Worlds 2025 Swiss Stage Day 1: Hydrogen Bomb vs Coughing Baby

The League of Legends 2025 World Championship proper is finally here! After T1 enters as the LCK 4th seed with their win against LPL's Invictus Gaming, we now mark the beginning of the Swiss Stage. Here's a rundown of what happened on the first day of Swiss Stage in Worlds 2025.

The Swiss Stage is a series of best-of-ones and best-of-threes. For Day 1, all matches are best-of-ones. T1 are in the Swiss Stage after their win against Invictus Gaming in the play-ins.

The games will be streamed on the official LoL Esports YouTube and Twitch channels. You can also watch the streams of all the official co-streamers.

This match kicked off the day and the Worlds 2025 Swiss Stage. Vivo Keyd Stars attempted a late invade, but their Jarvan IV was level 1 and functionally useless. This gave Team Secret Whales the edge and some early kills, but VKS hit back with a punish on Lê "Hizto" Văn Hoàng Hải's greed.

Team Secret Whales held on to their lead, however. Thanks to some discordant calls on both teams, the game turned out to be quite a bit of a fiesta, but TSW stayed ahead in fights and objectives. Empowered by the Infernal Soul and a massive lead, they dominated the LTA South representatives. They did experience some trouble closing out the game, though, but VKS could only prevent the inevitable for so long.

The LCP begins Worlds 2025 with a win, thanks to the Vietnamese squad of Team Secret Whales.

CTBC Flying Oyster took on Fnatic. A big part of this match may have been a draft gap: Shen "Driver" Tsung-hua on his signature Sion, and the rest of the team got an overall strong composition. On the other hand, Fnatic drafted losing sidelanes and no damage against Sion.

Granted, this could be hindsight. CFO utterly ran over FNC the entire game, and Driver's Sion seemed unkillable. Empowered by an incredibly fed Caitlyn on Chiu "Doggo" Tzu-chuan and the Chemtech Soul, CFO looked unstoppable. We got some stylish combos involving Ryze's Realm Warp and Neeko's Pop Blossom, too, which caught Fnatic off-guard a couple of times.

This win marks the LCP's second win of the day after TSW's.

After Fnatic's loss, Movistar Koi is seeking a win for the LEC. Unfortunately for them, they are the first coughing baby of the day. They managed to draft a strong composition, but will it be effective against KT?

MKOI did find some early leads in the form of kills and drakes. KT bot-laner Seo "deokdam" Dae-gil was punished particularly hard. As deokdam suffered, his counterpart in David "Supa" Garcia thrived.

KT continued to starve throughout the game, and the pressure built up from MKOI's objective control. Before long, MKOI was already at the brink of claiming the Hextech Soul. However, the KT rollercoaster was bound to favor them at some point, and it did. A fight went heavily in their favor and granted them access to Atakhan, but it was stolen away by the final remaining member of MKOI, Javier "Elyoya" Prades.

This was a minor setback, though, as KT now had momentum. They took Baron and claimed a lot of the standing gold that had been denied from them since minute one. MKOI was unable to recover, and KT fans were correct to get excited this one time.

KT Rolster finally ended their losing streak from the LCK 2025 playoffs, while the LEC remain winless.

BLG elected to play with Yang "Beichuan" Ling instead of Zhao "Shadow" Zhiqiang for this match.

To open, Bilibili Gaming drafted their Caitlyn-Elise duo in the bottom lane. Zhao "Elk" Jiahao and Luo "ON" Wenjun have played this combo six times this year, and they are 5-1 on it.

100 Thieves played around the Elise pick well. They successfully mitigated the effectiveness of BLG's botlane duo while getting small leads on the solo lanes.

The two teams continued to trade blows through the midgame, and the gap between them didn't seem that big after all. The carries of 100 Thieves got fed, too much that BLG had no space to move. The second coughing baby of the day was victorious and showed Bilibili Gaming a humiliating loss in front of the Chinese crowd.

T1 is coming straight from the play-in series against Invictus Gaming, so they've gotten to warm up a bit. This game was slow and methodical; a style that works in T1's favor. They've also prioritized getting Ryu "Keria" Min-seok on his signature Bard, and this was paying dividends.

This match went about just as expected. FlyQuest were throwing some punches themselves, but the back-to-back world champions simply hit harder. The entire game, it felt like for each opportunity that FLY had, T1 found two.

The drafting phase went as expected, apart from Anyone's Legend locking in Cassiopeia for their mid-laner Cui "Shanks" Xiaojun.

This Eastern faceoff was bloodier than the past few games. By 10 minutes, there had already been six kills. Despite all of the kills and fights, neither team had a meaningful advantage over the other.

When AL overstepped for their third drake, though, HLE was quick to punish. Thanks to a great engage from Yu "Delight" Hwan-jung, Park "Viper" Do-hyeon was able to claim a quadra kill and a ton of gold.

By this point in the game, Viper was the team. When he fell after AL's contest on Atakhan, so did the rest of HLE. Once again, the momentum swung in Shanks' and AL's favor.

The game eventually stabilized, but a less-than-ideal engage from HLE gave AL the window to take Baron. They also took the Hextech Soul, thanks to a clean steal by support Kim "Kael" Jin-hong. From the lead they built, it was easy for AL to destroy HLE's Nexus.

G2 was the LEC's final chance to find a win on Day 1 of the Swiss Stage of Worlds 2025. This chance quickly became a far-fetched dream as Top Esports just looked like the better team on all fronts.

Overall, this was a dismal showing from G2 Esports. As they fall into the 0-1 pool, the LEC fans are surely hoping for a stronger performance from them.

If you wanted to beat one of the tournament favorites, then you have to be creative. Huang "Maple" Yi-tang locked in Swain and it was effective. PSG did find themselves in the lead in terms of kills in the midgame thanks to jungler Hung "Karsa" Hao-Hsuan's efforts. However, Gen.G led the game in terms of gold and objectives.

Unlike most of the games today, this coughing baby in the form of PSG Talon did not seem like they had a chance. They had some standout moments, though, like Karsa's Atakhan steal.

This was business as usual for Gen.G and not much can be taken away.