League of Legends Down: Global Outage Disrupts Millions of Players in Early 2026
Understanding the Recent League of Legends Server Outages
League of Legends, one of the world’s most popular multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games with over 130 million monthly players, has faced significant server disruptions in early January 2026. Thousands of players worldwide reported catastrophic login failures on January 4, 2026, with Riot Games confirming the critical issue and working on emergency fixes. The timing proved particularly frustrating as Season 16 had just begun, leaving players unable to access competitive ranked matches during peak gaming hours.
The Root Cause: An Expired SSL Certificate
The primary issue was identified as the expiration of Riot Games’ SSL client certificate, a vital security component issued in 2016 with a ten-year validity period that expired precisely on January 4, 2026. This technical oversight prevented the game client from properly authenticating connections, resulting in over 7,000 issue reports flooding Downdetector, with approximately 81% of complaints related to game launch failures or client issues. Players from EUW, North America, and other servers reported the same pattern: the client would not load or would crash after opening.
Player Response and Temporary Workarounds
As frustration mounted, the gaming community quickly mobilised to find solutions. A popular workaround emerged where players manually set their computer’s date back to January 3rd to allow the client to authenticate before noticing the expiration. Riot employees subsequently provided ongoing updates on Reddit, demonstrating the company’s commitment to transparent communication during the crisis. Riot confirmed the issue and disabled ranked queues to prevent competitive disruption whilst engineers worked on a permanent solution.
Additional Server Issues in Europe
The problems didn’t end with the certificate issue. On January 8, 2026, the Europe West (EUW) servers appeared to be down in League of Legends, causing mass chaos in the region. Gamers on the EUW servers started noticing they couldn’t get into any games, with some receiving the error: ‘Failed to receive Platform SIPT’. This highlighted ongoing infrastructure challenges, with EUW often seeming to be the region with the most server issues as of late.
What This Means for Players
These outages underscore the fragility of even the most established live-service games and the importance of proactive infrastructure management. By January 5, 2026, Riot servers were reportedly back up and running, though some players continued experiencing minor issues. For players wondering whether future disruptions affect their connection or Riot’s servers, monitoring resources like Riot’s official status page, Downdetector, and the company’s social media channels provides the most reliable real-time information. As League of Legends continues its 2026 season with 24 scheduled updates throughout the year, maintaining server stability remains crucial for the game’s millions of dedicated players worldwide.