Riot disables League of Legends Demacia Rising following loading issues, with no signs of when it'll return

It's not a new League of Legends season if something doesn't go wrong. As the MOBA kicks off 2026 with a bang (the For Demacia cinematic slapped), there are plenty of huge changes to contend with, including the massive adjustments to each of the game's roles, the removal of Atakhan and addition of Crystalline Overgrowth, and changes to pacing to ensure that you get into game faster. But, as part of the Demacia-themed Act 1, all eyes have been on Demacia Rising, a brand new, city builder-inspired minigame that casts you as a young Lux trying to carve out a place in the world. It's the thing that I was most excited to try out, but, unfortunately, it's not working.

League of Legends Season 16 Act 1, For Demacia, went live on Thursday, January 8, and as is par for the course with most major online games these days, LoL immediately broke. To quote director of product Drew Levin, "EUW [was] on fire," with players reporting major server outages. While this was fixed after around three hours, complaints were still rolling in about Demacia Rising, which appeared to be malfunctioning across multiple servers.

As noted by u/vaterpolistaaa on Reddit, there appear to be issues with booting up the game. "When I try to open it, it loads for a minute or two and then shows an 'ERROR,'" they write. "At first it looks like it's loading properly - the cursor changes - but it always ends with an error."

Design initiative lead Daniel 'Rovient' Leaver was quick to respond, writing: "Apologies! We're super aware of the issue and are working hard to identify a fix for it. Rest assured it'll be available as soon as possible. In the meantime, all Silver Shields (the main 'currency' of the game) can still be earned by playing games of League or TFT while you wait, so at least you're not missing out on any progress."

This was followed up by a post on the official League of Legends developer X account, which confirmed that the minigame has been taken offline for fixing. As of the time of writing, it's unavailable in the client, with a critical error notification that reads "we're aware of issues affecting Demacia Rising and are working to resolve them."

There's no ETA for when the game mode will return, but Riot is usually pretty quick with its fixes, so hopefully we won't be waiting too long. Elsewhere, the team has already solved an issue with Rengar's Q (Savagery), which was doing less damage than intended, and shipped a micropatch that has stopped Stormrazer appearing twice in the in-game shop. Bastionbreaker has also been disabled in ARAM, as has the Flashy augment, and the Execution augment for Gangplank.

In terms of the general response to the new season, it's still early days. Some Reddit posts claim that games now feel somewhat one-sided, and that the new vision-boosting Faelights are giving too much jungle information. I've seen some rumors that Aphelios is also busted, which as a squishy support main, is absolutely terrifying.

I am excited for a new year of League of Legends, though. I played a lot of ARAM Mayhem and Arena over the holidays, and feel like I've got my League spark back. Hopefully the Demacia season lives up to the high expectations that are placed on it, but for now, you'll find me grinding for that Prestige Morgana skin.