Master, Grandmaster and Challenger: How the Apex Tiers Work

Master starts where the divisions end. Reach 100 LP in Diamond I and you move up at once; there is no promotion series. Riot's apex page then gives you “demotion protection for your first three games”. After those three, dropping below 0 LP sends you back to Diamond I, “at either 25, 50, or 75 LP” depending on the skill level the system assesses. Master itself has no cap on players and no upper limit on LP.

Master is also where the ladder stops being a staircase. Below it, every division is 100 LP and you compete with your own LP only. From Master up you are on one ladder per region with everyone else in the apex tiers, and the next two tiers depend on where the other players are.

Riot's rules have two parts each, and the second part is the one that moves:

• Grandmaster: at least 400 LP, and more LP than the lowest Grandmaster player in your region. You drop back to Master when you fall below 400 LP or when you have less LP than that lowest player.
• Challenger: at least 800 LP, and more LP than the lowest Challenger player in your region. The same two ways down.

So 400 and 800 are floors, not cutoffs. When more players sit above 800 LP than there are Challenger spots, the real cutoff is wherever the lowest player inside the cap sits, and it moves every day. We don't print a cutoff here because any number would be stale by tomorrow; trackers publish live cutoffs per region, and Riot's page gives only the floors. The March 2026 MMR-to-rank change made this harder: Riot wrote that it had “made the LP requirements for Grandmaster and Challenger higher, even though there's the same number of players there”.

Grandmaster and Challenger hold a fixed number of players per region. These are the numbers on Riot's apex page, dated 30 May 2026, for both ranked queues:

Oceania is listed twice with different numbers on Riot's own page. Its regional section gives 700 Grandmaster and 300 Challenger spots in Solo/Duo (500 and 200 in Flex); the “all regions” summary table on the same page gives 100 and 50 for both queues. Every other region matches across the two tables. We show both and don't pick, because we can't tell which one Riot's servers use. If you play in Oceania, the live leaderboard in the client is the only certain count.

You don't become Grandmaster the moment you pass the cutoff. Riot's page says the Grandmaster and Challenger standings “refresh on a rotating twenty-four hour schedule”, and that each time the clock hits zero in local time “it recalculates all Master+ players in the same region”. In practice: win your way past the lowest Challenger at 14:00 and you are still Grandmaster until the next update, and if two other players pass you before then, you stay Grandmaster after it too. The same update handles demotions out of the two tiers, which is why a player can sit at 820 LP and still be Grandmaster.

Decay is stricter in the apex tiers than in Diamond. From Riot's apex and placements pages:

• One banked day is used up each night; when the bank is empty you lose 75 LP per day until you play again. An apex player who decays goes to “Diamond II, not Platinum I”.
• Decay keeps running while an account is banned.
• Near the end of a season, keep “at least 1 more banked day than there are days remaining in the season”, because decay cycles one last time on the final day.

The worked examples and the Diamond rules are in ranked decay.

Dodging. Below Master a dodge costs 5 LP, then 15. Riot's queue dodging page adds one line for the apex tiers: “Rather than -5 LP loss, queue dodge penalties apply a -20 LP loss, along with an impact on MMR scoring.” It does not say what the second and third dodge cost at apex. In its December 2025 ranked post Riot described a dodge at Master and higher as counting “as a full loss”. The full table and the timers are in dodge penalty.

Solo/Duo. Since patch 26.15 Master players can duo again, but only with players close to them: Riot's tiers page allows a Master player to queue with another Master player within 400 LP, or with a Diamond I player if the Master player is under 200 LP. Grandmaster and Challenger players, and anyone with a Grandmaster or Challenger MMR, cannot duo at all. Riot adds that “Master players who are competing for Grandmaster are also restricted from playing duo”, and that players in Korea cannot queue with Master or higher. The whole table, tier by tier, is in Master+ duo restrictions.

Flex. Apex players can queue Flex alone or in groups of 2, 3 or 5, but “cannot, however, queue with any player ranked below Emerald”.

For Grandmaster and Challenger the answer is the cap table above: 1,000 players in each of the largest regions (700 plus 300), 150 in the smallest. For Master, Riot gives two statements that no longer agree with the trackers. Its tiers page (7 May 2026) says Master means “the top .2% of players worldwide”; its apex page (30 May 2026) says fewer than 1% of players ever reach Master or higher. Esports Tales' count of Solo/Duo players across all regions, dated 12 August 2026, has Master at 0.83%, Grandmaster at 0.054% and Challenger at 0.023%. The difference is the March 2026 change: Riot's own dev post says it moved players “at the higher end of Diamond into Master”, so the 0.2% line describes the ladder before it.

Riot's Ranked FAQ lists “What percentage of players actually reach Master and above?” and “How many Challenger players are there?” as its own questions, and answers them with the two pages above. For the whole ladder, Iron to Challenger with percentiles, see the share of players in Master and above. For the tier just before Diamond and why it holds 13% of players, see Emerald, the tier before Diamond. And for everything below the apex, the hub is League of Legends ranks explained.

One practical note for anyone near a cutoff: every LP decides, and the client only shows the LP of your last game. LazyElo's Rank & sessions page keeps the LP of every game and never shows an MMR number, which is what the LP tracker is for.