League of Legends Season 13: Season Start Date, Split Details, & Changes

League of Legends’ Season 12 officially ended on 14th November 2022, following which Riot Games introduced the preseason for 2023. Last year Riot decided to go with Sejuani as the Victorious skin pick and those who placed Gold or higher in either Solo/Duo or Ranked Flex received the skin along with other rewards. Heading into League of Legends Season 13, the publisher is making big changes to Ranked in 2023. With the developers officially back to work from their end-of-the-year holidays, players have exciting news about the start of the season, ranked splits, and more. 

Here’s all you need to know about League of Legends Season 13’s start date and other details.

League of Legends Season 13 start date

It seems like Riot Games has finally listened to the players who were wondering when they could begin their ranked climb this year.  Just four days into the new year of 2023, Riot Games has finally revealed the start date for League of Legends Season 13, treating the player base. On 3rd January, Game designer Ezra “Phlox” Lynn took to Twitter to reveal the first patch preview of 2023 and added that they were still looking at Solo Queue outliers for balancing as the game heads into the season start. He mentioned that League of Legends Season 13 kicks off on 10th January (Tuesday) along with the first patch. 

In short, you can start spamming ranked on 10th January 2023 when LoL Patch 13.1 goes live.

Riot Games officially confirmed the specific start times and dates for League of Legends Season 13 in each region.

What’s changing this year in ranked?

Firstly, Season 13 will have two ranked resets with a new concept called the Mid-Year Ranked Reset.

Split 1 is set to start on 10th January and Split 2 will start in the middle of the year as Riot Games is still deciding on the exact timing of Split 2’s start. Additionally, Riot Games is also changing the ranked promotion series between tiers from best-of-five (BO5) to best-of-three (BO3). It said, “We’re removing visible rank influence from your matches.”

Secondly, Riot acknowledged that the previous ranked split track had only four rewards that were spread pretty far apart and that the rewards were not motivating or rewarding players enough. As a result, the number of rewards is increasing this year. 

Lastly, players will be able to earn two ranked skins, one each per split. Interestingly, ranked skins will be available to players of all ranks, not just Gold and above, provided players clock in a set number of games. The catch, however, is that players who reach Gold from lower tiers (Iron, Bronze, Silver) will automatically earn the Victorious skin right after their promotion and will have the skin intact in their inventory even if they get demoted back to lower tiers. But the players placed above Gold tiers will continue to earn the rewards only at the end of the ranked split.

League of Legends Executive Producer Jeremy “Brightmoon” Lee wrote on Twitter, “1) Season 2023 starts on Jan 10! 2) Can't wait for you all to meet more of the dev team next week in the Season Start 2023 videos!! We have more of the team on cam to speak about their areas of focus than ever before so please give them a warm welcome.”

So players can possibly expect to see Riot Games League of Legends Season 13 Opening Day livestream along with the season’s new cinematic very soon!