Which formats are played at Riftbound events?

Every event of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game answers two questions before you sign up: where your deck comes from, and how many players sit at a table. The Riftbound Tournament Rules sort events into two kinds by the first question. At a Constructed event you bring a deck you built beforehand, and at a Limited event every card you play with is handed out at the event (Tournament Rules 202.1).

Most events are played one on one, and some stores and side events also run two-versus-two games and free-for-all games for three or four players. Riot's overview of organized play of 28 July 2025 allows both kinds of event to be played in any of these ways. The format says how the decks are built, while the mode of play, such as the Duel or Magma Chamber, says how the game runs, as the article on the game modes of Riftbound explains.

What is the difference between Constructed and Limited?

The difference is where the cards come from. In Constructed, players build a deck from their own collection and bring it along. In Limited, every player starts from the same kind of card pool, opened or picked at the table, and builds a deck in the time the event allows. Players keep the cards they receive.

The Tournament Rules know two Limited formats. In Sealed, each player opens booster packs alone and builds from them. In Draft, the players at a table open their packs together and pick the cards one at a time.

What is Standard?

Standard is the main Constructed format of Riftbound, which Riot calls its primary Constructed format on its Rules Hub. A Standard deck follows the deck rules of the Core Rules and fixes the sizes: one Legend, a Main Deck of exactly 40 cards with the chosen champion among them, 12 runes and exactly three battlefields with different names (Tournament Rules 402.1). When an event allows a sideboard, a player may bring up to 10 extra cards to swap in between games (rule 601.1.c.1).

Standard is made of the sets of the current year and the previous year (rule 601.3.b). The Tournament Rules of 9 October 2026 list every set so far: Origins with the Origins cards of Proving Grounds, Spiritforged, Unleashed, Vendetta and Radiance, which joins on its release date of 23 October 2026. Riot intends to start rotating older sets out of Standard in 2028, as the article on whether older sets stay legal explains.

A card on the banned list may not be in a Standard deck, with one exception at casual events: a ready-made Champion Deck played exactly as it comes in its box may keep the banned cards it contains (rule 601.2.d.2). The Tournament Rules name the Origins Champion Deck: Jinx, led by the Legend Loose Cannon, as the example. At a Nexus Night, the deck's Fight or Flight, Scrapheap and Reaver's Row may stay in it, as long as the player changes no card and adds no sideboard.

How do two-versus-two and free-for-all events work?

At a 2v2 event, two players sign up together as a team and play every match side by side against another team (Tournament Rules 603.1). The game is Magma Chamber, the team mode of the Core Rules, in which teammates share one score and play to 11 points instead of 8. A 2v2 event can be Constructed or Sealed, and in Sealed 2v2 each team shares one pool of 8 booster packs (rule 603.6). Teammates may show each other their hands and give each other advice (rules 502.12 and 703.9.e).

2v2 Constructed is a format of its own on Riot's Rules Hub. It allows the same sets as Standard, and its banned list holds every card banned in Standard and one more: Wuju Bladesman, the Master Yi Legend from Proving Grounds, which gives +2 Might to a friendly unit that defends alone, a teammate's units included. Riot treats one-on-one Constructed as its premier competitive format, but in its State of the Game of 3 August 2026 it said that 2v2 had become popular enough at events for Riot to start spending design and playtesting time on it.

Free-for-all games for three or four players, the Skirmish and War modes, can be played at Nexus Nights, and Riot's overview of organized play names structured free-for-all matches among the side events of its premier tournaments. The Tournament Rules give them no format of their own, so the format of the event applies.

How do Sealed and Draft work?

In Sealed, each player gets six unopened booster packs and builds a Main Deck of at least 25 cards from them (rules 602.4.a.1 and 602.4.a.2). In Draft, each player gets three packs, and a table of as close to eight players as possible opens them together. Every player takes one card from a pack and passes the rest on until each has picked 39 cards, and a Draft Main Deck needs at least 20 (rules 602.4.b.1 to 602.4.b.3).

The deck rules of Limited are looser than those of Standard.

• A deck may use any three domains, or its Legend's two domains and one more.
• The limit of three copies does not apply, and neither does Unique. The Tournament Rules give the example of a deck with ten Pouty Poro, and two copies of a Unique card such as Rabadon's Deathcrown may both go in.
• A signature spell fits any deck whose domains include all of its own, so Super Mega Death Rocket!, the Fury and Chaos spell of Jinx, can go in a Fury, Chaos and Body deck without a Jinx Legend.
• A card banned in Constructed may be played, unless it is banned in that Limited format too (rule 602.1.b).

Pre-Rift events, in the week before each new set, are the best-known Sealed events. Instead of six packs, each player opens a Pre-Rift kit with a 15-card pack built around one of the new Legends, five booster packs of the new set and a promo card.

Draft has been rare at stores so far. Riot has said that its first sets were not really designed with drafting in mind, and in its Products and Sets into 2027 article of 3 August 2026 it called Legacy, with its release on 29 January 2027, its first set built for drafting.

Which format does each kind of event use?

Riot sets the format of its larger events, while Nexus Night leaves it to the store.

• Nexus Night, the weekly store event, is played in the format the store picks. UVS Games, Riot's publishing partner that supplies the stores, names Constructed, Sealed and Modified Champion Deck as the choices in its dates and details for Radiance, and most Nexus Nights are Constructed. The Tournament Rules do not define Modified Champion Deck, so ask the store how it runs.
• Pre-Rift events are Sealed, with the kit described above.
• Summoner Skirmish, the competitive store tournament, is one-on-one Constructed in best-of-three matches.
• Regional Qualifiers have been one-on-one Constructed. Riot's overview of organized play puts them at the Competitive level, where matches are best of three and players may bring a sideboard. The first English one was played in Houston in December 2025.
• Regional Championships are one-on-one Constructed. Riot announced that the European Regional Championship in Stuttgart, from 6 to 8 November 2026, will be played in Standard with the cards of Radiance. The same page lists a slate of side events and on-demand events beside the main tournament.
• The World Championship, planned for 2027, is listed as one-on-one Constructed in Riot's overview of organized play.

Around the main event, the big tournaments run side events. Riot's overview says that their main events focus on Constructed, with limited play offered in the side events. Riot has not yet named the formats of the Nexus Cup and the Riftbound Challenge Series, the store programs for 2027 that it announced in its August 2026 State of Play.

Which format should you start with?

If you have no cards yet, start with Sealed. A Pre-Rift event or a Sealed Nexus Night hands you everything you need, and every player begins from the same kind of pool. If you own a ready-made deck, such as a Champion Deck, a Constructed Nexus Night lets you play it as it comes. Once you know one deck well, a Summoner Skirmish, which runs through the Radiance season, is the step up to competitive Constructed, and a 2v2 night is a friendly way to play next to a friend who is still learning.

A player who wants a Standard deck of their own does not have to open boosters for it, because single cards come from local game stores, from Cardmarket in Europe, from TCGplayer in the United States and from CardTrader on both sides, as the article on whether to open boosters or get single cards weighs.

The event finder filters the events near you by format, and the major events page lists the big tournaments. The deck builder checks a deck against the Constructed deck rules and the banned list while you build it. Each format has an article of its own: Constructed covers registering a deck and changing it between games, Sealed covers opening and building from a pool, Draft covers picking and passing cards around a table, and two-versus-two events cover how teams play together.