Team Vitality closes Vitality.Bee after nine years in the LFL

"Today, Webedia's withdrawal means we don't know who will take over," said Fabien 'Neo' Devide, chief executive of Team Vitality, in a video the club posted on October 9, 2026. The French organisation is pausing its Ligue Française de League of Legends (LFL) activities and closing Vitality.Bee, the academy side it has fielded since the league launched in 2019. (The Esports Advocate translated the French remarks.)

Devide's first reason was the missing operator

Sheep Esports counted the Bee run as nine years in the EMEA Regional Leagues (ERLs). Esports Insider called the October 9 decision a pause rather than a permanent exit, and the second French organisation in three days to step back with no one named to run the league in 2027.

Uncertainty was the reason Devide put first. He said the regional system needed "a little more time to arrive at an ecosystem that, in our eyes, will be satisfactory and will allow us to reinvest in it."

Sheep Esports reported on August 19, 2026, citing sources, that Webedia would stop organising the LFL from 2027. The item first aired on the French show On Refait Le Nash, and The Esports Advocate could not find a public confirmation from Webedia or from Riot Games. The Esports Radar's account is that Webedia co-managed the league with Riot Games France: commercial partnerships, day-to-day administration and broadcast production.

No LFL event was held in person in 2026, the first blank year since 2020. Closing an academy into that silence is a decision about the operator, not about one summer's table.

The LEC roster is the one he would not cut

Money was the other half of the video. The League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) is the squad he would not thin. "We need to make trade-offs today, and the trade-off is that we want to keep investing in the LEC, where we have a more established roadmap," Devide said.

Vitality's wider business has kept growing, The Esports Radar reported, and BYD France is the club's official vehicle supplier.

"It's not goodbye, it's more of a see you soon," he said. A see-you-soon is a difficult line to give a prospect when the 2027 operator has no name.

Only five of the 10 LEC organisations still field a regional team, on Sheep Esports' count. The LEC's Worlds path is a separate matter: three berths this year, the third of them in the play-in, in our account of how the 2026 Worlds play-in works.

Ici Japon had already set an end date

On October 7, 2026, Ici Japon Corp Esport said it will cease operations at the end of 2026. The club had reached the LFL only in 2025. Sheep Esports reported that the side cited a league whose future "has become uncertain."

Joblife closed its League of Legends division in September 2026. Once Vitality.Bee was included, Sheep Esports counted half of that summer's LFL field as absent for 2027.

Debutants are still arriving at Worlds. This year's names include Siwoo and Smash, in our note on League Worlds 2026 debutants.

Riot blocked a Vitality and BDS academy merger

In 2025 Team Vitality and Team BDS agreed to merge their LFL academies so one roster could draw on both organisations. Sheep Esports reported in November 2025 that Riot blocked the merger on competitive integrity grounds, after Webedia and Riot's local team had initially approved it. Riot declined to comment to Sheep Esports.

"We are sticking to the classic LEC format, with 10 LEC teams playing," Artem Bykov, LEC commissioner, told Sheep Esports in a September 19, 2026 interview, The Esports Advocate reported. That ends LEC Versus, the 2026 format that put regional sides Los Ratones and Karmine Corp Blue on the LEC stage.

Sheep Esports has also reported that Riot removed the requirement for LEC teams to field an academy roster.

NEO is in talks, and the LFL was not in its plan

Bertrand Amar, who led Webedia's esports work, left in December 2025. In a March interview with Sheep Esports he said Webedia had "decided to reduce its esports scope to focus on French competitions that were already well-established commercially and less risky." Webedia ran the EMEA Masters in 2024 and in 2025, and did not run it in 2026.

Amar co-founded New Esports Org (NEO) with Matthieu Dallon, creator of the Electronic Sports World Cup. NEO has taken the EMEA Masters and the Game Changers women's circuit, and Sheep Esports called it the obvious candidate to run the LFL.

In August, NEO told The Esports Radar: "We are in talks with Riot and key stakeholders in France to find a new sustainable model, but nothing is decided yet, knowing that we didn't plan to invest in LFL but rather in EMEA Masters and Game Changers LoL." Nobody has named an operator since.

Riot is waiting until its three-year licensing cycle with 13 regional league organisers ends after 2027 before it potentially changes the system, Sheep Esports reported, and no LFL operator for that season has been named.

This article is informational analysis only and is not betting advice.

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