RuneGrove — the Riot MMO & Runeterra universe hub

Riot is building an MMO in Runeterra, and no gameplay has ever been shown — the 2020 reveal was an announcement and nothing more. So we did the opposite of hype: we mapped the world first. Every region, every creature and every story Riot has published about Runeterra, catalogued and cross-referenced, and read as what it really is — a design document for a game that does not exist yet.

1,738 catalogued lore works · 542 codex entries · 142 mapped places · 177 champions · 13 zones.

The MMO ledger — Riot has said nothing on the record for 3 days

That is not a gap in the coverage — it is the coverage. Of 131 published dispatches on this beat, exactly 3 were a dev update. Everything else is analysis, lore and industry reporting read through the lens of a game that does not exist yet.

• Since Riot spoke on the record: 3 days (Riot's MMO Boss Eyed a PAX Lore Panel. Fabrice Condominas answered Riot's Seattle panel card with one eyes emoji and nothing else, three days before the co-founder who greenlit his MMO opens the show. — 5 September 2026)
• Last hard signal: 1 days (Riot's MMO Studio Is Called Riot Discovery. Nineteen live job ads sit under that name, three of them say 'unpublished MMO' in plain text, and the three newest landed in Los Angeles in the last week. — 8 September 2026)
• Riot’s only public commitment: Before 2030 (No title, no codename, and no gameplay has ever been shown.)
• Our last dispatch: 9 September 2026 (Riot Calls Its MMO the Grail Internally. Its own 39-second clip of Marc Merrill saying so passed 7 million views, and the most-liked public reply is about 2XKO.)

What the beat actually publishes: Industry 45 · Lore 34 · Analysis 24 · Hiring 13 · Concept 6 · Community 4 · Dev Update 3 · Riot MMO 1 · Rumor 1.

The full Riot MMO tracker & development timeline ›

Riot MMO & Runeterra dispatches

• The Noxian Army Left Ionia. Its Fight Pit Never Closed, and the Ionians Are the Ones Paying at the Door Now. (8 September 2026)
• League Is Letting Strangers Speak. Riot is opening voice chat to your whole team in Patch 26.20, and anyone under Honor level 3 gets to listen but not talk. (8 September 2026)
• Ionia's Shrine Maiden Fairy Tale Is Real. Yunara Never Left Her Post, and the Thing She Guards Asked to Be Locked In. (8 September 2026)
• Riot Says League Needs the Right Frustration. Its Lead Gameplay Designer Said the Game Needs It to Survive, 778,000 People Read That, and the Loudest Reply Got 440,000 of Its Own. (8 September 2026)
• Sea of Thieves Is Switching Off Fast Travel. An Entire Season Ships With No Headline Feature, Just a World It Wants You to Cross Again. (8 September 2026)
• The Celestial Realm Opens Only Inward. Every Crossing Riot Has Written Costs a Mortal Body, and the Only Map of the Far Side Is a Pattern in the Rock That Dead Climbers Melt Into. (8 September 2026)
• Bandle City’s Portals Open by Accident. Riot Printed a Tea Maker Who Blended Two Leaves Wrong, Fell Asleep, and Woke Up on the Far Side of a Door That Is Supposed to Need a Specialist. (2 September 2026)
• SWTOR Gave Every Player a Difficulty Dial. Your Friend Can Fight the Same Monster on Easy While Standing Next to You. (2 September 2026)
• World of Warcraft's PvP Crowd Shrank. Its Director Says the Team Gets Staffed to Match, and Riot Just Hired the Man Who Ran That PvP for 11 Years. (2 September 2026)
• Freljord's Frostguard Lodge Lists the Dead. More Than Half the Names Carved Into It End in a Death Rune, and Every One of Them Died on the Same Climb. (2 September 2026)
• Guild Wars 3 Answered Riot's Hardest Question. Who Are You in a World Already Full of Heroes? (31 August 2026)
• Riot MMO Fans Are at War Over Group Finder. Riot's Own Classic Launch Shows Where It Leans. (31 August 2026)
• Ambessa's House Was Built on Trade Routes. Her First Errand Was Walking a Battlefield to Collect the Blades of the Dead. (31 August 2026)
• Riot's MMO Engineer Shipped WoW Classic. Seven Years On He Went Back to the Office Whiteboard Where Blizzard Guessed Opening-Day Player Counts, and the Man Beside Him Says the Guess Was Nowhere Close. (31 August 2026)
• RuneScape Deleted 298 Microtransactions. It Lost 40% of Its Revenue the Next Day, and Six Months Later Its CEO Says the Bleeding Stopped. (27 August 2026)
• The Elder Scrolls Online's Director Called Building an MMO a 'Monumental Undertaking.' Riot's MMO Boss Used That Exact Phrase the Day He Took the Job. (26 August 2026)
• A 20-Player Dragon Raid Is Landing in a World Where Other Players Can Loot Your Corpse on the Way In (26 August 2026)
• EverQuest Just Relaunched Without Its Death Penalty, and Its Raids Now Cap at Eight People (24 August 2026)
• Riot Just Killed the API for Its Newest Mode and Asked the Stat Sites to Stand Down. Its MMO Is the Real Test. (24 August 2026)
• Nobody in Bandle City Can Read the Tree at Its Center, and Riot Already Built a Town for the Ones Its Doors Strand (24 August 2026)

The thirteen zones of Runeterra

The most likely explorable map, ranked by how much of each zone actually exists in this archive. Every zone has its own guide, its own codex and its own body of fiction.

• Demacia Modern era — 130 lore works · 57 codex entries · 15 champions · 5 mapped places
  Fiora, Galio, Garen
• Noxus Modern era — 122 lore works · 62 codex entries · 17 champions · 4 mapped places
  Ambessa, Briar, Cassiopeia
• Ionia Classical era — 201 lore works · 114 codex entries · 23 champions · 50 mapped places
  Ahri, Akali, Hwei
• Piltover Modern era — 104 lore works · 36 codex entries · 8 champions · 3 mapped places
  Caitlyn, Camille, Ezreal
• Zaun Modern era — 147 lore works · 35 codex entries · 14 champions · 3 mapped places
  Blitzcrank, Dr. Mundo, Ekko
• Freljord Ancient era — 109 lore works · 51 codex entries · 15 champions · 5 mapped places
  Anivia, Ashe, Aurora
• Shurima Ancient era — 86 lore works · 83 codex entries · 11 champions · 31 mapped places
  Akshan, Amumu, Azir
• Ixtal Classical era — 42 lore works · 29 codex entries · 8 champions · 9 mapped places
  Malphite, Milio, Neeko
• Bilgewater Modern era — 94 lore works · 42 codex entries · 8 champions · 6 mapped places
  Gangplank, Graves, Illaoi
• Targon Cosmic era — 86 lore works · 51 codex entries · 7 champions · 15 mapped places
  Aphelios, Diana, Leona
• Shadow Isles Cursed era — 108 lore works · 30 codex entries · 10 champions · 6 mapped places
  Elise, Gwen, Hecarim
• Bandle City Beyond era — 49 lore works · 10 codex entries · 7 champions · 2 mapped places
  Corki, Lulu, Rumble
• The Void Beyond era — 38 lore works · 14 codex entries · 9 champions · 3 mapped places
  Bel'Veth, Cho'Gath, Kai'Sa

What is actually in here

• Lore works: 1,738 — 954 of them cinematics, trailers or music
• Codex entries: 542 — across nine codices — Baron Nashor, Rift Herald, Elder Dragon…
• Mapped places: 142 — Great City of Demacia, Immortal Bastion, Placidium of Navori, Howling Abyss…
• Champions: 177 — by zone, story and the fiction each one appears in
• 3D models: 10,976 — 261 champions, 16 2XKO fighters, 493 Riot Forge characters
• Cards: 4,762 — Legends of Runeterra and Riftbound, with art
• Voice lines: 73,367 — every line every champion says, transcribed and searchable

Latest in the Runeterra chronology

The most recent chapters of Runeterra’s own history, in lore order rather than publication order. Currently ending in The Noxian Expansion & Beyond — 24 entries.

• Back from the Brink — Locke Champion Cinematic (1002 AN+ · cinematic · Locke, Vayne)
• Salvation — 2026 Season 1 Cinematic (1002 AN+ · cinematic · Garen, Sona, Shyvana)
• For Demacia: Spearhead — Motion Comic (1002 AN+ · motion_comic · Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao, Yunara)
• For Demacia: Winged Protector — Motion Comic (1002 AN+ · motion_comic · Jarvan IV, Shyvana)

Everything Runeterra, in one place