With a 3–1 victory over Invictus Gaming (IG) in the Play-In Stage decider at the Beijing Smart Esports Center on the 14th, T1 punched its ticket to the Swiss Stage of the 2025 League of Legends World Championship. In this win-or-go-home series for a place in Swiss, T1’s steadier, more composed play proved decisive. 

Appearing on the post-match broadcast, Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok said, “I’m grateful to be able to play in front of so many fans here in Beijing, and I’m happy we won.”

This year’s Play-In was, for the first time, a single do-or-die series for the final Swiss Stage berth. Asked how he handled the pressure, Faker replied, “Sure, if you lose you could be going home, but we chose to view it as having the upside of getting one extra match in beforehand. We just focused on doing our absolute best.” 

Reflecting on IG’s Game 4 draft of Varus–Pantheon–Sylas–Ziggs–Nautilus, he explained, “We expected their composition to be very strong in the early and mid game, so we tried to address that phase properly.”

Faker closed by setting his ambitions plainly: “As always, the goal at Worlds is to win the championship. We’ll give it everything we have. Thank you to the fans who always support us. We’ll keep showing strong performances from T1 here in China.” He enters this Worlds as the first player in League of Legends history to make 10 Worlds appearances.

This article was translated from the original that appeared on INVEN.