The regular season for both the LTA North and the LTA South have concluded. Eight teams will now do battle in Brazil with the hope of being the one and only team to represent the Americas at the first international event of the year, First Stand. Heading into the Split 1 playoffs, four teams from North America and four teams from Brazil will collide in a single elimination bracket to determine the winner. Let's take a look at how we got here from the LTA South.

The LLA rises up

Perhaps Leviatan was underrated coming into the LTA South Split 1, but they lit the region on fire along with Isurus Estral being two of the teams to qualify for Brazil. It's impressive that both the main LLA team and the guest LLA squad have qualified for the cross-region portion of the event as the number one and two seed, meaning two of Brazilians best will be the third and fourth seeds heading into the event. 

North American fans should be all too familiar with the jungler for Isurus in Josedeodo, the Argentine jungler played in the LCS under the FlyQuest banner a couple of years ago, and will now be going up against Team Liquid and a struggling UmTi, which could give us the first upset of the 2025 LTA Split 1 playoffs. Leviatan impressed a lot of people this split with a solid run, taking down Trymbi and Vivo Keyd Stars, followed by hometown favorites paiN Gaming, before dropping to Isurus in the best-of-one seeding match.

Uphill battle for Brazil

Despite having the hometown advantage, the teams from the CBLoL will have to settle for a third and fourth-place finish as LOUD and paiN Gaming qualified for the LTA Split 1 playoffs. In some ways they got upset, this was their home turf, with the crowd passionately behind them, but that was not enough to get the job done as both former CBLoL squads had to settle for third and fourth place. 

This does mean, however, that they will now have to deal with facing North America's one and two seeds in 100 Thieves and Cloud9 if they want to progress to the next round. And while these weren't the two favorites coming into the season, they have been the best two teams comfortably this split, taking down both Team Liquid and FlyQuest respectively to claim the first two spots in Brazil. Although this makes it harder for the LLA squads if TL and FLY return to form, it makes it equally harder for the Brazilian teams as there are now four very strong teams in North America with little to no upset potential.