Shad0w LoL: Career, Champions and Worlds 2026

Shad0w is an Italian jungler, born Zhao Zhi-Qiang, who plays for CTBC Flying Oyster in the LCP and heads to Worlds 2026 with them. His career has crossed regions. It starts at MAD Lions in 2020, runs through LGD Gaming, Ninjas in Pyjamas.CN, FunPlus Phoenix and Bilibili Gaming, and includes the LPL 2025 Grand Finals title, won before he joined CFO in January 2026.

His game is built on skirmishing. This year his most played junglers are fighters such as Jarvan IV, Pantheon and Wukong, all run with Conqueror and an attack damage bruiser core. Lee Sin remains the champion he has played most across his career. He was born on 25 February 2001, and profiles of other players in his region and beyond sit on our esports hub.

2026 is his busiest season on record by a wide margin. The scoreboards list only 6 games for him in 2025, a 66.7% win rate on a sample too small to judge. His first year at CFO already covers a full LCP calendar and a much wider set of champions.

The results have not matched the volume. He wins less often than in that short 2025 stretch, dies more per game and carries a lower KDA. The season so far is one of heavy involvement rather than clean wins.

His footprint is where the numbers have grown. He takes a larger share of CFO’s damage, joins a higher share of its kills and places more vision per minute than he did in 2025. His CS/min is slightly lower, but his gold per minute is a little higher. That is the profile of a jungler who plays through fights and lanes rather than one who farms toward a late power spike.

For your own jungle games, the takeaway is the trade-off itself. High kill participation only pays when the fights you join are winnable. A playmaking jungler on a team that loses those fights collects assists and deaths together, and that is the risk this style carries.

Shad0w’s 2026 pool is wide and fighter-heavy, and the picks that win for him are not the ones he plays most. The table below lists every champion with his professional record and win rate.

Pantheon is his best champion on a real sample. It is his second most played pick of the year and carries the best record of his regular champions, which is why Pantheon features among his best games. Xin Zhao and Trundle back it up: both hold winning records on meaningful samples, and Trundle has given him the highest KDA of any champion he plays regularly.

The common thread is early pressure. Pantheon and Xin Zhao are skirmishers that reward a jungler who looks for fights around the first objectives, and that suits a player whose kill participation sits at the center of his game.

Jarvan IV is the clearest problem. It is his most played champion of 2026, yet CFO has lost far more often than it has won with it, and Wukong shows the same pattern over a similar number of games. Both are engage junglers that depend on the team following up, and a missed follow-up usually costs the jungler a death and the team an objective.

Wukong’s story has a twist. All of his Wukong wins this year came in Split 1, the games listed among his best, so the champion delivered early in the season before the losses piled up.

Naafiri, Sejuani and Vi sit at even records and act as his flex options, with Naafiri also among his most recent choices. Poppy, Lee Sin, Skarner and Nocturne have small samples. Jayce, Ambessa and Qiyana were early experiments that have not returned since the first half of the year, and none of them has enough games to call good or bad.

Across his career, Lee Sin is his most played champion and still holds a winning record, with Jarvan IV, Pantheon, Xin Zhao and Wukong completing his signature list. Lillia, Graves, Olaf, Volibear and Gragas all last appeared in 2020, the year he spent at MAD Lions, and have not been part of his pro pool since.

Shad0w builds his three most played junglers the same way. Each one runs Conqueror, a Precision primary with an Inspiration secondary, Flash and Smite, and an attack damage bruiser core. It is a build for long fights rather than burst, and it matches a player who wants to be in every skirmish.

Both champions share the same core of Black Cleaver and Sundered Sky, which adds armor shred and staying power for extended fights. The difference is the next item. Guardian Angel is close to standard on Pantheon but only an occasional choice on Jarvan IV, where Death’s Dance also appears. The second life suits a Pantheon who commits deep into fights.

Wukong keeps Sundered Sky but pairs it with Trinity Force. Black Cleaver is the usual third piece, and Maw of Malmortius appears as a rare answer to magic damage. His Wukong rune page swaps Coup de Grace for Last Stand, which favors fighting at low health over finishing targets.

Triumph and Legend: Alacrity are constant across all three pages. The Inspiration secondary of Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight is the detail worth copying: free boots leave more gold for the bruiser core, and the extra haste helps a jungler who plans plays around Flash. Item and rune values move from patch to patch, so check the patch notes before you take a setup into ranked.

His latest games come from LCP 2026 Split 3 in late August, in series against Team Secret Whales and MVK Esports. The champion spread stands out. Naafiri, Sejuani, Nocturne, Poppy, Vi, Pantheon, Wukong and Jarvan IV all appear, often a different jungler from one game to the next, which points to drafts built around the opponent rather than a single comfort pick. Games with a video carry a Watch link in the table.

Watch his best Jarvan IV, Pantheon and Wukong games from the 2026 season below.

Shad0w’s listed career starts at MAD Lions on 24 January 2020. He left on 19 April 2020 and played a two-day stint for Double Crunch Team Italy on 30–31 May 2020. He then returned to MAD Lions from 12 June to 6 September 2020.

His move to the LPL came next. He joined LGD Gaming on 7 June 2021 and stayed until 20 November 2022, his longest spell with one organization. He then played for Ninjas in Pyjamas.CN from 14 January to 5 August 2023.

His listed history then has a gap until he joined FunPlus Phoenix, where he played from 12 January to 14 June 2025. He moved to Bilibili Gaming on 19 July 2025. That stint ended on 9 November 2025 and produced the biggest result of his career.

He joined CTBC Flying Oyster on 16 January 2026, his first team outside Europe and China, and has been their jungler through the LCP season. The move took an LPL champion into a new region, and his heavy 2026 workload shows how central he is to CFO’s plans.

Shad0w’s standout result is first place at the LPL 2025 Grand Finals on 21 September 2025, won during his time with Bilibili Gaming. A domestic title in one of the most competitive leagues in League of Legends is the credential he carried into his move to CFO.

It is also the only title in his listed achievements. That frames his 2026 season: Worlds gives him a stage to add an international result to a domestic one.

Shad0w is at Worlds 2026 with CTBC Flying Oyster, the Asia Pacific #2 seed. The team starts in the Swiss stage of the Main Event, which begins on 23 October 2026. Follow every stage on the Worlds 2026 hub.