G2 Esports took Game 1 from T1 in the second round of the lower bracket at the 2026 League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational on the 8th, winning with a late-game double ADC composition that held up when the fight turned messy. The opening map at the Daejeon Convention Center Exhibition Center II in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon ended with G2 Esports pushing straight into the Nexus after a swingy finish that kept T1 under pressure from start to finish.
For readers searching G2 vs T1, the reason is simple: this was the lower-bracket match where a single game already carried bracket consequences, and G2 Esports made its draft matter. The composition gave them a clear path once the game reached the late stages, where two damage dealers could keep firing even as T1 tried to break the map open. That plan became most visible after G2 Esports pulled ahead from a skirmish over Void Grubs, then started to build around the kind of sustained damage that a double ADC setup is built to deliver.
Lee Sang-hyeok’s Cassiopeia was targeted when he did not have Flash, and G2 Esports used the opening to keep T1 from settling the pace. T1 answered with its own attempts to force the issue, including a play on Broken Blade’s Vayne with Keria Ryu Min-seok’s Camille, but that chase dragged on because Camille had not yet learned her ultimate skill, and both T1 players were left without a kill. G2 Esports then took down Doran Choi Hyun-joon’s Renekton shortly after, showing how quickly the map could flip when T1 missed the first punish.
T1 did recover ground. After Camille reached level 6, Oner Moon Hyun-joon’s Nocturne helped bring down Hans Sama’s Ezreal, and T1 picked up two more kills to close the gap after turning back G2 Esports’ attempt to target Cassiopeia. Then came the biggest reset in the game: T1 won a massive teamfight while focusing Caps’ Anivia and secured Baron, only for G2 Esports to blunt the momentum by using Vayne’s free-hitting potential in a top-lane standoff to push T1 back. When the fourth Dragon approached, G2 Esports assumed T1 had gone to contest the stack and began Baron, but T1 moved to defend, forced the engage with Camille, and took Baron for itself. Phase Kim Su-hwan’s Ziggs also stole the Dragon, keeping the map from settling into one side’s control.
The late game still belonged to G2 Esports. Around the 41-minute mark, the fourth Dragon fight broke wide open, the Dragon went to T1 again in the skirmish, and G2 Esports’ two ADCs finished off Nocturne and Renekton before claiming Baron as a trophy and charging into the enemy base. Hans Sama’s Ezreal later solo-killed Renekton in the side lane, and G2 Esports finished the map by pushing straight into the Nexus. Whether the series extends or not, the first game has already shown the shape of the matchup: T1 can win the middle fights, but G2 Esports has a late-game answer that does not need much room to end the game.
