A League of Legends ban is a Riot Games penalty that locks an account out of the game, either for a set number of days or for good. Riot's support pages draw a line between bans and restrictions: a restriction still lets you log in but limits chat or queue access, while a suspension or ban keeps you out. Since November 19, 2025, Riot also links penalties across every account it believes belongs to the same player, so one ban can follow you to an alt.
Most League players find out at login. The client shows the penalty, the reason and how long it lasts, and Riot's published boosting ladder runs from a 3-day ban to a 14-day ban to a permanent one. Which penalty you have decides the rest: whether an appeal stands a chance, and whether the problem is your account or your PC.
What a League of Legends Ban Is
A League of Legends ban, in Riot's own wording, is a penalty that leaves you "unable to access your account" for a period of time. Riot uses "ban" and "suspension" for the same thing in many articles. Its newer support page on suspended accounts adds a rule of thumb: a suspension is usually short-term, a ban usually means the account is barred for good, and because older articles mix the two words, the duration on the notice is the better guide.
A restriction is the lighter category. Chat restrictions, AFK queue delays and queue dodge timers are restrictions: the account keeps working, but one feature is limited for a while. Riot retired a third kind, Ranked Restrictions, in Patch 26.04.
One more thing to rule out: "banned" in League also describes champions removed during champion select. Those draft bans have nothing to do with your account. Everything below is about account penalties issued under Riot's Community Pact and Terms of Service.
How to Check If Your League Account Is Banned
The quickest way to check a League of Legends account is to sign in to the League client, because Riot shows the penalty on a full-screen Penalty Notification at login. Riot's FAQ says you get the reason for a ban when you try to log in. Work through these checks in order:
- Sign in to the League client with the account. A Penalty Notification takes over the client and lists the penalty, the behavior behind it and the time left.
- Read the tier. A chat restriction shows the remaining days, a 2-week suspension also turns off chat, gifting and the store, and a permanent suspension lets you see only the notification before the client logs you off.
- Press the Copy Text button on the card to save its text. Riot says past suspension notices cannot be viewed later, so this copy is your record if you appeal.
- If the client logs you in normally but games will not start, look at the queue timer. A queue delay or lockout is an AFK or dodge penalty, not a ban.
- If every Riot game on the PC shows error VAN 152 at login, the penalty sits on the hardware rather than the account, which is covered further down.
Can't sign in at all and no notice appears? Wrong credentials, a server outage or a compromised account are more likely than a ban. Riot's account recovery page lists all three, and it also notes that a permanently banned account cannot be recovered through that tool.
League of Legends Ban Types and How Long They Last
League of Legends ban lengths run from a few minutes of queue delay to a permanent ban, and Riot sets the length by the offense and the account's history. The table sums up what each penalty blocks, using Riot's support pages and its October 2025 enforcement FAQ.
| Penalty | What it blocks | Length |
|---|---|---|
| Chat restriction | Chat in games and lobbies | A set number of days |
| AFK queue delay | Queue entry, 1 to 15 minutes | 1 to 5 games |
| AFK queue lockout | All matchmade queues | 24 hours to 2 weeks |
| Temporary suspension | Login on that account | Days or weeks; the standard tier is 2 weeks |
| Permanent suspension | Login, for good | No end date |
The Instant Feedback System, Riot's automated behavior system, punishes verified bad behavior within 15 minutes of a game ending. Milder cases get a chat restriction. Riot's Instant Feedback System FAQ says extreme negative behavior can skip the ladder entirely and jump straight to a two-week or permanent suspension, even on an account with no earlier offenses.
Boosting and ranked manipulation have their own ladder, and it starts at a ban, not a warning. Riot's enforcement FAQ lists a 3-day ban for a first offense, a 14-day ban for a second and a permanent ban for a third, plus a 6-month suspension for queuing with a confirmed scripter. On top of the ban, Riot drops the account's Honor to level 1 or 2, removes the season's Ranked Rewards and reverts the LP and MMR gained.
A League permanent ban is final in practice. Riot says permabans are almost always preceded by warnings or temporary suspensions, and that continuing after those warnings is why a permaban stays permanent.
Why Riot Bans League Accounts
Riot bans League of Legends accounts for breaking the Community Pact or its Terms of Service, and the report categories in the client double as the list of bannable behavior: negative attitude, verbal abuse, leaving the game or going AFK, intentional feeding, hate speech, cheating with unapproved third-party programs, and an offensive name.
In-Game Behavior and Chat
Verbal abuse and griefing are the usual path from a chat restriction to a suspension. Party chat counts the same as all chat, and Riot's temporary ban page says the chat logs behind a suspension are shown to you at login. Leaving games feeds a separate ladder: Riot's AFK system escalates from short queue delays to queue lockouts of 24 hours, 3 days, 7 days and 2 weeks, and a game where you were flagged as a leaver counts as a loss.
Boosting, Bought and Shared Accounts
Account rules got stricter in 2025. Riot began banning purchased and botted accounts on September 9, 2025 with Patch 25.18, and penalizes account sharing that feeds ranked manipulation from 2025 onward. In a later Vanguard post, Riot said its Anti-Boost system had acted against 296,416 League and Valorant accounts for rank manipulation since late 2025, and that accounts bought or used with no real owner get banned permanently. The same system runs in Valorant, where false boosting bans are disputed through the same Riot ticket.
Cheating and Payment Disputes
Scripts and other third-party tools sit at the top of the scale. League runs Riot Vanguard, and the cheating and tampering Vanguard flags draw League's harshest penalties, up to a ban on the PC itself. Payment problems are a separate category: Riot's chargeback policy suspends a League account as soon as a chargeback goes through, suspends both sides of a disputed gift, and lets Riot ban an account permanently after several chargebacks. A single chargeback suspension can end once the balance is repaid.
Banned After Your League Account Was Hacked
Riot treats a League ban earned by someone who broke into your account as a ban on you. Its support pages repeat one line in several places: you are fully responsible for all activity on your account, and Riot says it cannot modify suspensions or bans picked up that way. That is also why sharing your password with a friend ends badly when the friend gets the account banned.
There is a separate path when Riot itself spots the break-in. Riot can issue a security suspension when it detects suspicious activity, such as a likely compromise or suspected account selling, and it says those suspensions are handled case by case through a ticket. So the order matters:
- Recover the account first with Riot's account recovery tool, which is built for compromised accounts.
- Turn on multi-factor authentication and change the email password, since anyone who controls that inbox can reset the Riot password.
- Then open a Player Support ticket, describe the compromise, and include anything that proves you are the original owner, such as purchase receipts.
Expect Riot to be firm on behavior bans earned during the compromise. Riot says it can only help the original owner of an account, and an account that was bought or traded gets no help at all.
When a League Ban Spreads to Other Accounts or Your PC
A League of Legends ban no longer stays on one account by default. Two mechanisms carry it further: penalty linking across your own accounts, and hardware bans on the PC.
Linked Accounts Share Penalties
Since Patch 25.23 on November 19, 2025, Riot links every penalty, from queue delays and chat restrictions to suspensions and bans, across all accounts it is confident you own. Riot says shared IP addresses alone do not trigger a link, so playing at an internet cafe or on a family PC does not tie your account to strangers. Making a fresh account to dodge a chat restriction can get the restriction copied to it.
Hardware Bans and VAN 152
Riot can also ban the PC itself, and League hardware bans last far longer than an ordinary suspension. Riot reserves them for cheating flagged by its tools, a verifiable threat of harm, or extreme abuse across accounts that were already permanently banned. During one, every login on that machine returns the VAN 152 code in League and in Valorant, and any other account that signs in there is restricted and banned for a period too. Reinstalling League or deleting the banned account does not clear it.
Saturn works on that flag. It is a Windows tool that spoofs hardware IDs, not a cheat: Saturn's League of Legends spoofer clears the hardware flag on the banned PC by changing the identifiers Vanguard reads, from the CPU, TPM, motherboard and SMBIOS data to the RAM sticks, every drive, the graphics card, USB devices, the MAC address, the display EDID and UEFI variables, plus dozens more. Run in temporary mode, the replacement IDs hold only during a Saturn session, so the banned ones come back once you exit; in permanent mode one HWID profile replaces them for good. It does nothing for an account ban, which stays on Riot's servers, and Riot counts any login on a hardware-banned PC as ban evasion. A 24-hour free trial asks for an email but no payment card.
Can a League Ban Be Lifted?
A League of Legends ban can be lifted only when Riot agrees it was placed in error. Riot says penalties from the Instant Feedback System are generally not lifted or adjusted, and Riot's suspension FAQ for League opens with the line that correctly assigned penalties are never overturned. If you believe yours is wrong, the route is a Player Support ticket filed as a personal suspension, ban or restriction request. The full process, with what to write and which penalties Riot reviews, is in how a League ban appeal works.
A few cases do get reviewed more readily, according to Riot's own pages: smurfing or boosting bans you believe the system got wrong, security suspensions after a compromise, and chargeback suspensions, which end when the balance is paid. Temporary suspensions also end on their own when the timer runs out, so for a 3-day or 14-day ban, waiting is often faster than appealing.
League of Legends Ban FAQ
How do I check if my League account is banned?
Sign in to the League client. Riot shows a Penalty Notification at login with the penalty, the reason and the time left, and it reappears at every login until the penalty ends. A permanently suspended account can open only that notice before the client logs it off.
How long do League of Legends bans last?
Temporary League bans last days or weeks, with 2 weeks as Riot's standard suspension tier, while a permanent ban never expires. For boosting, Riot's ladder is 3 days, then 14 days, then permanent. AFK queue lockouts run from 24 hours to 2 weeks.
Can a permanent League ban be removed?
Only if Riot agrees it was a mistake. Riot keeps penalties it placed correctly, and a permaban usually follows several warnings, so most are final. A Player Support ticket about a personal suspension or ban is the one official way to ask.
What happens if my hacked League account gets banned?
Riot holds the owner responsible for everything done on the account, so behavior bans from a hijacker generally stand. Recover the account with Riot's recovery tool, turn on multi-factor authentication, then open a ticket with proof of ownership; Riot reviews security suspensions case by case.
Do League bans carry over to my other accounts?
Yes, since November 19, 2025. Riot links all penalties across the accounts it is confident belong to one player, so a suspension on your main applies to your alts too. A hardware ban goes further and covers every account used on the banned PC.
Is saying "ez" bannable in League?
One word on its own is unlikely to trigger a ban, but taunting counts as reportable behavior in Riot's Instant Feedback System, which looks at the whole game before it acts. Repeated taunts and insults lead to chat restrictions first, then suspensions.