Riftbound Stuttgart Regional Championship: Prizes and Rules

Three weeks before the European Regional Championship, Riot changed what it pays out. Its 15 October Organized Play article, Regional Championships: Competitive Integrity & Prizing, moves the Overnumbered Foil Plated Legends to a draft for the top finishers, cuts the Best-Of prize list, makes decklists open and turns a requested concession into a disqualification. Riot itself says those Overnumbered cards have been "the main motivation for many competitors" at Regional Championships, so this is not small print.

Riot's article opens with Stuttgart, less than a month out. The event details come from Riot's August Regional Championship page: 6 to 8 November in Hall H of Messe Stuttgart, played in Standard with Radiance cards, invitation only. The Swiss rounds, the Day 2 cut and the invite routes are in our tournament rules guide, so they get one line here. This post covers what changed since Riot's August announcement and what it means if you hold an invite. Riot writes the changes for Regional Championship events in general, so they apply to Las Vegas on 11 to 13 December as well.

What Riot changed on 15 October

The article does three things:

• Prizing. Overnumbered Foil Plated Legends stop being per-Legend Best-Of prizes. The top 58 finishers draft them instead. The Best-Of prize becomes an ordinary Foil Plated Legend, and only Unleashed, Vendetta and Radiance Legends are eligible.
• Conduct. No asking for or offering match concessions, and no settling a timed-out draw any other way. Decklists are open. Intentional draws stay legal.
• Worlds. The Top 8 of each Regional Championship, in Europe, North America and China, are invited to a World Championship Showcase in China at the end of January.

None of it touches turn order. Riot's start-of-game test, published the same day, runs at Stuttgart's Friday and Sunday Standard Challenge side events, not at the championship. Our going-second post has the details.

Overnumbered Legends now go to the top 58

Here is the prize plan Riot published for Stuttgart on 4 August next to what replaces it:

Fifty-eight is a familiar number. Riot's Card Gallery lists exactly 58 Champion Legends across the six sets in Standard: 12 from Origins, 4 from Proving Grounds, 12 from Spiritforged, 12 from Unleashed, 9 from Vendetta and 9 from Radiance. That fits the August promise of one Overnumbered plated card per legal Legend, now handed out by placement instead of by Legend. Riot doesn't spell that match out, so read it as my arithmetic, not an announcement.

That is Riot's August first look at the Regional Championship Overnumbered Legends: the four Proving Grounds Legends with new art, the program the October article reworks.

The draft changes who goes home with one. Under the August plan, a player who made Day 2 as the only pilot of a quiet Legend took that Legend's Overnumbered card wherever they finished, while a 9th-place finisher on a popular Legend could get nothing from that prize line if someone above them played the same Legend. Now 9th place takes the ninth pick. Cash still runs to 64th, so places 59 to 64 get $250 and no pick.

Riot's stated reason is that it has been tracking how these rewards "influence competitive decisions" beyond players representing their favourite Legends. It doesn't say which decisions. The obvious one, on my reading, is Legend choice: a prize for the best finisher on each Legend makes a thinly played Legend a shorter queue. At RQ Los Angeles, nine Legends put only one or two players into Day 2, by Riot's own Top Decks table.

Which Legends can still win a Best-Of

Every Champion Legend in Standard, sorted by whether it can earn a Best-Of in Stuttgart:

That makes 30 eligible Legends, and a Legend with no Day 2 pilot produces no Best-Of at all. RQ Los Angeles offered 33, drawn from Spiritforged, Unleashed and Vendetta, which Riot's LA preview called the three most recent sets. Stuttgart follows the same pattern one set later: Radiance comes onto the list and Spiritforged drops off. Master Yi is the trap. His Unleashed Legend, Wuju Master, is eligible. His Proving Grounds one, Wuju Bladesman, is not. Check the set of your Legend card, not the champion.

Losing Spiritforged matters. In Riot's LA Legend table, Spiritforged Legends were the most-registered set, with 667 of 1,962 Day 1 players, and still had 115 of the 371 in Day 2, two behind Vendetta's 117. Irelia, Blade Dancer was LA's most-played Legend with 193 pilots. Six of LA's Top 8 played Legends that cannot win a Best-Of in Stuttgart: two Irelia, two Azir, Ornn and Master Yi, Wuju Bladesman. Only the Akali and the winning Rengar would qualify. Radiance changes the field, so this is not a Stuttgart forecast, and our Los Angeles results post makes the same point about projecting across a set release. What it shows is how much of a current field sits outside the Best-Of list. The Overnumbered draft doesn't care which Legend you played, so a Top 8 Irelia still picks early.

Two loose ends. Radiance Foil Plated Legends won't be handed out at the events. Riot says it is still working out delivery and expects them to be available in January 2027, so a Radiance Best-Of winner leaves Stuttgart without the card. And Riot doesn't say whether drafting an Overnumbered Legend affects Best-Of eligibility. Its wording is "the highest finishing eligible player", without defining eligible.

What each finish earns

Cash comes from Riot's Regional Championship page, unchanged since August. The pick order comes from the October draft rule:

That adds up to the published $50,000 pool. The non-cash prizes stack on top of it. Every competitor gets a participation package with a commemorative playmat and a promo card. Day 2 adds a Day 2 promo. Top 8 adds another playmat and promo, and the champion gets their own playmat and promo on top of that.

Riot's Regional Championship page pictures a K'Sante, Courageous promo beside each of the participation, Day 2 and Top 8 tiers, with the Top 8 card stamped TOP 8 and paired with a Top Cut playmat. The champion tier shows a blank placeholder, and the page's text still says Riot is putting the finishing touches on these rewards.

No concessions, no deals after time

The conduct changes, as Riot lists them:

• No throwing matches. Players may not ask for or offer match concessions at any point before or during the tournament, outside the exceptions below.
• No deciding matches after time. If a match ends in a draw because of the time limit, players cannot decide a winner randomly or arbitrarily.
• Still allowed: conceding an individual game for strategic reasons, such as saving time for game three, but never a game that decides the match. Yielding a match for a genuine outside reason, such as a medical emergency. And intentional draws before time runs out.
• Penalty: immediate disqualification and possible suspension from competitive Riftbound for anyone who asks for, offers or carries out an illegal concession or collusion agreement. Riot says it will repeat the rules by email and in floor announcements before each event.

Against the Tournament Rules dated 9 October, two things change. Normally any player may concede a match at any time (Tournament Rule 410.2). At a Regional Championship that freedom shrinks to the listed exceptions. Settling a match by coin flip, dice or another game was already Improperly Determining a Winner (703.10), and at Professional level, which Riot's Organized Play page assigns to Regional Championships, that has meant disqualification since 16 October (703.10.d). The new rule covers the gap after time. A game still unfinished after the three extra turns goes to a player leading by two or more points, otherwise it is drawn, and a match tied on game wins is a draw (408.2 and 408.3). In Stuttgart that draw stands. Conceding to break it would be exactly the kind of concession the policy bans.

Intentional draws keep their usual Tournament Rules. Both players have to agree, nothing can be offered in exchange (410.3), and you cannot scout other tables' results before deciding to draw. You also have to stay seated while your match is in progress, and breaking that is an Unsporting Minor penalty (410.4).

One thing Riot's list doesn't address is prize splits. In single elimination, Tournament Rules 704.5.c and 704.5.d let players split prizes with the organizer's permission. Under 704.5.d, the two finalists agree on a winner and one player drops. 704.5.c.1 already makes players at a major streamed event keep playing for final rankings. Riot's permitted exceptions include neither, and an agreed drop in a final looks a lot like a match concession. If a Top 8 split is part of your plan, ask the head judge before you get there.

Open decklists at the table

Tournament Rule 401.5.b says Professional events should "typically" run open decklists, with the final call left to the head judge. For Regional Championships Riot is making it a requirement, and it announced this early so players know before they lock their lists. Here is how it works under 401.5.a. Each round you get your opponent's decklist to review at the start of the match and between games, but not during play.

That list is the whole registration: Champion Legend, battlefields, Main Deck including the Chosen Champion, Rune Deck and sideboard (401.2), plus the three Legends picked for Neeko, Blending In if you run her (401.2.a). It is registered before round one and cannot change once handed in (401.3 and 401.4). In practice your opponent knows your three battlefields and your full sideboard before game one, and can reread them between games. In best of three, each player picks one of their three battlefields for each game and a battlefield used in a game someone won is gone for the match (Core Rule 488.5). So both players now make that pick knowing exactly what the other could still put down.

The World Championship Showcase

What Riot has published about it:

• Who: the Top 8 at each Regional Championship, in Europe (Stuttgart), North America (Las Vegas) and China. If one player makes Top 8 at more than one, every invitation after their first passes down to the next eligible finisher at that event. Three Top 8s means up to 24 invitations.
• Where and when: China, at the end of January.
• Not yet published: the exact date, the city, the format, the card pool and what the players compete for. Riot says it will share more about the Showcase, including what players will be competing for, in future updates.

The timing puts the Showcase in the same stretch as Legacy, whose Pre-Rift runs 22 to 28 January 2027 with release on 29 January. The name has also shifted. Riot's August and July Regional Championship pages promised Top 8 invitations to "Riftbound's first-ever World Championship". The October article calls the January event Riftbound's first World Championship Showcase and describes the Regional Championships as a stepping stone to "crowning our first World Champion." Riot hasn't explained the difference. For the ladder that replaces Regional Championships next year, see our 2027 organized play post.

Quick reference

• Event: European Regional Championship, 6 to 8 November 2026, Hall H, Messe Stuttgart. Standard with Radiance cards, invitation only. Las Vegas follows on 11 to 13 December under the same policy.
• Source: Riot's Regional Championships: Competitive Integrity & Prizing, 15 October 2026.
• Overnumbered Foil Plated Legends: drafted by the top 58 in finishing order, 1st picks first.
• Best-Of: a Foil Plated Legend for the highest eligible finisher on each Unleashed, Vendetta or Radiance Legend who reached Day 2 on it. That is 30 Legends at most. Origins, Proving Grounds and Spiritforged Legends are out. Radiance Best-Ofs are expected to ship in January 2027.
• Cash: $50,000, $10,000 for 1st, paid down to 64th.
• Conduct: no requesting or offering match concessions, no deciding a timed-out draw any other way, open decklists. Intentional draws before time and strategic game concessions are allowed. Breaking the rules means disqualification and possible suspension.
• Worlds: Top 8 earns a World Championship Showcase invite, end of January in China. Extra invites pass down.