Sixteen teams qualified for the tournament based on their placement in regional circuits such as those in North America, Europe, South Korea, and China.

Russian-German DJ Zedd made an exclusive song for the tournament titled "Ignite" which became available for streaming viewing on the game's official YouTube channel.

SK Telecom T1 defended their title from the 2015 League of Legends World Championship by defeating runner-up Samsung Galaxy 3–2 in a best of five final series.

[4] Riot pledged to add 25% of all revenue generated from selling Championship wards and skins – customizations for the player controlled hero character – to the prize pool.

[5][13] Tiebreaking matches were played in groups A and C.[14][15][16] The Cinderella story of the tournament was the run of Albus NoX Luna, the CIS champions who became the first wildcard team to make it to the quarterfinals in the history of the League of Legends World Championship.

[16] Group B's deciding matches all occurred on the last day, when all teams except for the Korean first seed SK Telecom T1 had 2–3 records.

[17] I May was also hurt when one of its players was suspended for one match on the last day and fined $2000 for abusive behavior in online games.

[19] During Cloud 9's match against Flash Wolves, Zachary "Sneaky" Scuderi killed 690 minions, which set a new record for this statistic at worlds.

[20] Despite a 1–2 showing in the first week, H2K managed to make the quarterfinals at the top of its group by winning four straight matches, including a tiebreaker against EDward Gaming,[16] to become the only European team to move on.

[22] Royal Never Give Up defeated the North American champions TSM to even their records at 3–3 and win the head-to-head tiebreaker to move on to the quarterfinals.

[5] All three of the Korean teams, SK Telecom T1, ROX Tigers, and Samsung Galaxy, advanced to the quarterfinals from the group stage.

Two Chinese teams, EDward Gaming and Royal Never Give Up, advanced by finishing second in their groups.

[24][26] The final lasted six hours and was played in front of a crowd of nearly 20,000 fans at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

[29] The first match of the best of five series lasted 40 minutes and was won by SK Telecom,[29] who were able to attack Samsung Galaxy's undefended base after winning a big "all-in" battle between the two teams.

[30] The second match was also won by SKT, who were able to continuously build up an insurmountable advantage after winning a battle in the mid-game,[30] ending the game after 31 minutes.

[31] The turning point in this game was a fight over Baron, an important in-game objective, where Samsung Galaxy was able to kill half of SK Telecom's team and destroy two of their turrets afterwards.

[8] The final prize pool, which included fan contributions via purchase of in-game items, was worth $6.7 million.