Where can you find the official Riftbound rules?

The official rules of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game are published by Riot Games in one place, the Rules Hub on playriftbound.com. Everything else, from the booklet in a starter box to a video or a guide like this one, explains those documents but does not replace them.

Riot itself says that the Rules Hub is not the place to learn the game, and compares its documents to a car manual for someone who is still learning to drive. A new player does better with a short guide first, and the article on the quickest way to learn the rules says which one.

What is on the Riftbound Rules Hub?

The Rules Hub is a single page with six kinds of content.

• Core Rules. The numbered rules of the game: deck building, setup, the turn, timing, combat, scoring and every keyword. The English version of 9 October 2026 runs to 142 pages.
• Tournament Rules. The rules for Riftbound competitions, from store events to premier events: deck registration, sideboards, time limits, the duties of players and judges, and penalties. The English version of 9 October 2026 runs to 53 pages.
• Ban lists. Two lists name the cards and battlefields banned in sanctioned Constructed tournaments, one for Constructed and one for 2v2 Constructed.
• Patch notes. Each update of the Core Rules comes with an article that says what changed and why.
• Errata. Each set since Origins has an article with the old and the new wording of every card whose text Riot has changed.
• Judges. A link to the judge test of UVS Games, the company that manufactures Riftbound and brings it to stores.

How can you tell that a rules document is current?

Look at the date. Both rule books print the day of their last update at the top of the first page, and the Rules Hub shows the same date next to each link. Riot has updated the Core Rules with every set since Spiritforged, each time with patch notes.

As of October 2026, the newest rule books are dated 9 October 2026. They bring the rules for Radiance, the fifth set, and apply from 16 October 2026, the first day of the Radiance Pre-Rift events. A copy saved on a phone does not change when Riot updates the Rules Hub, so compare its date with the one on the page before an event. Old links to riftbound.leagueoflegends.com still lead to the same pages on playriftbound.com.

A larger change is planned for Legacy, the sixth set, in January 2027. Riot has said in its Radiance patch notes that it will rewrite the rules documents from the ground up so that players and judges can look things up more easily, without changing how the game plays.

What do the patch notes and FAQ articles add?

The patch notes and FAQ articles settle questions that the rule books leave open, with worked examples from real cards. Riot has published a rules FAQ for every set from Origins to Vendetta, and has said that an FAQ for Radiance follows after the set's release on 23 October 2026.

These articles carry real weight. Riot calls the answers in them official rulings, and its recent FAQs say that where an FAQ and the Core Rules differ, the FAQ takes precedence until the next Core Rules update replaces it. The FAQs are listed under Rules and Releases on playriftbound.com, and the Rules Hub links all the patch notes.

Where do you find the current wording of a card?

The current wording of a card is in the errata. Riot sometimes changes the text of a card after it has been printed, to make it easier to understand or to make clear how it works within the rules, and from then on the card is played with the new wording. Printed cards keep the old text, so the words on a card in your hand can be out of date.

On 9 October 2026, two weeks before the release of Radiance, Riot published errata for four Radiance cards. Elnuk Herd is printed to give another friendly unit +3 Might, and its new wording drops the word "another". Neeko, Blending In is printed to let you choose three different Legends besides your own while you build your deck, and the new wording makes that up to three. Older cards have errata too, such as Bone Skewer from Unleashed and Fizz, Trickster from Spiritforged.

On this site, the page of a card with errata shows the wording it is played with today, and the printed wording under it. Riot has also said in the Radiance patch notes that it does not update the rules or introduce errata to manage the power level of any card, and that when a powerful card needs managing, it uses other tools, such as a ban.

Are the official rules available in other languages?

Yes. Riot publishes the Rules Hub in all five languages Riftbound is printed in: English, French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean, each with its own translation of both rule books. Only the language code in the address changes, as in playriftbound.com/fr-fr/rules-hub/ for French.

For the Tournament Rules, English is the reference: rule 104.2 says that the English version takes precedence over any translation. At a tournament, any player may also ask a judge for the reference wording of a card, which the Tournament Rules call its Watcher wording, in the language they prefer (rule 420.2).

How do you look something up in the Core Rules?

Search the document for the word you need, then follow the numbers. The Core Rules have five parts: the Golden and Silver Rules from rule 000, Game Concepts from 100, Playing the Game from 300, Additional Rules from 700 and Keywords from 800. A few numbers are worth knowing: rule 193 says how a game is won, combat starts at rule 461, scoring at rule 469, and each keyword has its own rule from Accelerate at 805 on. When Riot adds rules, the numbers after them can shift, so a rule number belongs to the version it was taken from.

Which source wins when two of them disagree?

The card wins over the rule book. The Golden Rule says that card text supersedes rules text (rule 002), and the card text that counts is its current wording, errata included. After that, the official sources rank like this:

• An FAQ wins over the Core Rules where the two differ, until the next Core Rules update.
• At a tournament, the Tournament Rules win over the Core Rules (Tournament Rules 104.1), and an official addendum for a specific event wins over the Tournament Rules (104.3).
• At the event itself, the head judge is the final authority, including where the written rules are unclear (204.4).

A player who disagrees with a floor judge may appeal to the head judge, whose ruling is final (Tournament Rules 413). At Competitive and Professional events, judges explain how a rule works but do not say what a move you have not made yet will do, so ask whether a kind of ability can score the winning point, not whether your attack will win (Tournament Rules 204.5.a.1).

The Core Rules are written for looking things up, so read a rule in plain words first and check its number afterward. The How to play part of this guide explains the game rule by rule, and the article on the rules new players get wrong most often gives the rule number of each mistake, so that a question at the table can be settled quickly. Before a tournament, the rules that apply at a Riftbound tournament matter as much as the Core Rules, since the Tournament Rules win wherever the two disagree, and the event finder shows the events near you. Every card is in the card list, with the wording it is played with today.