The North American and European portion of the League of Legends Rift Rivals tournament has been given a new format ahead of the July 5 start date, Riot Games announced Wednesday.

The international tournament that will pit regions from all over the world against each other received criticism specifically geared toward the NA vs. EU matchup as fans didn’t think there were enough series between the teams from both sides.

Riot heard the cries of the community and has changed the format to include a double round robin group stage over three days culminating with a best-of-five final between the best team from NA squaring off against the best team from the EU.

Three teams representing NA will face off against three teams from EU. Teams will play each member of the opposing region twice for a total of 18 matches in the round robin stage. 

The NA LCS and EU LCS will put forth the top three clubs from each Spring Split - Team SoloMid, Cloud9 and Phoenix1 in North America and G2 Esports, Unicorns of Love and Fnatic from Europe.

The tournament will be compressed to four days instead of six and its dates have been changed from July 3-9 to July 5-8. The event will be held at the European League Championship Series studios in Berlin.

In other Rift Rivals matchups, South Korea will face China, Taiwan and Oceania will do battle with Japan and Southeast Asia, Latin America North and Latin America South with tangle and Brazil and Turkey will meet the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States.
 

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