Why Smurf Accounts Are More Popular Than Ever in 2026

League of Legends turned 15 last year. The player base is aging. The ranked ladder is more competitive than it has ever been. And yet, one of the most debated topics in the community isn't a champion rework or a new item — it's smurfing.

Smurf accounts have been part of League culture since the early seasons, but 2026 has seen a noticeable surge in demand. Whether it's streamers playing "unranked to Challenger" series, frustrated Gold players looking for a mental reset, or returning veterans who don't want to grind 150 games on a decayed account, the reasons people buy or create secondary accounts have evolved well beyond "stomping low Elo for fun."

So what's actually driving this trend? And why does Riot seem unable — or unwilling — to stop it?

The Ranked Reset Problem

Every new season, Riot performs a soft MMR reset. In theory, this gives everyone a fresh start. In practice, it compresses the entire ranked population into a narrow band where Diamond players are placed into Gold lobbies and former Platinum players end up in Silver.

Season 16 made this worse. The new split system means players face multiple resets per year, and each one creates weeks of volatile matchmaking. For competitive players, this is miserable. You're not playing against people at your skill level — you're coinflipping through a chaotic mess of mismatched lobbies until the ladder stabilizes.

This is where smurf accounts enter the picture. A fresh Level 30 account with clean MMR doesn't carry the baggage of a tanked main. There's no negative win rate dragging down LP gains. No invisible MMR anchor from a bad streak three months ago. Players start with a neutral slate, and if they're genuinely better than their current rank, they climb faster on the new account than they ever could on their old one.

It's not about cheating the system. It's about escaping a system that punishes you for past performance long after you've improved.

Vanguard Changed the Game — But Not How You'd Think

When Riot deployed Vanguard (their kernel-level anti-cheat) to League of Legends in 2024, the community expected a crackdown on smurfing. Hardware ID tracking, phone number verification, stricter account creation — all of it pointed toward making secondary accounts harder to maintain.

What actually happened was more nuanced. Vanguard did reduce scripting and botting significantly. Cheaters who relied on third-party tools got wiped out in waves. But smurfing? It barely changed.

The reason is simple: smurfing isn't cheating. Playing on a secondary account doesn't violate Riot's Terms of Service. You're not using exploits, injecting code, or manipulating game files. You're just playing the game on a different account. Vanguard was never designed to stop that, and Riot has never officially banned the practice.

What Vanguard did change is the smurf account market itself. Accounts that were created using automated leveling tools became riskier. Providers that cut corners started seeing higher ban rates. The market shifted toward sellers who could deliver accounts that looked legitimate — proper leveling patterns, rested accounts that had been inactive for weeks before sale, and clean match histories that didn't trigger Riot's behavioral detection.

Players who want to buy LoL accounts now have to be more selective about where they shop. The days of grabbing a $2 account from a random forum and hoping it lasts are mostly over. Modern buyers look for sellers with warranty systems, secure payment processing, and a track record of account longevity — especially post-Vanguard.

The Mental Health Angle Nobody Talks About

Here's something the anti-smurf crowd rarely acknowledges: for a lot of players, a smurf account is a mental health tool.

Ranked anxiety is real. It's documented. Players who have invested thousands of hours into their main account develop genuine stress around queuing up, because every loss feels like it's destroying something they've built over years. The stakes feel impossibly high even though it's just a video game.

A smurf removes that pressure entirely. You can queue ranked without the weight of your main's history. You can try new champions, experiment with different roles, or just play without the constant anxiety of "what if I drop a division." For some players, having a secondary account is what keeps them playing the game at all.

This isn't a fringe opinion. Multiple high-profile streamers and coaches have openly recommended smurf accounts as a way to combat ladder anxiety. Tyler1's famous "unranked to Challenger" runs aren't just content — they demonstrate that a fresh account with neutral MMR produces a fundamentally different ranked experience than grinding on a hardstuck main.

Regional Differences Matter More Than You'd Think

The smurf account market isn't uniform across regions. NA and EUW have always been the dominant markets due to sheer player population, but smaller regions tell a more interesting story.

OCE (Oceania) is a prime example. The Australian and New Zealand player base is passionate but relatively small, which creates longer queue times and a tighter ranked ecosystem. When your server has fewer players, every rank feels harder to escape because you're constantly matched against the same people. This has made OCE one of the fastest-growing markets for secondary accounts.

The supply side is limited too. Most large-scale account providers focus exclusively on NA and EUW because that's where the volume is. Players looking for OCE LoL accounts have fewer options, which means the sellers who do specialize in Oceania tend to build loyal customer bases. Some of these shops have been operating for over a decade — AussyELO, for instance, has been selling OCE accounts since 2014, making it one of the oldest active sellers in the region.

EUNE faces a similar dynamic. The server covers a massive geographic area (Nordic countries, Eastern Europe, Greece, Turkey) but gets less attention from account providers than EUW. Players on these smaller servers often feel like second-class citizens in the broader League ecosystem, and the smurf market reflects that imbalance.

The Numbers Don't Lie

While Riot doesn't publish official statistics on smurf account usage, third-party data paints a clear picture. Community surveys on Reddit consistently show that 30-40% of active ranked players admit to owning at least one secondary account. In regions like OCE and EUNE, where queue times are longer and the player pool is smaller, that number is likely higher.

The demand isn't slowing down. If anything, Season 16's increased ranked volatility and the introduction of role-specific quests (which require significant time investment per role) have given players even more reasons to maintain multiple accounts. A dedicated top lane account, a support-only smurf for playing with lower-ranked friends, a "tryhard" account and a "for fun" account — the use cases keep multiplying.

Riot's Quiet Acceptance

Riot's official stance on smurfing has always been carefully worded. They don't endorse it, but they don't ban it either. The closest they've come to addressing it directly was the introduction of "Smurf Queue" — a shadow matchmaking system that detects accounts with abnormally high win rates and places them in lobbies with other suspected smurfs.

Smurf Queue was meant to protect new and low-ranked players from getting stomped. And to its credit, it works reasonably well. If you're a Diamond player on a fresh account winning 80% of your games in Silver, you'll get flagged and placed into smurf-only lobbies within 10-15 games. The climb still happens, but you're climbing against other smurfs rather than genuine Silver players.

This is arguably the healthiest compromise. Riot gets to protect the new player experience without alienating the significant portion of their playerbase that uses secondary accounts. And players who smurf still get what they want — a fresh MMR, clean LP gains, and a ranked experience that reflects their current skill rather than their historical baggage.

The Market in 2026

The smurf account market has matured significantly since the early days of shady forum transactions and PayPal chargebacks. Modern sellers operate like legitimate e-commerce businesses with customer support, warranty systems, and secure payment processing through platforms like Stripe.

The price point has also stabilized. A Level 30 account with 40,000+ Blue Essence (enough to unlock roughly 20 champions for ranked) typically runs between $5-15 USD depending on the region. That's less than a single skin in the Riot store. For players who value their time, spending $10 to skip 100+ hours of leveling is an obvious trade.

Where Does This Go From Here?

Smurfing isn't going away. Riot knows it. The community knows it. As long as the ranked system creates situations where experienced players feel trapped by their MMR history, there will be demand for fresh starts.

The more interesting question is whether Riot will ever build a legitimate "fresh start" option into the client itself. Some players have suggested a paid MMR reset — essentially letting you wipe your ranked history and start placements from scratch on your existing account. It would eliminate the need for secondary accounts entirely while generating revenue for Riot.

Until that happens (if it ever does), the smurf account ecosystem will continue to thrive. It's not the villain the community makes it out to be. For most players, it's just a practical solution to a system that doesn't offer one on its own.

This article reflects the author's views on the current state of League of Legends smurfing culture. GameTyrant does not endorse or promote any specific third-party services.