Riftbound Radiance Preview Season: The Full Schedule

Riftbound's fifth set started leaking into the world differently from most trading card games' spoiler seasons. On 18 September, the LCS and LEC broadcasts carried what Riot itself called "a great opening act" - and then, publicly, nothing else happened for a week. The real preview season was a 16-day rollout (25 September to 10 October, counting both ends) that started with the developer panel at RQ Los Angeles on Friday 25 September, and it wasn't one announcement post. It was 109 distinct creators, streamers and press outlets (115 listed slots, explained below), each handed a specific date to show off a piece of Set 5: Radiance.

Update, 1 November 2026: preview season is over. The schedule below is kept as Riot published it on 18 September and is written in the past tense where it describes the rollout. Riot's announcement page now also lists the follow-up posts from 9 October: Core Rules: Radiance Patch Notes (effective 16 October), the October 2026 Tournament Rules Changelog, Radiance Errata Updates, and a "festival of brilliance" card showcase, plus a Pre-Rift preparation post on 12 October. The Card Gallery is the place to read the cards themselves.

The original post was written on 21 September, when Riot's Card Gallery carried no Radiance cards and the schedule was the map of when Radiance would stop being a card count and a handful of named Legends and start being cards you could read.

What Radiance preview season actually is

"Preview season" is Riot's own term, and the set details behind it, as Riot had announced them and as our 2026 set schedule post covered them, were: 167 cards (61 Showcase, per the figure on Riot's article today), five of nine Legends named at that point (Seraphine, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Ekko and Evelynn), Showdown Decks pitting Seraphine against Evelynn, a Vault Bundle, Pre-Rift kits, and one new Ultimate Rare card Riot had announced but not yet shown. What was new was the how and when of finding out the rest, published in Riot's 18 September Radiance Preview Season article.

One date did shift since this vertical last wrote about it. Riot's 3 August Products and Sets into 2027 article said previews would "continue to run through October 9." The actual day-by-day list Riot posted on 18 September runs a day longer, closing out on 10 October with a single confirmed reveal partner. It was a one-day nudge, not a contradiction worth losing sleep over.

That box art is the other reason the schedule matters: it was the first official look at Jarvan IV and Ziggs alongside Ekko and Seraphine, confirming all four sit on Radiance packaging.

How to catch every reveal without missing one

Riot built two tools for this, and both beat relying on any single creator's feed:

• The Card Gallery (riftbound.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/card-gallery), which Riot says "will get updated every day at 5pm PT with the previous day's reveals." It is the single aggregation point - everything any partner shows eventually lands here, even if you missed the original post.
• The #RBRadiance hashtag. Riot's own framing: "Worried that you might not follow everyone we tap? Follow the hashtag #RBRadiance to see every single drop." With the 109 distinct partners spread across YouTube, Twitch, X, Instagram, TikTok, Bilibili and traditional games press, no single platform's algorithm is going to surface all of them for you.

When this post was first written, on 21 September, three days after the LCS/LEC teaser and four days before the Los Angeles panel, the gallery held no Radiance cards. That tracked with Riot's own framing of the 18th as pre-show noise rather than a reveal. Preview season has since ended, so check the gallery directly for the current card list rather than relying on this post.

The full day-by-day reveal schedule

Riot's page lists 115 entries across 13 dates, but that counts slots, not partners. Four entries are not creators or outlets (LCS Broadcast, LEC Broadcast, Los Angeles RQ and the Official Overview Article), and Giorgia Falci and Riftbound Report each appear on both 1 and 2 October, leaving 109 distinct creators and outlets. Of those, 80 post in English or are globally recognizable outlets, including any French-language partners; the remaining 29 are Chinese-language creators and outlets (identified by Chinese-character names on Riot's list). Below is every English-language name Riot published, by date - the full list, including every regional handle, is on Riot's own announcement.

Two things stand out reading that table straight. First, 1 October was the single biggest day for mainstream games press - GamesRadar+, IGN, Polygon and VICE all had the same date, which is the closest thing this schedule had to a coordinated "wide reveal" moment outside the Friday panel itself. Second, the volume was front-loaded: 28 through 30 September alone account for 46 of the 115 listed slots, more than a third of the entire season, in the three weekdays starting the Monday after the Los Angeles panel.

What was confirmed about Radiance going in

Before previews began, mechanics were still under wraps - that is the entire point of a preview season. What Riot had locked in, per its 3 August Products and Sets into 2027 article, was the card count (167, 61 Showcase, as the article now reads), the code (RAD), five of nine Legends (Seraphine, Ziggs, Jarvan IV, Ekko, Evelynn), the products (booster packs and displays, Showdown Decks, a Vault Bundle, Pre-Rift kits) and the release date: 23 October 2026, which has now passed. Our set schedule post has the full breakdown, including how Radiance compares to Vendetta's card count and mechanics. If you're chasing the Los Angeles event itself - door times, the prize ladder, who's speaking on the Friday panel - that's in our RQ Los Angeles preview.

Quick reference

• Preview season: over. It ran 18 September (teaser) through 10 October 2026, with the main rollout starting 25 September at the developer panel at RQ Los Angeles.
• Where to see the cards: Riot's official Card Gallery (which Riot said would update daily at 5pm PT with the previous day's reveals during preview season) and the #RBRadiance hashtag.
• Scale: 115 listed slots across 13 dates, covering 109 distinct creators and outlets; 80 post in English or are globally recognizable outlets, 29 are Chinese-language.
• Original 21 September state: no Radiance cards were in the Card Gallery yet. The 18 September LCS/LEC slot was pre-show framing, not a card reveal.
• Biggest reveal day for mainstream press: 1 October (GamesRadar+, IGN, Polygon, VICE.com).
• Radiance itself (as announced before previews): 167 cards (61 Showcase), nine Legends (five named at the time), released 23 October 2026 (date from Riot's pre-release announcement).