LoL Patch Schedule & Server Downtime News (Updated for 2024!) How to Know Ahead of Time! Best Sources: Twitter, Reddit, Riot for League of Legends Maintenance

Its frustrating to plan for some free time to play League of Legends, but then have the servers go down for maintenance all night out of nowhere. Will the LoL servers go down tonight? Don’t panic, here are the links you can check for the most advance notice of League of Legends server maintenance and downtime!  Perhaps bookmark to check back next time you’re wondering?

#1 Scheduled League of Legends Patch, Planned Downtime (Updated for 2023)

• Official LoL Patch Schedule – Dates also copied below. Shows planned patch downtime months in advance.
• Patch downtime tends to be at least 4-6 hours, sometimes longer.
• The patches occur early in the morning, just after midnight, for example if it says Wednesday, that means downtime starts Wednesday morning at 1-2 AM. NOT Wednesday night.
• Also plan for “Emergency Maintenance” on many Tuesday or Wednesday nights not listed here, around midnight CST, for around 2-5 hours. (See #5 below for more info.)

#2 Normal League of Legends (LoL) Maintenance / Patch Duration, Timeline, Schedule

A quick explanation of how patches and downtime work in League of Legends. An example timeline:

1. About 2 hours before ranked queues go down late on Tuesday night or the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the client will show a notification if you click the ! icon in the LoL Client.
2. It usually has a message like: “Ranked matchmaking will be unavailable at 01:30 PST in preparation for the patch deploying at 03:00 PST.”
3. To repeat it, there is no advance warning in client until just a couple of hours before the downtime occurs
4. Then after 3:00 AM PST the entire client stop working (no games or logins at all.) Trying to login will either just fail or you’ll get a message that says they expect the downtime to be until between 7:00 – 10:00 AM PST. (That’s 4-6 hours of the game being completely down.)
5. In my experience they overstate the downtime length 90% of the time. LoL is usually down for 2-3 hours for a patch – in my experience.

#3 League of Legends Official Service Status Page – Link

• https://status.riotgames.com/lol?region=na1&locale=en_US
• Link displays current Service Status for LoL NA Servers (Other regions can be selected)
• This usually does not provide any information ahead of time, but if the game is currently down it should be listed here so you can confirm the reason.
• May provide information on how long the downtime will last.

#4: The Best Social Media to Find League of Legends Server Maintenance / Downtime Changes

• Bookmark this page for future reference!
• Below is a copy of the best official Twitter / X account I could find relating to patches. It seems more focused on what will be changed. There doesn’t seem to be any reliable official social media account warnings in advance about downtime.
• The LoL status on Riot’s site is generally better: https://status.riotgames.com/lol?region=na1&locale=en_US

Tweets by LoLDev

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#5 “Emergency Maintenance” Often on Tuesday or Wednesday Nights around Midnight

Many Tuesday or Wednesday nights around midnight, there will be downtime (sometimes only ranked, sometimes the whole game, sometimes a combination) from around 2AM PST to 7 AM PST. I’ve been surprised and frustrated by this many times, and this information is never given out officially anywhere. In fact, when I contacted Riot, the support person did not even know it happens, but claims it may have been “emergency maintenance. Yet the downtime seems to reliably happen on these days. (This is unannounced maintenance; different from the planned patch schedule listed.)

• Regular (but unannounced) downtime: often Tuesday night (Wed. early morning) @ around Midnight EST
• Downtime varies, but is around 1-7 hours (average 2-4 hours.)
• Sometimes only ranked queues will go down, sometimes it’s a combination of ranked and the whole LoL game service

#6 Comprehensive List of Sources to Check for Early Notice of LoL Server Maintenance:

A complete listing of all sources you can check to get as much warning as possible to plan a late night gaming session!

• Riotgames.com Service Status: https://status.riotgames.com –  Official Riot website page, lists server status for all games (does not give advance notice)
• League of Legends website – not a great source; its a huge website and the best you’ll find is the below planned patch schedule.
• Downdetector for League of Legends – If your connection to the game servers isn’t working, check this to see if there has been a recent spike in reports from others
• League of Legends Subreddit on Reddit.com – You’ll usually find people complaining after unplanned downtime, but reddit is not a great source for finding downtime plans ahead of time
• League of Legends Discord – same as reddit, tons of people will be complaining after the fact, but check the twitter account above for the most advanced notice! You can also ask here if you think there may be some strange connection issues and want to see if anyone else has the same problem.

#7 3rd Party Website: Downdetector

• https://downdetector.com/status/league-of-legends/
• This is a popular website for all services, games, and similar. When something stops working, people will google “is Y down” and usually the first result is downdetector.com – then users often click to report it is down for them, sometimes leaving a comment about it. This can be a good indicator of exactly when LoL went down, but won’t help in advance or tell you when it will be back up and running.

How Could Riot Improve LoL Maintenance Events?

1. The most obvious improvement would be to notify players in the client much sooner. Currently there is no notification until about 2 hours before downtime maintenance starts. That should be increased to 12-24 hours. Minor, temporary bugs have notifications in the client for days at a time. Scheduled maintenance would be easy to announce much earlier.
2. Clearly state downtime on social media and their website ahead of time. Currently, the Riot website only seems to show this information on their site during the downtime, not in advance. Riot’s social media such as X / Twitter does not seem to have any information about it reliably.
3. Have a newsletter or similar notification service to notify players (opt-in) about planned downtime.

What Should I Do While League of Legends is Down for Maintenance?

• Download and play the League of Legends Public Beta Environment (PBE) of course! 
• PBE is the “beta” branch of LoL, and is still up and live during the downtime maintenance of the main League of Legends game!
• You will need to have a regular LoL account first, and it must be in good standing (no current bans) with at least honor level three. You will install the separate LoL PBE client and link your main account to the PBE account. PBE accounts come with some free in game currency to unlock some characters and skins.
• Another option is to create an account in a different region, for example if you are in the US, you could make a European account. Regions have separate downtimes.
• Check out some of the cool collectible LoL statues available on Amazon such as the one below!

How long will the LoL Servers Be Down?

Server and game downtime for official patches (14.3, 14.4 etc.) usually tend to last about 3-6 hours. Sometimes they are completed in about 3 hours, but sometimes something will go wrong and it will be extended. The in-game notification usually lists 4-6 hours, but I’ve seen it take in a range from 2-12 hours on rare occasions. More often than not lately it has been 2-3 hours.

Want to rant about the League of Legends servers going down again? Or have another source to check for news on upcoming downtime? Leave a comment below!