For over a decade, the League of Legends World Championship Grand Last has featured an elaborate Opening Ceremony, full with musical renditions and a efficiency of its yearly anthem.
Though its goal is to hype up audiences for League of Legends’ ultimate worldwide match of the season, the ceremony has turn into one of many recreation’s most anticipated moments of the esports calendar.
American artist and lead singer of Towards the Present, Chrissy Costanza, has performed an integral half in League of Legends’ relationship between esports and music. Notably, Costanza has stepped onto the Worlds stage greater than some other singer throughout League of Legends’ esports historical past, first in 2017 (Legends By no means Die), 2019 (Phoenix), and just lately in 2025.
“I feel music has actually introduced League of Legends and LoL Esports to a worldwide stage,” the singer stated in an interview with Esports Insider only a few hours earlier than her third look on the Worlds 2025 stage.
Since 2022, Esports Charts knowledge reveals that peak viewership for Worlds opening ceremonies has steadily grown roughly 20% per 12 months. In 2025, it reached almost half the whole viewers of the finals.
Artist decisions, host areas, and the finalist groups affect these numbers, however the ceremony has clearly prolonged past the core aggressive crowd.
Music as a Connecting Medium
Yearly, Worlds arrives in new internet hosting cities, and all the occasion reshapes itself round that area. Costanza too identified that the present displays the identification of the place it lands in, making yearly and each Opening Ceremony really feel “distinctive.”
Nonetheless, extending this localisation to the artist choice for Worlds is a comparatively latest pathway that Riot determined to pursue. Beginning in 2022, Riot Video games more and more sought performers who would embody songs ‘for the area, by the area’.
Costanza recalled how thrilled she felt to see NewJeans seem in Korea in 2023, and to work alongside G.E.M. this 12 months in China bolstered that sentiment. Noting that League of Legends’ world affect attracts expertise that promote out arenas on their very own, Costanza stated that working with native icons for the ceremony offers followers one thing acquainted whereas introducing world audiences to performers they won’t have encountered in any other case.
“I’ve mates in my life that knew Legends By no means Die, however that didn’t know something about League of Legends, that discovered League of Legends due to the music,” she stated.
This impact traces all the way in which again to the start of Riot Video games’ push into music. For the 2014 World Championship, Think about Dragons launched the now iconic music ‘Warriors’. Followers who cherished the band doubtless adopted the music again to League of Legends, and this sample has since repeated 12 months after 12 months as Riot continues to work with well-known artists.
That technique has grown extra intentional just lately. By selecting regional but globally recognisable performers, Riot Video games has made it simpler for audiences to know the aim of every anthem and, in flip, uncover League of Legends esports. Tales informed via songs like ‘STARWALKIN,’ ‘GODS’ and ‘Heavy is the Crown’ create entry factors for individuals who had no earlier connection to the sport.
“Lots of people simply consider [Heavy is the Crown] as a large Linkin Park music, however then they form of dig deeper and are like ‘oh, this was part of one thing. What was this part of?’ And now swiftly you’re on this larger ecosystem. So it’s cool. I like how music can simply be the soundtrack to actually any expertise of life,” stated Costanza.
The Opening Ceremony heightens that affect by tying every music to competitors, historical past, and the lore that gamers already carry with them. Via native artists, sturdy emotional storytelling, and performances that may rival worldwide sports activities occasions, the Worlds Opening Ceremony has turn into one of the crucial highly effective instruments for brand spanking new followers to step into LoL Esports.
Sacrifices for Worlds
This 12 months’s anthem, ‘Sacrifice,’ set the tone for Worlds by honouring the fifteenth anniversary of League of Legends esports. The music highlights what professional gamers are prepared to resign for his or her ardour — however they’re not the one ones who’ve given up one thing.
The business has grown on the backs of people that cherished esports sufficient to work for it via lengthy hours, fixed journey, and an ever-changing schedule — a sacrifice that music artists additionally endure.
“I’ve struggled so much, however I feel sacrifices are vital,” highlighted Costanza.
“And I feel the gamers, […] all of the rioters right here who work on these occasions on the bottom have related experiences. And musicians… we hand over time at residence. We hand over time with our family members. I’ve missed extra birthdays, […] large moments, greater than I may rely, to be at occasions like this.
“To go on tour. To be recording. So I feel one of many largest sacrifices you hand over is that once you’re right here you’ll be able to’t be wherever else. And infrequently we don’t wish to be wherever else, however we’re away from our pets and our family members and our households and our mates. And so I feel that’s powerful.”
She shared that the journey takes its personal psychological toll, and he or she typically catches herself eager for a quiet evening at residence in her personal mattress. But she all the time reaches the identical conclusion. The expertise is value it, and that feeling is why she retains returning, totally conscious of what it prices.
Legends By no means Die
These sacrifices additionally body how a lot Legends By no means Die reworked her life. For Costanza, that collaboration in 2017 marked a turning level she by no means noticed coming. “I couldn’t have considered one thing that good,” she stated.
Costanza then defined that she nonetheless feels “surprised” by how far the music reached and the way deeply it modified her profession.
What made the success much more significant was that it got here via a recreation she had cherished for years. She had already constructed friendships via late-night matches and had related with the group lengthy earlier than moving into the recording sales space. Sharing such a second with one thing she cared about so personally created the form of pleasure she stated she couldn’t have imagined earlier than.
With earlier anthems that includes business giants like Think about Dragons and Zedd, Costanza assumed ‘Legends By no means Die’ can be “restricted” by them being Towards the Present, nonetheless a rising band on the time. She had no concept the music would turn into one of the crucial enduring anthems in Worlds historical past. The efficiency shifted the whole lot for her, mixing skilled achievement with private love for the sport in a method that also shapes her profession at the moment.
“That second formed the whole lot for me,” she stated.
Just some hours after this interview, Costanza stepped onto the Worlds stage singing a medley of ‘Warriors,’ ‘Phoenix,’ and ‘Legends By no means Die,’ to open the 2025 Worlds Finals.
As League of Legends and its esports scene proceed to develop, extra artists method the Riot Video games Music division to provoke collaborations.
In some ways, the present recognition of LoL Esports’ opening ceremonies feels just like the pure conclusion to a journey that started earlier than the Worlds’ anthems. Riot’s earliest musical initiatives — champion themes and in-game tracks — had been a part of making League of Legends. Nonetheless, Riot’s first musical gamble got here in 2013 with “Get Jinxed,” a completely animated music video created to introduce Jinx as a brand new champion.
The music’s success pushed Riot to take a fair bolder step the next 12 months by producing an unique anthem made particularly for its esport. That threat — the 2014 Worlds music ‘Warriors’ — reshaped expectations of what esport music may very well be, and it set the muse for Riot Video games Music to broaden throughout digital bands and even productions like ‘Arcane‘.
But regardless of at the moment’s broad musical universe, the Worlds’ Opening Ceremony stays Riot Video games’ flagship musical undertaking. It’s the second the place its musical ambitions, esports legacy, and emotional storytelling converge, celebrating the whole lot League of Legends represents proper earlier than a brand new World Champion is topped.
