Riot introduces Hwei, LoL’s upcoming ‘artistic mid laner’

The next League of Legends champion to be released finally has a name.

In an extensive update from the LoL developers released earlier today, League’s champions teams lead Lexi Gao shed light on some of the new champions that will be hitting the Rift in the future, starting with one that was teased earlier in the year. 

The LoL dev team teased all of the new releases at the start of 2023, with Naafiri and Milio getting first honors, as well as a then-unnamed “hangry jungler” who turned out to be Briar. An “artistic mid laner” was also teased at the start of the season, and finally, that champion has a name: Hwei. 

Hwei was teased to be a painter, and although no models or visuals of the champion were shown off by Riot, a piece of complimentary art that features bright colors and abstract stylization was briefly displayed during the dev update. 

“He owes much of his skills to his previous masters but after time and exploration, he has transcended their skill and created his own unique style,” Gao said in the update. “While Hwei comes prepared with what he wants to paint, his extensive palette of possibilities leaves room to learn, experiment, and master.”

Hwei was noted to be a “somber” champion in terms of his personality, although “his art is visually stunning,” according to a Champion Roadmap piece released by Riot. In the same follow-up piece, which was also written by Gao, Hwei was confirmed to be a mage and that he’ll fill the role of a traditional AP mid laner that many seasoned League players should be familiar with. 

This year has been a relatively thin one for champion releases in League, with only three new additions making their way to the roster. Should Hwei not release until the start of 2024, then Riot would finish this year with its lowest number of champion releases ever. In 2021, only four champions were released, while five were released in 2022. To counteract the low output when it comes to new champions, though, Riot has been making extensive updates and reworks to many existing champions, including Ahri, Jax, Rell, and Neeko.

Hwei does not have a release date attached to him yet, but it’s possible that we’ll see the champion hit the PBE sometime soon and likely get a release date that comes before the end of 2023.