I lost the ticket lottery too, and I am still going to Worlds

I have not had a good week with draws.

I missed the T1 Signature Edition drawing, twice. I also entered the presale lottery for Worlds 2026 and did not get picked for early access to tickets either. At that point I had genuinely started to take it personally.

Worlds is in the United States this year. I have been watching this game since I was a teenager, and for most of those years watching Worlds meant a stream, a bad sleep schedule, and a lot of shouting at a monitor on my own. The one year it is close enough to actually attend, I lost the lottery to get in early.

So on general sale day I sat there with my hopes fairly low.

I got three tickets. Day 1 of the Swiss stage, in Texas.

Who I am taking

My wife, and my six year old daughter.

I have thought about that more than the tickets themselves. She has grown up with me watching this game, in the background, on the second screen, the noise of a crowd she has never actually been part of. She has opinions about which champions look coolest, which is the correct way for a six year old to engage with League of Legends and honestly a better system than most rankings.

I have no idea whether she will love it or last two games and ask for chicken nuggets. Both outcomes are fine. Being in a room with thousands of people who care about the same thing is worth showing her once, even if she remembers the crowd more than the games.

My wife has tolerated a decade of this with more patience than I deserve. She is coming for the trip. That is fair.

The bit I actually cannot wait for

T1.

I have followed them for years, through the eras where they were untouchable and the ones where they were not. Being able to see them live, and to see Faker in person rather than through a stream at three in the morning, is genuinely the thing that made me refresh the ticket page until it worked.

There is one small problem with this plan.

They have to qualify first.

Please, not this

Think about the sequence. Years of watching from a different continent. A Worlds finally within reach. A lottery I lost. A general sale I somehow won. Three tickets in hand.

And then the team I have followed all that time does not make it.

That would be, comfortably, the worst luck of my life, and given the week I have had I do not think we can rule it out. I would like to say I am confident. I am not going to say that out loud in case the universe is listening.

If they make it, I will be the person in the crowd who is far too loud for a Swiss stage game.

I am going to write it all down

I want to document the trip properly. Photos, what the venue is actually like, whether it is worth travelling for, what it is like taking a small child to an esports event, what I would do differently.

Partly because I would have liked to read that before booking. Most Worlds coverage is about the games. Very little of it is about whether you should bring your family, how long the days actually run, or whether a six year old can survive a full stage day.

So expect a follow-up with pictures, and probably an honest note about the parts that were less glamorous than the trailer.

In the meantime I am back to collecting Riftbound and losing draws. If you are doing the same, at least the cards can be tracked even when the lottery gods are not cooperating.