Seraphine, Not Alone
Every card in the collection got brand-new artwork and a unique card frame built specifically for this release — no reused splash art here. The set comes in two versions. The T1 2025 Worlds Champion Signature Edition is the true grail: only 10,125 copies are being produced per language, and each box includes one serialized card numbered from 1 to 2025 (a nod to T1’s championship year) carrying a gold-stamped signature from the player who chose it. It’s priced at $360 and is being distributed through a drawing on Riot’s merch store rather than a standard sale, so fans get a fair shot instead of a speed-checkout race. There’s also a friendlier Player Bundle at $70 for fans who just want the five cards — with different art — plus sleeves, a deckbox, a binder, and a metal die to actually play with.
One fun wrinkle: Keria’s pick, Seraphine, Not Alone, is actually a preview card from Riftbound’s upcoming fifth set, Radiance, and won’t be tournament-legal until that set launches on October 23. So this collection doubles as an early look at where the game is headed next.
A Big Week for a Game Still Finding Its Footing
The timing lines up with Riftbound’s second-ever “State of the Game” address from the design team, where Game Director Dave Guskin and Executive Producer Chengran Chai reflected on the game’s first year. The headline takeaways: the team plans to keep banning cards when something proves too warping for the metagame (as they did following Vendetta‘s launch), they’re actively reworking rules templating to make the game friendlier to new players, and they’re leaning hard into community feedback as the design compass going forward. It’s a refreshingly candid look behind the curtain for a game that’s only just celebrated its first birthday — and it’s clear Riot sees collector pieces like the T1 collection and the core competitive game as two halves of the same coin, not competing priorities.
New to Riftbound? Here’s the 60-Second Version
Riftbound is built around Legends — powerful League of Legends champions who anchor your deck and set the tone for how you’ll play. Instead of one big battlefield, you’re fighting across contested lanes, deploying units, and racing to control key locations while your Legend’s abilities push the game in your favor. Cards are organized into six domains (think color identities), and champion cards like the ones in this new collection are the stars of the show — flashy, powerful, and exactly the kind of thing new players gravitate toward first. If you’ve ever wanted a TCG that feels like it was built by people who actually understand what makes League’s champions compelling, Riftbound is worth a look.
Whether or not you win the drawing for a Signature Edition box, the T1 collection is a genuinely cool moment for a young game leaning into its community and its source material at the same time — and a good excuse to check out Riftbound if you haven’t yet.
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