Liquid End Inspired's Streak at Five and Take the LCS Top Seed

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05 October 2026 13:07

Team Liquid Alienware managed to beat LYON 3-1 to win LCS Summer, making their first LCS championship since Spring 2024, and ended a run of five consecutive North American titles for Kacper "Inspired" Słoma. He was chasing a sixth.

Josedeodo is named as the Finals MVP.

The series

Josedeodo won the first two games basically on his own. Lee Sin was the opener, then Qiyana drafted straight into Inspired's Skarner, and he controlled the map in both. Saint had been building something on Syndra until a KICK-flash during a dragon fight ended it.

LYON took game three. Inspired got out in front with early ganks, Liquid snapped back with Josedeodo on Maokai, and a jungler can only do so much when the lead is already gone.

Then Morgan was the lead in game four, and that was the series.

How they got there

Liquid won against FlyQuest 3-0, then managed to beat Cloud9 in the upper bracket final.

Cloud9 beat Lyon 3-1 in the upper bracket semi-final, dropping them down. They beat past Shopify Rebellion 3-1, then took the Cloud9 rematch 3-1 in the lower bracket final to reach their third LCS final of the year.

They'd won the other two, Lock-In and Spring.

The rebuild

Only Yeon and CoreJJ remained from 2025 roster. Quid came from 100 Thieves, Josedeodo from Isurus, Morgan from BRION.

Fourth at Lock-In. Runners-up at Spring. Champions at Summer.

CoreJJ won six LCS split titles plus the LTA 2025 Cross Conference trophy, the only one the short-lived league produced. Quid takes his first. Josedeodo caps a return to North America with a championship after being named regular-season MVP in 2024 Spring.

Head coach Jake "Spawn" Tiberi took his third since joining in November 2023, and stated "Number 3 was pretty special today. Woke up and knew it was in the bag so was able to enjoy every moment. Everyone on the squad worked their ass off. Let's do some damage at Worlds."