Faker LoL: Career, Champions and Worlds 2026

Faker, born Lee Sang-hyeok on 7 May 1996, is the South Korean mid laner of T1, the organization he joined in 2013 and has represented under both the SK Telecom T1 name and today’s T1 brand. In LoL he is known for Worlds titles won across very different eras of the game, in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025. He is also known for a pool built on control mages, with Azir, Orianna and Ryze at its core.

Faker’s 2026 shows steady team results with rougher individual lines. T1 is winning his games at almost the same rate as in 2025. His KDA, however, has fallen from last year’s 4.22, mostly because he is dying more often per game.

His role in fights has shifted as well. He is taking a smaller share of the team’s damage and is involved in fewer of its kills than last season. His CS/min and vision per minute have both gone up. That reads like a mid laner spending more time on side waves and warding for setups, and less time at the center of every skirmish.

He has also played a slightly narrower pool so far than the 24 champions he used across 187 games in 2025. The 2026 season still has Worlds to run, so the gap in games played will shrink before the year ends.

Ryze is his most played champion of 2026, but his best results come from further down the list. Azir and Akali, both on double-digit samples, have the highest win rates among his regular champions. Anivia has become a genuine part of the rotation rather than a surprise pick, and T1 has drafted it all the way into September.

Orianna sits in the middle. She is reliable, has the strongest KDA of his frequent champions, and is the champion T1 turns to when the draft needs a teamfight setup. Galio is the outlier among his staples, with a losing record this year on a double-digit sample. That suggests T1 drafts it for engage and map presence rather than for pressure in lane.

Below that core sit the pocket picks: Twisted Fate, Annie, Taliyah and Sylas, each brought out for specific drafts. Viktor and Aurora show losing records, but on too few games to say anything about how well he plays them. To read up on any of these champions, start with our champion pages.

Across his whole career, Azir is the champion he has played most in pro games, ahead of Orianna, Ryze, Galio and Corki. LeBlanc still holds the best career record among his staples, even though he last played it on 14 October 2025.

His builds point to one plan: scale, stay healthy and win the mid game. On both Ryze and Anivia he opens with Rod of Ages and pairs it with Seraph’s Embrace and Actualizer. That mana-and-health core makes him hard to burst. It also tells you he is happy to concede early tempo if the game reaches his item spikes.

On Ryze he runs Deathfire Touch from Sorcery with Resolve as the secondary tree, taking Bone Plating and Unflinching for extra durability. He takes Flash with Ghost rather than Teleport. That choice favors speed in fights and between side waves over cross-map Teleport plays, and his boots (Chainlaced Crushers or Swiftmarch) follow the same logic.

Anivia is the most unusual setup. He takes Electrocute from Domination with Taste of Blood, Sixth Sense and Relentless Hunter, and Sorcery as the secondary tree. That is a kill-threat, roaming rune page on a champion more often built for zone control. Crimson Lucidity and Cryptbloom show up as follow-up items, which keeps his cooldowns turning in long fights.

Orianna drops the Rod of Ages core entirely. Crimson Lucidity, Hextech Rocketbelt and Blackfire Torch, paired with Summon Aery, Absolute Focus and Legend: Haste, add up to a fast, ability-haste build for teamfights. Hextech Rocketbelt also gives her extra mobility to start fights herself.

His latest games come from two settings. With T1 he played the LCK 2026 Season Playoffs series against Dplus Kia and Hanwha Life Esports in September. On 20 September he joined the South Korea national team for the Korea Pre Evaluation for 2026 Asian Games against Vietnam. Across those games he went from Azir, Orianna and Syndra to Galio, Viktor and even Locke, a sign of how deep into his pool drafts are reaching late in the season.

Watch his best Ryze, Anivia and Orianna games of the season below.

His pro career began on SK Telecom T1 2 on 3 April 2013. He moved to the main SK Telecom T1 roster on 4 September 2013 and won Worlds 2013 on 4 October 2013. He then played for SK Telecom T1 K from 15 November 2013 to 30 August 2014, a stretch that included the Champions 2014 Winter title.

Since 7 January 2015 he has played mid for the unified T1 roster, first branded SK Telecom T1 and now T1. He has not changed organization or role since then, through every meta shift and roster rebuild around him. That stability is rare at the top level, and it is why his career history and his team’s history are almost the same story.

The record splits into two peaks. The first ran from 2013 to 2017: Worlds titles in 2013, 2015 and 2016, MSI wins in 2016 and 2017, and a Worlds final in 2017. After a leaner middle stretch with semifinal finishes at Worlds 2019 and Worlds 2021, T1 reached the Worlds 2022 final, then won the event in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

His Worlds results define his standing. Titles in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025, plus second-place finishes in 2017 and 2022, mean he has contested the final in both the earliest and the most recent eras of the event. MSI 2016, MSI 2017 and Esports World Cup 2024 add international titles outside Worlds.

His domestic titles run from Champions 2013 Summer to LCK 2023 Spring, with a cluster of playoff wins in 2019 and 2020. His most recent results are mixed. T1 won the KeSPA Cup 2025 on 14 December 2025 and finished second at MSI 2025, but finished 4th at Esports World Cup 2026.

Faker is at Worlds 2026 with T1, which qualified as Korea #3 and goes straight into the Main Event. T1’s first stage is the Swiss stage, which starts on 23 October 2026, with the knockout stage to follow for teams that advance. Follow every stage on the Worlds 2026 hub.

In Korean Ranked Solo/Duo he plays a more mechanical, assassin-leaning mid pool than in pro games. Yone and Aurora lead his ranked games, followed by Hwei and Sylas. Azir, Taliyah and Orianna, the control mages he leans on in the LCK, appear further down alongside Ambessa.

Aurora is the clearest gap between the two pools. It is one of his most successful solo queue champions, yet it has only a handful of pro games this season. If you want to study his laning on mechanical mids, his ranked VODs are a better source than his LCK games. Other pros who stream are listed on our streamers and pro players page, and our mid lane guides cover the fundamentals behind his choices.

Faker’s streamer page lists 596 solo queue games in our VOD library at a 55.2% win rate, currently Grandmaster (1,642 LP).