Underdogs DPlus KIA Beat Karmine To Win EWC 2026 League of Legends
Korean team and tournament underdogs, DPlus KIA, overcame fellow unfancied team Karmine Corp to lift the EWC 2026 League of Legends trophy. The two finalists were among the most unfancied teams in the competition, although French team Karmine Corp did have home soil advantage.
Both finalists lost early in the playoff stages, forcing them to take the lower bracket routes through to the main event.
In the final itself, DPlus swept Karmine Corp aside 3-0 to take their first international trophy in more than five years.
DPlus take $600,000 in prize money, with Karmine collecting $340,000. In the third place match, Gen.G beat T1 2-1 to secure a podium finish.
Road To The Final
DPlus endured an ominous start to the tournament, losing their first group game 1-0 to AG.AL. The result pushed them into the lower bracket, meaning another loss would send them home. But, in the lower bracket, they beat FURIA and G2 by 2-0 scorelines.
Their run got even more impressive in the quarterfinals, when they dispatched Bilibili Gaming, one of the tournament favourites, 2-1, and then dumped Gen.G out by the same score, setting themselves up for a final showdown.
Karmine Corp had a Cinderella run of their own. After losing their opening match 1-0 to Gen.G, they went on to beat Team Secret 2-1 and Sentinels 2-0. In the playoffs, they eliminated AG.AL 2-0 and emerged 2-1 victors over T1 in the semifinals.
The Final
While they had similar runs to the final, the best-of-5 showdown was a very one-sided affair. DPlus made short work of all three games, destroying Karmine’s Nexuses with 16-9, 18-8, and 23-5 kill leads.
The result saw DPlus walk away with the $600,000 first prize and 1,000 club points, while Karmine collected a very reasonable $340,000 in cash and 750 club points. DPlus’s Shin “Smash” Geum-Jae won the Sony MVP award, seeing him net an additional $25,000 on his birthday. Smash dealt 28.4% of his teams damage throughout the tournament run.
DPlus last won the LoL World Championship in 2020. They also won the LCK 2021 Spring and Summer events, as well as the A-tier KeSPA Cup 2020, but have struggled to get out of local competitions since.
