As part of our ongoing efforts towards full transparency with our LCS audience, we’re confirming that later this year our Riot Germany office and EU LCS studios will be moving from Cologne to Berlin.

Although Cologne has been an awesome home for us for the past year, we couldn’t be more excited about the move and to usher in a new season of EU esports in our brand new base.

We’ll be back later this year with a glimpse of our new studio once details are squared away – but suffice to say we’re excited to offer more space and a better entertainment experience for fans across Europe. We’ll be up and running in our new home by the start of the new EU LCS season.

Leaving Cologne wasn’t an easy decision. Cologne is often considered the capital of esports but Berlin is the German city with the biggest concentration of LoL players.

Although moving away from Cologne will doubtless be a disappointment for local fans who lived nearby, we’re confident that our newer, bigger studio will allow us to create a better entertainment experience for fans in Germany and across Europe. In Cologne, a large majority of our attendees came from throughout Germany to join us in studio, and we expect to see the same thing in Berlin.

We’ve been working closely with and talking to LCS teams about this move for a few months. Moving to an international capital city like Berlin offers LCS teams and players the opportunity for more sponsor attention and visibility, better cost of living and broader domestic and international media exposure.

We’ll be back within the next few weeks as we get the details ironed out, but wanted to give LCS fans from EU and around the world a glimpse of where our thinking is around the future of the EU LCS. Above all, we believe this move to Berlin will allow us to continue to grow and level up the EU LCS ecosystem and experience for teams, players and fans.