New 'League of Legends' Ranked Tiers Will Be Added Next Week

League of Legends players will see some ranked changes taking place next week when the Grandmaster and Iron tiers are added.

Grandmaster and Iron tiers in the ranked ladder are two more rungs players will have to climb through on their way to the top. Riot Games revealed the addition of those two tiers back in September, and a new update on the status of the extra ranked tiers said Grandmaster and Iron would be added to the game in Patch 8.24.

"Next week we'll be rolling out Grandmaster (as well as Iron and some in-client design changes) as part of preseason," said Riot Games senior designer Ed "Riot SapMagic" Altorfer in an update on the game's site. "To kick off Grandmaster and make sure it's working just right, players above Masters need to drop in order to properly test Grandmaster promotions and demotions."

Even though League of Legends is currently in its preseason period where the 2018 ranked season has ended with players' ranks getting reset in January, the addition of the two new tiers will still change where the best League of Legends players are placed. Challenger players will be bumped to Master and the two new ranks will be locked for a staggered period before players can fill the tiers.

Riot Games' schedule for the ranked changes following Patch 8.24's release can be found below:

• All players currently in Master and Challenger will be moved to Master, 0LP.
• Grandmaster and Iron will be added.
• Grandmaster and Challenger will be locked, no one can promote into it.
• After one week, Grandmaster unlocks and you can promote into it.
• After two weeks, Challenger unlocks and you can promote into it.
• This change does not impact underlying MMR at all, so matchmaking will be unaffected.

Players won't be moved out of Bronze and into Iron when the new tiers are added, the Rioter said on Twitter, but this same update will bring about the change where Division V of each tier is removed and only four divisions remain in each rank.

In preseason, primarily new players who start placements will enter at Iron. We aren't adjusting players' ranks during this time except with the removal of Division V, any player who is currently Division V will temporarily move to Division IV.

— SapMagic (Ed Altorfer) (@RiotSapMagic) November 27, 2018

League of Legends' next patch that adds the two new ranked tiers is coming next week and is expected to release on December 5th.