How much has rank changed in 2026?

This will be a quick post, and more commentary-based than some of my previous posts. This data exists out there in cool places like Timewinder made by Beora or this blog by Skulz. I supplemented with my own 2026 split 2 data.

Riot has decided to change the distribution of ranks this season. Their intended goal was to ensure that players within a given rank share a similar set of demonstrated skills and game understanding. They felt iron was too crowded, diamond was too wide, and gold should be the baseline for being reasonable at game understanding.

Here I just want to visualize what that change really looked like and what it means for rank equivalency from 2025 to 2026.

Log scale:

I think the plots speak pretty clearly for themselves. I included a log-scaled version for visualizing the upper ranks and a non-log version for visualizing the lower ranks. Essentially what has occurred is an elimination of iron and a wholesale shift upward for every other rank. Near the bottom ranks this is as extreme as 400 LP. Iron is bronze, bronze is silver. Gold starts to compress a bit, with gold 1 inflating to plat 3. Near the top it narrows to less than a 100LP increase.

It is true that in master+ the increases were pretty intense. What was m75 became M228, a massive uptick. To combat this in the apex tier, riot hard-reset all accounts to master 0LP at the start of split 2 on April 28. Below is how the apex tiers look as of May 6th. It remains to be seen if Riot will achieve their intended goal. It’s possible they are setting up for another tier between GM and masters.

Which distribution of ranks is correct? I’m not really sure. Riot is trying to balance:

1. Consistency of how many people you are better than: A rank could mean you are better than X percent of players in the community, eg. percentile. This has the advantage of being consistent and interpretable.
   
   However Riot also is trying to account for:
   
2. The change in skill distribution over time: Is the skill level of players a normal curve anymore? Has the shape changed over the years? Do they want a rank to mean I have X skill set? I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that the skill distribution has changed. In that case, changing the distribution of ranks to match the distribution of skill could make sense.
   

I tend to favor #1 because #2 feels kind of hard to quantify. I’m not sure there is a right answer here though. What do you think?