Worlds 2025

The WC logo designed by the Player's Council.

Worlds 2025 was the third World Championship for the Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game ran by the Player's Council. Most invitations went to the best players of a series of monthly World Championship Circuit events, which took the place of the qualifier leagues, Format Championships and Walk-on Qualifiers of Worlds 2023 and Worlds 2024. The main event was held in a single day on GEMP on October 18, 2025, and basmelis won his third consecutive World Championship, with dstaley as World Challenger.

Format

• Group Stage: a 6-round Swiss
  • Rounds 1-3 used the PC-Fellowship deck
  • Rounds 4-6 used the PC-Movie deck
  • The top 8 moved on
• Championship Tournament: a double-elimination bracket for the top 8, using the same decks as the Group Stage
  • Upper Bracket games used the PC-Movie deck
  • Lower Bracket games used the PC-Fellowship deck

All cards used PC errata, and sets V1 and V2 were legal.

World Championship Circuit

The Circuit was announced on April 8, 2025. It replaced the Weekend Qualifier Leagues, which the PC found hard to police, and there were no Walk-on Qualifiers. It was 10 Swiss tournaments, run in pairs on the second Saturday of each month from May to September, at 1300 UTC and 1700 UTC for European and American time zones: 4 in PC-Fellowship, 4 in PC-Movie and 2 in PC-Expanded.

Each tournament scored points for the Circuit:

• 1 point for taking part
• +1 for winning
• +1 for the top 4, if at least 8 players took part
• +1 for the top 8, if at least 16 players took part
• +1 for the top 16, if at least 32 players took part

A player's Invitation Score was the sum of their 4 best events; more events could be played, but only the best 4 counted, so that skill was rewarded over free time. Winning a Circuit event did not by itself earn an invitation.

16 invitations were issued: 2 to the 2024 World Champion and World Challenger (basmelis and rbranco), up to 4 to winners of selected in-person events, and the rest to Circuit players in order of Invitation Score. (The Group Stage threads describe all 16 as "the top 16 players from the 2025 WC Circuit".)

Each Circuit tournament also gave out digital prizes on Gemp: High Place Event Award and Event Award packs for the top finishers and everyone who completed a game, and the month's Full Art card to every player who finished all their matches. Errata was frozen before the August round, apart from emergencies, until the World Championship.

Date	Format	Time zone	Players	Winner
May 10, 2025	PC-Fellowship	EU	9	basmelis
May 10, 2025	PC-Fellowship	AM	9	Wingfoot81
June 14, 2025	PC-Movie	EU	7	basmelis
June 14, 2025	PC-Movie	AM	12	enolen
July 12, 2025	PC-Expanded	EU	10	balrog69
July 12, 2025	PC-Expanded	AM	6	Chadwick537
August 9, 2025	PC-Fellowship	EU	9	scyld
August 9, 2025	PC-Fellowship	AM	9	Chadwick537
September 13, 2025	PC-Movie	EU	9	dstaley
September 13, 2025	PC-Movie	AM	8	Sithdorra

The World Championship 2025

Invitees

The top 16 were seeded in this order:

1. basmelis
2. Chadwick537
3. dstaley
4. Wingfoot81
5. scyld
6. enolen
7. Sithdorra
8. rbranco
9. tOmas
10. m_scarpato
11. talial
12. stephan77
13. Modrzew
14. balrog69
15. Rutil
16. BetoSb

The Group Stage

• Rounds 1-3: PC-Fellowship replays + decklists
• Rounds 4-6: PC-Movie replays + decklists

The Championship Tournament

• World Champion: basmelis
• World Challenger: dstaley
• Competitors: Chadwick537, Sithdorra, stephan77, talial, m_scarpato, Rutil

stephan77 had to drop after his first win in the first round. It was ruled that his opponent, m_scarpato, would stay in the Upper Bracket but be eliminated on a second loss.

• Top 8 replays

Aftermath

The three-time World Champion, Bas Melis (basmelis), chose Rosie Cotton, Hobbiton Lass (1U309) for the 2025 WC Promo, "the surprise tech piece that let him scythe through his opposition". Branded versions were issued to every 2025 participant, exclusive for one year; at the same time, the 2024 WC Promo (a full-art They Are Coming (1C196)) was unlocked for everyone.

Every player in the 2025 World Championship received a head start in the 2026 Circuit, in the form of a starting Championship Points score counted as if they had already played a Circuit event: 6 points for the top 4, 5 points for 5th-8th, and 4 points for the rest.

References

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The Lord of the Rings TCG World Championship
Decipher	2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007
LOTR Online TCG	2006 (planned)
SWCCG Players Committee	2010
LOTR-TCG Player's Council	2023 • 2024 • 2025 • 2026