Home / Esports News / LoL Esports League of Legends EUW Gets Experimental Ranked Matchmaking Changes Craig Robinson February 27, 2026 LoL Esports Riot Games has finally deployed experimental matchmaking changes to League of Legends‘ EUW ranked queue, aiming to improve autofill and secondary role balance in competitive games. The test went live at approximately 2 AM CET on the Europe West server on Friday, February 27, affecting only the Ranked Solo/Duo queue. Players experienced 5-10 minutes of ranked downtime during the deployment, with active queue searches ejected, though in-progress games remained unaffected. The timing was key: early in the elos, able to miss most of the queues, and really late in the elos, when naked testing matters the most. The EUW Ranked experience should improve. Image Credit: Riot Games What Changed in EUW Ranked Matchmaking The matchmaking improvements specifically address two long-standing community concerns: autofill versus autofill balance and secondary versus secondary role distribution. Riot’s announcement emphasized the experimental nature of the changes, noting that live testing provides significantly more data than internal testing environments. Largely thanks to testing with real player data in the crazy world that is EUW solo queue. The developer requested community feedback on potential issues, including extended queue times, inappropriate rank disparities, overall game balance quality, and autofill distribution accuracy. Players were encouraged to report anomalous lobby compositions and game IDs through the official feedback thread. It’s an ideal area to test, as autofilling is often responsible for severe skill disparities within teams. It’s partially why Riot issues the Aegis of Valor to protect players losing elo in off-rolled positions, alongside the double LP incentives for winning while auto-filled. Though Season 26 is one of the most inflated LP seasons of all time, thanks to autofill protection and double LP gains. The new Ranked Test should further aid the problems affecting Ranked Solo Queue, which the band-aids are somewhat helping with, but creating other problems in the meantime. EUW Ranked Test ThreadWe are looking to go Live with Matchmaking improvement for autofill vs autofill and secondary vs secondary balance at 2AM CET (~1 hour from now)There will be about 5-10m of Ranked downtime while we switch over and people will be ejected from queue (but…— Matt Leung-Harrison (@RiotPhroxzon) February 26, 2026 Riot Needs Feedback on Tests Riot acknowledged the limitations of pre-deployment testing, stating that the live environment provides exponentially more matchmaking data than internal simulations. The EUW-exclusive rollout allows developers to monitor results on a single high-population server before potentially expanding changes globally. The developer expressed confidence that the system would avoid the flagged issues but requested vigilant community reporting nonetheless. Specific concerns included players stuck in extended queue searches beyond typical wait times and matchmaking creating games with unusually wide skill gaps. Community members can submit feedback with lobby screenshots and game IDs, with player names redacted if preferred. The testing window duration was not specified, suggesting Riot will evaluate performance metrics before determining next steps.