What Will Be The Region 10 in Legends of Runeterra?

WARNING: This article contains spoilers and datamined information not officially endorsed by Riot.

Hi there! I’m TheSkilledRoy, and I am a Legends of Runeterra dataminer, content creator on Youtube, and consistent Masters-level player.

I spend most of my time researching release schedules and diving deep into the data for hints at upcoming content. In the past, I’ve been able to accurately predict LoR expansions before they came out, and a full list of all of my predictions is here: The Skilled Roy’s Track Record. 

Today, I am here to talk to you about my latest theory, and a topic that people have been wondering about since the beginning of the game. What is the final region of Legends of Runeterra going to be? What is region number 10? Is it Void, Ixtal, or Bandle City? Or something else entirely?

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Faulty Assumptions about Region 10

Now, a lot of people have come into this debate with a variety of preconceived notions, fallacies, and assumptions. Before I speak on what Region 10 is, let’s dispel these the best we can.  

• Assumption #1: Champion ‘X’ is in the game already, Riot wouldn’t do Region ‘Y’ without them.

The logic states that Riot wouldn’t do Bandle City without Teemo or Lulu, and so that region is eliminated from contention. Today, we can see people who speak about Void use this same logic to eliminate Ixtal. After all, they say, Riot wouldn’t do Ixtal without Malphite.

However, it’s important to note, with Rek’sai coming in Expansion 3 of Shurima Set this logic is now obviously flawed. Each of the three region now has champions that were or will be released under some other allegiance. This means you cannot eliminate a region based on this logic without eliminating all 3 of them. Or, alternatively, all three should have an equal chance. 

• Assumption #2: Region ‘X’ has so much to develop on, unlike Region ‘Y’.

It becomes increasingly obvious as I read the various debates on Region 10 that many people are coming to the argument with a lot of personal bias. This is totally fine, as everyone has their favorite for Region 10. Yet, it’s important to recognize that bias.

As someone who loves both Ixtal and Void, I would be happy to see either developed. Even a region like Bandle City, for example, has plenty to develop on. You may not like the themes of Ixtal or the characters of Void – but it is just a matter of opinion and taste. But it is not fair to say that those biases can be objectively a reason for a region to exist in the game or not.

All of the three possible regions have a lot to develop on. Thus, in this debate, we cannot state as a fact that one region is preferable in this aspect to the others, as it often just devolves into a matter of personal taste more than anything else. 

• Assumption #3: Riot can’t put other champions into Region ‘X‘, because Region ‘X’ is isolated/closed off.

In fact, all three of the possible regions are ‘isolated’ in some way within the world of Runeterra. Ixtal is an enclosed society in the jungle. Bandle City is an enclosed society in the Spirit Realm and the Void is in… the Void – which is not welcoming to any kind really.

It can also be proven that the physical location of a region has nothing to do with a champion’s or follower’s region. Let’s take Riven and Elise. Riven, a former Noxian who abandoned her post and now fights Noxians in Ionia is still considered Noxian despite her allegiance changing. Elise, however, is a Noxian who now worships and serves the spider god Vilemaw. She is considered Shadow Isles.

It gets even more murky with their followers. Hapless Aristocrat is a Noxian who has chased after Elise to woo her, but he is Shadow Isles. Brutal Hunter came to Ionia to hunt down Riven, yet is still Noxian.

The developers of Legends of Runeterra have chosen their champions, followers, and regions to tell stories, but to say that champions have to be tied to their current physical location, is just not true given the current examples we have in the game.

• Assumption #4: It can’t be Region ‘X’, they only have ‘Y’ number of champions for it on the Universe page.

It’s evident that the Universe page is not a good reference for Legends of Runeterra. Malphite is listed as Ixtal despite being in Targon in LoR. Teemo is listed as Bandle City despite being Piltover and Zaun in LoR, and Rek’sai is listed as Void despite being Shurima in LoR.

Hell, neutral champions like Nocturne and Kindred are given regions in LoR despite not having one on the universe page. Most damning, some champions are still shown in their pre-rework locations such as Mordekaiser, who in the lore is closely related with Noxus, and is actually still showing up as a Shadow Isles champion.

Thus, we cannot realistically treat the Universe page of champions as a fully relevant source, as it is already very inconsistent with not only Legends of Runeterra but even the current state of League of Legends champions.  

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With those assumptions taken care of right off the bat, let me share and explain what I think Region 10 is:

Bandle City!

I know, this isn’t what you might want to hear, and I understand if you don’t want to read any more of this article, but at least I want to show you the evidence so that you understand where I’m coming from and perhaps consider it as a possibility. 

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The Title Card

Let’s start with the clue that was out there for everyone to find all this time. One of the developers of the game, Riot Dovagedys, recently spoke about a hint on Region 10 in an interview with Swim. He mentioned it was something that has existed since Beta, a hint that would reveal the final region. He mentioned that no one has found it yet, and while this piece of evidence has been mentioned before, no one has brought it up to reach a definite conclusion. 

Most people began to look for cards, but I turned to something different. The title card. As a content creator, I often look for high-quality assets from the game so that I can use them in my video. When you go to the Media page on the official Legends of Runeterra website you can download a clean render of the title font:

This isn’t anything special, but something leaped out at me. The Riot’s internal file name for the title was “Logo-No_Tag_No-Faction-ENG-RGB.png”. ‘No Tag’ is likely in reference to ‘No Tagline’, i.e. this title card lacks the “The League of Legends Card Game” that used to be written out under the logo in the early days of the game. ‘Faction’ is a term that developers use internally to refer to regions – as you might remember, some of the Bilgewater cards in Rising Tides were even initially released with the word ‘faction’ in place of ‘region’.

So, using the wayback machine and digging into old coverage of the Beta of Legends of Runeterra, I found another version of this logo. The Riot’s internal file name for this old title card is “LoR-Logo-Faction-ENG-RGB”, which hints that the small engravings on each letter (that are absent on the version above) are the Factions/Regions of the game:

So, what regions are represented on this title card? Each region has a unique symbol and sigil, all of which you can see for yourself on the Universe page or the League of Legends wiki. Each engraving on the title corresponds to the specific region – let’s go over them:

• The first R has the curvature of Ionia’s dragon. 
• The U has the plates of the wings of Demacia. 
• The N we’ll skip for now but return to it shortly.
• The first E is the gears and screws of Piltover and Zaun.
• The T is the Sun Disc of Shurima and the water pouring down.
• The second E is a bit harder, but it’s the shoulders of the Freljord sigil – just situated sideways.
• The second R is the Noxian Axe from their sigil. 
• The third R is the Bilgewater Serpent from their sigil.
• Then the A is the mountain’s peak of the Targon Sigil. 
• The line under the letters bears the engravings of the book from the Shadow Isles logo.

Now, let’s go back to the letter ‘N.’ Given that every other region on this title card is already in the game, it seems fair to state that whatever this ‘N’ is… it’s likely the final 10th region. So, let’s look at the sigils of Void, Ixtal, and Bandle City – and compare them to the engravings on letter ‘N’.

As you can see, the Bandle City icon is clearly the closest as it has the signature double leaves. You might say Ixtal’s has leaves too, but if you look at the exact spacing of the two pairs of twin leaves you’ll see they’re exactly like Bandle City’s sigil. 

Thus, I will conclude that based on a title card, Bandle City is the most likely candidate to be the LoR’s final region. However, this is only one piece to the puzzle.

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Fae Guide Name Change

As a premise to this next argument, let me first talk to you all about Cataclysm. You see, back in the day, Cataclysm was not the Jarvan spell but rather was the name of the cat-mech that Von Yipp piloted in the Purrsuit of Purrfection deck.

It was renamed to Catastrophe shortly after LoR’s launch, clearly to free space for the upcoming Jarvan IV champion. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the only time something like this happened – it’s just one of the rare times that the name-change happened ‘publicly’ and to our knowledge. You see, a lot of cards have had ‘beta names’ that were later changed for one reason or another.

One interesting card that got affected by this kind of change is Fae Guide. It was renamed late in development so the public never actually knew how it was named initially, but this information is available on the wiki.

The original name of this card was actually ‘Bandle Guide’. Which is very interesting. You see, one thing all Lulu cards specifically avoid is mentioning Bandle City outright, instead referring to the ‘bandle woods’ that are situated in Ionia. It would make a lot of sense to rename a card named Bandle City Guide if Bandle City was intended to be the final region of the game. 

It’s also very important to note that Yordles and Bandle City as a world were both expanded upon just recently with the Don’t Mess With Yordles cinematic. This coincided with a lore event developing the lore of Bandle City in Wild Rift.

It also featured a full Yordle-themed event there with five Yordle champions, new models, and the like that Wild Rift usually gets. It’s undeniable that Riot clearly sees some value in Yordles as they got a Tales of Runeterra short even before the current expansion, Shurima, had gotten theirs. Obviously, it was meant for Wild Rift, but unlike the Void who hasn’t gotten a proper monster since 2014, or Ixtal who hasn’t gotten a new champion since 2019, it shows that Riot at least cares somewhat about Yordles. 

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Datamined Assets

Additionally, there is one final piece of datamined information that makes the most sense when we assume that Bandle City is the 10th region.

A while back when they changed the location of the region icons, a developer also stated that one of the reasons they changed it was for “upcoming features”. Soon after that, we’ve got the new champion mastery feature that partly explained the change – but also the new assets were datamined from the game’s files. These include updated borders for the game for champions, followers, spells, and prismatics… for Dual Region cards:

Dual-region cards are the mechanic that has been done in nearly every single card game ever, and they are coming to LoR. Now, in my personal opinion, I think it would make a lot of sense for the various Yordles who are spread out across the world such as Poppy, Kled, Kennen, and the like, to all be designed as dual-region champions.

And what’s more, if you factor in all the various Yordles who are currently in other regions besides Bandle City… this region suddenly has more champions available to it than Ixtal and Void.

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Closing Words

A few weeks ago, Riot Dovagedys has entered Swim’s stream to talk about Bandle City. When Swim ran a poll for his audience on Region 10 being Ixtal or Void, Dovagedys said “Why doesn’t your poll have Bandle City?” Last year, during a Q&A session in Twin Sunz’ Discord, game director Andrew Yip also mentioned that they would be willing to do a second Teemo to fill out a hypothetical Bandle City and that nothing was off the table.

It’s clear that Riot wants us to consider Bandle City, and it’s only because we as a fanbase have written it off that the conversation continues to be dominated by ‘Ixtal vs Void’ debate. This to me is the crux of this issue. The fanbase has spent so much time arguing between Void and Ixtal that Bandle City isn’t actually ever being mentioned, and thus these pieces of possible evidence are constantly being ignored.

I want you to imagine now that Region 10 is actually Bandle City. As a developer, wouldn’t you try to manage people’s expectations? Wouldn’t you try to alert players the best you could – to keep an open mind on each possible option? Riot Dovagedys has done just that.

Recently, in a big Ixtal thread on Reddit, Dovagedys spoke to the fanbase and explained that no matter what Region 10 is, your favorite champions and stories will arrive in the game. This is the message I want to state here to you all.

If Region 10 is Bandle City, if it really isn’t Ixtal or Void, which is what many fans have been arguing over for the past year, I want you all to know that they have made a commitment for all champions to make it in. Even if Region 10 is Ixtal or Void, all of us have to understand that eventually all of our favorite characters will make it to the game. And whether or not it’s Ixtal, Void, Bandle City, or literally a KDA region, we will have to trust Riot to come through on their promise. 

If you want to stay up to date with my datamining and speculations, I’d love to have you on my Discord, or feel free to follow me on Twitter. You’re also welcome to subscribe to my Youtube channel and check out my original video that inspired this article.

If you have any questions about any of the stuff I’ve brought up here, feel free to comment and I’ll do my best to respond. Thank you so much for reading to the end! Feel free to ping and laugh at me if I eventually get this wrong!