iG Beats LCK's HLE at Worlds, Delivering LPL's First Win Over Korea This Tournament
The LPL's fourth seed routed the MSI champion 29 kills to 9 behind rookie AD carry Jiaqi and TheShy's roaming — while its analyst prepared the team remotely after a US visa refusal.
For the first time this tournament, a League of Legends team from China's LPL beat one from Korea's LCK — and it was iG, the fourth seed nobody picked, that did it.
iG defeated Hanwha Life Esports, the LCK's second seed and the reigning MSI champion, 1-0 in a best-of-one at the Worlds 2026 Swiss stage on Sunday night, winning in 28 minutes and 36 seconds with 29 kills to 9. The result sent iG into the 2-1 bracket group and, coming days after China's teams opened the tournament winless, landed like a course correction. The club's match report passed 6,800 likes within the hour.
The story of the game was the bottom lane. Jiaqi, iG's young AD carry playing his first Worlds, took the MVP after an account of the match described his lane as having "completely dismantled" Guma, the champion Korean marksman on the other side. Asked afterward what he wanted to prove on this stage, Jiaqi's answer ran short: "That this is what iG is." The veterans did their part — Wei's early pressure on Kanavi, Rookie anchoring the mid game, and TheShy, the most famous player in the building, roaming to keep his teammates comfortable, the detail that became the trending phrase itself.
Meiko, iG's support and a former world champion, refused the upset framing in the post-match interview: "It's hardly an upset — we were never a weak team. iG is a team that anyone can beat." Retired champion jungler Ning, watching from the desk, griped about the draw instead: iG, he argued, keeps being handed heavyweights — Gen.G, then HLE — while the LPL's tournament had begun so badly that its three teams all opened with losses.
There was also the running subtext of this Worlds for Chinese teams: the visas. iG's analyst, known as Orange, was denied his US visa and has been working from the club's base in China, joining meetings remotely — a companion misfortune to TES, whose strategist ZUIAN was refused three times and whose two coaches were also held back. Fans have tallied it up: of China's four qualifiers, only BLG fielded its full staff. Beating the LCK's second seed without the man who prepares their drafts gave the win its extra edge.
TES, the other Chinese winner earlier in the Swiss round, played LEC champion G2 later in the night as both Chinese teams chased a second straight win.