What is Riftbound?

Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game brings the champions of League of Legends to the table as cards. It is a physical card game, played face to face with a deck you build yourself, and it is made by the same company that makes League of Legends. This article explains what the game is in a few minutes of reading, and points to the articles that go deeper.

Who makes Riftbound?

Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, designs Riftbound and writes its rules. UVS Games manufactures the cards and gets them to the stores. Riftbound is printed in English and Simplified Chinese, and in 2026 French, Traditional Chinese and Korean editions followed. The article on who makes Riftbound names every company involved.

When did Riftbound come out?

The first English set, Origins, came out on 31 October 2025, together with the Proving Grounds starter box and three Champion Decks. Since then a new main set has followed every few months: Spiritforged, Unleashed and Vendetta are out, and Radiance, the fifth set, has its release on 23 October 2026. The article on when Riftbound came out gives the release date of every set in Chinese and English, and the article on every Riftbound set says what each set added.

How does a game of Riftbound work?

A game of Riftbound is usually played by two players. Each brings a deck built around a Legend, a League of Legends champion who starts the game in play and sets the two domains the deck may use. Next to the Legend, each deck sets aside its chosen champion, a champion unit of the Legend's own champion that waits beside the Legend and can be played as if it were in your hand.

At the start of each turn you channel two runes: you take them from your rune deck into play. Runes pay for everything you play, from units that fight to spells that change the fight and gear that stays on the table. Your units move to the battlefields in the middle, and when they take one, you score a point. Every battlefield you still control at the start of your next turn scores you another. The first player to reach 8 points wins. The article on how a game of Riftbound works follows a whole game from setup to the winning point, and the article on how to win a game of Riftbound explains the scoring in full.

What kinds of cards are there?

Riftbound cards come in a few kinds, each with its own job in the game.

• Legends lead a deck and stay in play all game.
• Units fight for the battlefields. The champion units are the League of Legends champions themselves.
• Spells are played for an effect and then go to the trash.
• Gear stays in play and keeps working, and some gear is equipped to a unit.
• Runes pay for the other cards.
• Battlefields are the places the players fight over.
• Tokens are made by other cards during the game, and every token is on the token list.

The six cards below show how they fit together in one deck: Loose Cannon is the Legend of Jinx, Jinx, Demolitionist is a champion unit that deck can choose as its champion, Super Mega Death Rocket! is a signature spell only a Jinx deck may play, Long Sword is gear that you attach to a unit, the Fury Rune pays for cards of the Fury domain, and Grove of the God-Willow is a battlefield.

Do you need to know League of Legends to play?

No. Riftbound has its own rules and none of them assume you have played League of Legends. Players who know the video game will recognize the champions, the regions of Runeterra and items like Zhonya's Hourglass, and that makes the cards fun to discover. Players who have never played it learn the champions from the cards, and the champions page tells you who each one is. The article on whether you need to know League of Legends shows which names League players will recognize and where the cards differ from the video game.

How do you start playing Riftbound?

The easiest way in is a ready-made product. Proving Grounds is a box for two to four players with four decks that are ready to play, and each Champion Deck or Showdown Deck is a full deck around one champion. From there you can open booster packs or pick single cards to improve your deck, build a new one with the deck builder, and play at a local store: many stores that sell Riftbound run a weekly Nexus Night, which you can find with the event finder. Single cards come from local game stores and from marketplaces such as Cardmarket in Europe, TCGplayer in the United States and CardTrader on both sides of the Atlantic. The article on how to start playing walks through the first steps one by one.