Riftbound
Riftbound has five official game modes, from a 1v1 Duel to a four-player War and 2v2 team play, and two ways to get your cards: a Standard deck you build ahead of time, or Sealed and Draft from packs opened at the event. Here is how each one works under Riot's rules as of October 2026.
Riftbound separates how many people are playing from where the cards come from. Riot's Core Rules call the first a Mode of Play: it sets the number of players, the teams, the victory score and how many battlefields are on the table. The Tournament Rules call the second a competition format: Constructed, where you bring a deck you built, or Limited, where everyone builds from product handed out at the event.
The two combine freely. Riot's organized play announcement says both Limited and Constructed "can be played 1v1, 2v2 or 3/4 player free for all," so a store can run a Sealed free-for-all or a 2v2 Constructed night. In practice, competitive events use 1v1 Standard, and the other combinations show up at casual store events.
The five sanctioned modes of play, from Riot's Core Rules dated October 9, 2026. Every deck brings 3 battlefields; the mode decides how many reach the table.
The competition formats, from Riot's Tournament Rules of the same date:
1v1 is the mode most players learn first and the one every competitive event uses. Both versions are played to 8 points with two battlefields on the table, one from each player. The player going second channels an extra rune on their first turn to make up for going second.
Duel is a single game. Each player picks one of their three battlefields at random during setup, and the other two sit out. Match is best of three, and battlefields become a choice: each player chooses which one to put down, and after a game somebody wins, the battlefields used in it are out for the rest of the match. A drawn game lets you reuse them. Riot's rules also allow a Match to be played best of five, where games 4 and 5 can bring back a used battlefield.
The best-of-three structure is why your three battlefields matter in competitive play: over a full match you can end up playing on all of them. Scoring works the same in both versions. How scoring and the final point work →
Standard is the format you build a deck for at home. The deck has 1 Legend, a main deck including your Chosen Champion, 12 runes and 3 battlefields with different names, with up to 3 copies of a card by name and at most 3 Signature cards. The Core Rules ask for a main deck of at least 40; at an event, the Tournament Rules make it exactly 40. The full deck construction rules →
As of October 2026, Standard is every set released so far: Proving Grounds, Origins, Spiritforged, Unleashed, Vendetta and Radiance, which became legal with its release on October 23, 2026. A card is legal if it's from one of those sets or shares a name with a card that is. Riot can ban cards, and Standard has its own ban list. The current ban list →
Nothing has rotated yet. The Tournament Rules describe Standard as "the most recent 5-8 sets," made of the current year's sets plus the previous year's. Riot's July 2025 organized play announcement set out the plan in more detail: Standard grows to nine sets (Origins and the next eight) first, and from then on the four oldest leave when the first set of a new calendar year comes out. The first rotation takes Origins and the four 2026 sets together. Riot's timeline puts that at the start of 2028, with the release of the tenth set, and its Rules Hub says it intends to start rotation in 2028. The Tournament Rules don't name a date yet, so check them when 2028 nears.
Competitive matches allow a sideboard of up to 10 cards that could legally be in your main deck. You can't use it in the first game of a match, swaps are one for one, and the 3-copy limit counts main deck and sideboard together. You can switch your Chosen Champion while sideboarding, but not your Legend, runes or battlefields. Riot also lets an unmodified preconstructed deck keep its banned cards at casual events: a Jinx Champion Deck played exactly as sold can still run Fight or Flight at a Nexus Night.
Riftbound's free-for-all modes are Skirmish for three players and War for four. Both are single games to 8 points with three battlefields on the table. In Skirmish, each player contributes one at random. In War, the player who takes the first turn removes their battlefields from the game, and the other three each contribute one.
The first turn changes too. In both modes the player going first skips their first draw, and the player going last channels an extra rune on their first turn. Seats in between get neither.
Combat stays a two-player affair. A combat only ever happens between units of exactly two players, and while a combat is staged or in progress at a battlefield, no one else can move units there unless they already had units at that battlefield, and no one outside the combat can play units there. A third player can't pile into a fight, and a unit that would be played to that battlefield by someone outside the combat goes to their base instead.
Three battlefields also change the last point. A conquer only gives you the final point if you've scored every battlefield that turn, so in Skirmish and War that is three battlefields to score, against two in 1v1. To win, you need at least 8 points in a cleanup and more points than every opponent; if two players are tied on top, the game goes on. If a player concedes, the battlefield they brought is replaced with a blank one that has no abilities.
2v2 is two teams of two, played to 11 points that the team shares. Riot's Core Rules now call the mode Magma Chamber. Turns alternate between teams, teammates win or lose together, and a battlefield can score for a team only once a turn. Each player still controls their own units and their own deck, and teammates can't play the same Legend or the same battlefields.
2v2 is also an event format with its own ban list (Standard's plus Master Yi's Wuju Bladesman Legend), and it can be run as Constructed or as Sealed, where the team opens and shares eight boosters. The rules for scoring, turn order, helping on your teammate's turn and the final point all change, so 2v2 has its own guide. How to play Riftbound 2v2 →
Limited means the event hands out the cards. You don't bring a deck; you open product, build on the spot and keep what you open. Riot's Tournament Rules define two Limited formats, Sealed and Draft, with the same deck rules apart from the pool and the minimum size.
A deck without a Legend or a Chosen Champion is still legal, and it draws one extra card at the start of its first Beginning Phase each game, even if it's missing both. Signature spells are allowed when both their domains are in your three, without the champion. Blank battlefields are battlefields with no rules text; at a casual event, anything the table agrees on can stand in for one. A card banned in Constructed is still legal in Limited unless that Limited format bans it too.
A draft table seats as close to eight players as possible, in random order. Everyone opens a booster, takes out the rune or token (you can keep it), and checks that 13 cards are left. You take one card, put it face down on a single pile, and pass the rest to your left. That repeats until the pack is gone. The second pack passes to the right and the third to the left again, and you finish with 39 cards. At competitive events you can't look back at your picks except between packs when a judge allows it; at a casual draft you can.
Sealed is the Pre-Rift format, and a Pre-Rift kit isn't six plain boosters: the Radiance kit was five boosters and a champion pack. Riot's rules also allow preconstructed decks as part of a Sealed event, so the event's announcement is the final word on what you open. At a casual event you can rebuild freely between games and rounds, including changing your domains, Legend and runes. Competitive Limited events register your starting deck and the rest of your pool. Getting ready for a Pre-Rift →
Competitive Riftbound is 1v1 Standard, best of three, with 60-minute Swiss rounds recommended. The casual weekly event is where the other modes and formats live, and the store picks.
| Event | Format |
|---|---|
| Nexus Night | The store's choice: Constructed, Sealed or Modified Champion Deck, played 1v1, 2v2 or free-for-all |
| Pre-Rift | Sealed, from a kit of the new set, the week before release |
| Summoner Skirmish | 1v1 Standard Constructed, best of 3 |
| Regionals and higher | 1v1 Standard Constructed, best of 3 |
Modified Champion Deck appears in the Nexus Night format list from Riot's distributor, UVS Games, and in the event search's format filter. Riot hasn't published rules for it, so ask the store how they run it. The game mode Skirmish (three players) and the event Summoner Skirmish (1v1) share a word and nothing else. Finding an event near you →
The Riftbound Deck Lab shows a Legal or Not legal badge for the format you pick, with every problem listed under it. For Standard and 2v2 it checks the constructed rules on this page and each format's own ban list, and Copy tournament list works once the saved deck is legal. The Draft option uses Draft's 20-card minimum and drops the copy limit. Sealed's minimum is 25, so count a Sealed deck yourself before you register it. How the Deck Lab checks a deck →
At the table, the free score tracker plays all five modes: Duel, Match, Skirmish, War and 2v2, with each mode's victory score and battlefield count, one shared score per team in 2v2, and the 60-minute round clock for events. Your results stay yours. TurnZero HQ doesn't combine Riftbound results across players. The Riftbound score tracker →
Riot updates the Core Rules and Tournament Rules at least once a set. The current PDFs are on Riot's Riftbound Rules Hub.
Riot's rules split a format into two parts. The mode of play is how many people sit down: Duel and Match for 1v1, Skirmish for three players, War for four, and 2v2 for two teams. The competition format is where the cards come from: Constructed (Standard) with a deck you built beforehand, or Limited (Sealed and Draft) with cards opened at the event. Riot says either kind can be played 1v1, 2v2 or free-for-all.
Standard is Riftbound's constructed format. As of October 2026 it includes every set so far: Proving Grounds, Origins, Spiritforged, Unleashed, Vendetta and Radiance (legal from October 23, 2026). Riot's Tournament Rules define it as the current year's sets plus the previous year's, and Riot has said no set rotates out until nine Standard sets are out.
Yes. Skirmish is the three-player free-for-all and War is the four-player one. Both are played to 8 points on three battlefields. In War the player who goes first brings no battlefield. Combat is still only ever between two players, so you can't send units into a fight two other players are having.
A Sealed deck has a main deck of at least 25 cards from six boosters, and a Draft deck at least 20 from three drafted boosters. Both take a 12-card rune deck in the deck's domains, from any source, allow any three domains, and drop the copy limit. A Legend and a Chosen Champion are optional; a deck missing either draws one extra card at the start of its first Beginning Phase.
Both are 1v1 to 8 points. Duel is a single game, and each player's battlefield is picked at random from the three they brought. Match is best of three: each player chooses a battlefield, and once a game is won, the battlefields used in it can't be picked again that match. Most tournament matches are best of three.
Not yet. Riot's plan, announced in July 2025, is for Standard to reach nine sets (Origins and the next eight) before anything rotates, then for the four oldest sets to leave when the first set of a new calendar year comes out. The first rotation would remove Origins and the four 2026 sets together. Riot's timeline puts it at the start of 2028, when the tenth set releases, and its Rules Hub says it intends to start rotation in 2028, though the Tournament Rules don't give a date as of October 2026.
Build your Riftbound deck on TurnZero HQ and the Deck Lab says whether it's legal for Standard, 2v2 or Draft. The score tracker plays every mode. Free to start.
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