True Damage returns after seven years as Know My Name turns Faker’s dynasty into the Worlds 2026 anthem

Seven years after GIANTS introduced one of Riot Games’ most successful virtual groups, True Damage is back with “Know My Name,” the official anthem of the 2026 League of Legends World Championship . SOYEON returns to represent Akali, joined this time by Coco Jones as Senna, Vic Mensa as Ekko and

Seven years after GIANTS introduced one of Riot Games’ most successful virtual groups, True Damage is back with “Know My Name,” the official anthem of the 2026 League of Legends World Championship. SOYEON returns to represent Akali, joined this time by Coco Jones as Senna, Vic Mensa as Ekko and Sofía Reyes as Qiyana, while Yasuo retains his role as the group’s DJ and producer.

The comeback is significant on its own, but Riot has given the song an even larger purpose. Know My Name is the 13th official Worlds anthem and the first performed by one of Riot’s virtual music acts, while its animated video is built around Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok and T1’s extraordinary competitive history. Rather than presenting the 2026 contenders as the stars of another fantasy battle, Riot uses four minutes of animation to move through Faker’s victories, defeats, roster changes and eventual return to the summit, culminating in the unprecedented three consecutive World Championships T1 captured from 2023 through 2025.

True Damage finally has a second single

True Damage debuted at the 2019 World Championship Final in Paris with GIANTS, performed by SOYEON, Becky G, Keke Palmer, DUCKWRTH and Thutmose. The virtual lineup consisted of Akali, Qiyana, Senna, Ekko and Yasuo, combining hip-hop, pop, Korean and Spanish influences with the kind of lavish animated presentation Riot had already demonstrated through K/DA one year earlier.

The project immediately became more than a set of League skins. GIANTS accumulated hundreds of millions of views and streams, True Damage received a complete cosmetic line in League of Legends and Qiyana’s Prestige Edition became part of Riot’s high-profile collaboration with Louis Vuitton. Despite that success, however, the group effectively disappeared after its debut. K/DA subsequently returned with an entire EP and Riot later introduced HEARTSTEEL, while True Damage remained associated with a single 2019 song.

Know My Name ends that seven-year absence. Riot has retained the same five virtual members but rebuilt most of the real-world vocal lineup around them, treating True Damage as an ongoing musical act rather than a one-off Worlds experiment.

SOYEON is the link between the original group and its comeback

SOYEON of i-dle is the only vocalist returning from the original 2019 True Damage lineup, again providing the voice and rap identity associated with Akali. Her presence gives the comeback continuity with GIANTS and with Riot’s wider musical universe, where she has become one of the company’s most recognisable recurring collaborators through both True Damage and K/DA.

The other roles have changed substantially. Coco Jones represents Senna, replacing the role originally performed by Keke Palmer; Sofía Reyes takes Qiyana’s vocal and rap position, previously associated with Becky G; and Vic Mensa now represents Ekko, whose 2019 performance was split between Thutmose and DUCKWRTH. Yasuo remains the silent fifth member inside the fiction, functioning as True Damage’s producer rather than receiving a credited vocalist on the track.

That new combination also reinforces the international identity Riot wants for the group. SOYEON brings Korean rap and K-pop experience, Jones contributes contemporary R&B, Mensa brings hip-hop, and Reyes extends the group’s Latin-pop influence. Riot’s Global Head of Music Maria Egan specifically connected that mixture of voices and cultures with New York, where the 2026 World Championship will eventually conclude.

Know My Name is less about winning Worlds than surviving long enough to win again

The song’s central idea is resilience. Riot’s official description focuses on the determination required to become legendary, while the music video repeatedly avoids presenting Faker’s career as one uninterrupted rise toward greatness. Instead, it begins with one of the lowest points of his professional life and then uses success and failure as two halves of the same story.

That choice distinguishes Know My Name from an anthem built purely around the excitement of the tournament about to begin. Faker enters Worlds 2026 as the most decorated player in League of Legends history, so another cinematic simply depicting him as an unbeatable final boss would tell an incomplete story. Riot instead concentrates on the years when winning again seemed increasingly uncertain and on the teammates who eventually helped him rebuild T1 into a championship roster.

The title consequently works in more than one direction. Faker no longer needs anyone in esports to learn his name, but maintaining what that name represents has required repeatedly proving that earlier victories were not the end of his story.

The video begins with the defeat that ended Faker’s first dynasty

The opening deliberately starts in 2017 rather than 2013. Faker is caught during the World Championship Final by Park “Ruler” Jae-hyuk’s Varus, recreating the decisive Flash into Chain of Corruption that helped Samsung Galaxy destroy SK Telecom T1’s attempt at a third consecutive championship. The video then evokes the image of Faker crying at his desk after the loss, one of the most recognisable photographs in League esports history.

Only after showing that collapse does the animation return to his first era of dominance. The earlier championships are represented through specific competitive moments: his Ahri during the 2013 run, MaRin’s Gnar in the 2015 Final and Faker’s Orianna surviving pressure against ROX Tigers during the legendary 2016 semifinal series.

This structure makes those first three Summoner’s Cups feel like history rather than the destination of the video. Faker had already achieved what would have been a complete career for almost any other professional player before the 2017 defeat. What Know My Name is interested in is what happened after the dynasty stopped.

The years without a trophy become part of the legend instead of being skipped

After 2017, the video does not simply jump to T1’s eventual return to dominance. Faker is shown moving through the years in which other organisations became world champions, visually emphasising how long he remained part of League while the competitive landscape changed around him.

That period is essential to the story Riot wants to tell. Faker won Worlds in 2013, 2015 and 2016, but his fourth championship did not arrive until 2023. During those seven years, League itself transformed: new generations of Korean players emerged, the LPL became an international superpower, SK Telecom became T1 and multiple versions of the roster failed to recover the dominance associated with its earlier era.

Faker nevertheless remained. The music video treats that endurance as comparable in importance to the trophies themselves, presenting longevity and adaptation as the qualities that ultimately made the second dynasty possible.

The 2022 defeat becomes the bridge to T1’s three-peat

The emotional centre of the modern portion is Worlds 2022, when T1 reached the Final only to lose 3–2 to DRX in one of the greatest underdog runs League has produced. The video references the failed late backdoor involving Faker’s Viktor and Zeus’s Gwen, along with the famous images of Keria breaking down after the defeat while his teammates remained beside him.

That loss matters because the same core roster returned one year later. Faker, Oner, Gumayusi, Keria and Zeus had repeatedly reached domestic and international finals without converting enough of those opportunities into championships, creating a growing narrative that an extraordinarily talented lineup might never finish the job on the biggest stage.

Riot visually turns that frustration into the fuel for what follows. The video does not present 2023 as a fresh team suddenly appearing at the top; it presents it as the answer to 2022 and to the accumulated disappointments that came before.

Worlds 2023 begins the second T1 dynasty

The 2023 sequence references the extraordinary path T1 took through the LPL contingent. JD Gaming entered the tournament pursuing the Golden Road after winning both domestic splits and MSI, while T1 had endured its own sequence of lost finals. Those storylines appear through signage and environmental references before the animation recreates moments from the eventual run.

T1 ultimately defeated Bilibili Gaming during Swiss, LNG Esports in the quarterfinals, JD Gaming in the semifinals and Weibo Gaming in the Final, becoming the last obstacle between the LPL and a World Championship on home soil. Faker’s Akali appears in the animated recreation of the final against Weibo, where T1 completed a dominant 3–0 victory and Faker lifted his fourth Summoner’s Cup seven years after his third.

That title already looked like the conclusion to one of esports’ longest comeback stories. In retrospect, it became the beginning of something even larger.

The Galio moment represents the fifth championship

The video’s 2024 section centres on Faker’s Galio during the World Final against Bilibili Gaming, specifically the moment in which he enters a team fight around Zeus’s Gragas and T1 collapses onto the engagement. Riot turns the Ultimate into one of the animation’s grandest heroic entrances, fitting a year in which Faker’s experience and willingness to initiate decisive fights became central to another championship run.

T1 won the 2024 Final 3–2, giving Faker his fifth world title and securing back-to-back championships for the organisation. That alone restored the kind of dynasty League had not seen since SK Telecom’s original peak, but the roster did not survive intact.

The video handles Zeus’s departure with unusual restraint. Rather than transforming the change into conflict, the top laner is shown saying goodbye before Choi “Doran” Hyeon-joon enters the story. The transition allows Riot to acknowledge that the famous ZOFGK lineup ended after 2024 while preserving the importance of what those five players achieved together.

Doran’s arrival leads directly into the 2025 Final

The final competitive sequence moves into Worlds 2025, where T1 returned with Doran replacing Zeus in the top lane. Their route eventually produced an all-Korean Telecom War Final against KT Rolster, a best-of-five that T1 won 3–2 to complete the first three-peat in Worlds history.

The animation recreates the deciding battle through Doran’s Gragas initiation, Gumayusi finding deokdam and Faker fighting Bdd, before Keria’s Renata Glasc intervenes as Bdd’s Cassiopeia threatens Faker. It is an appropriately team-oriented ending for a video ostensibly centred on one player. The point is not that Faker personally defeats everybody around him; it is that his career has survived through different teammates, different metas and different versions of T1.

That 2025 championship gave Faker six World titles: 2013, 2015, 2016, 2023, 2024 and 2025. No other player has a record remotely comparable, and entering Worlds 2026 he has the opportunity to extend a run that has already surpassed the achievements Riot was celebrating when previous Worlds videos framed him as League’s final boss.

Riot has packed the animation with details for long-time esports fans

Beyond the main chronology, Know My Name contains numerous smaller references aimed at people who have followed T1 closely. Gumayusi appears with his dog Doongi and the headband associated with his 2024 Worlds appearance. Draft screens recreate actual champion selections, tournament slogans reappear as background signage and pieces of broadcast culture are hidden around the environment.

The animation also references the narratives that surrounded T1 rather than only the plays that happened on Summoner’s Rift. The failed finals before 2023, the idea of JD Gaming’s Golden Road, community jokes and the transition between Zeus and Doran all become part of the visual language. It is closer to an animated retrospective than a conventional promotional music video.

Production was handled with WIZZ, with CRCR providing animation direction, while the track itself was produced by longtime Riot Games Music collaborator Sebastien Najand. The combination allows the video to move between relatively grounded representations of players and highly stylised recreations of in-game champions without needing to choose one visual language for the entire career.

Know My Name is the first Worlds anthem performed by Riot’s own virtual artists

Riot has used virtual performers around Worlds before, but the distinction in 2026 is important. K/DA’s POP/STARS debuted during the 2018 Final, True Damage performed GIANTS during the 2019 ceremony and other Riot music projects have appeared around international events, but those songs were separate from that year’s official World Championship anthem.

Know My Name is different. Riot has made True Damage themselves responsible for the Worlds song, making 2026 the first championship in which one of the company’s fictional music acts owns the anthem rather than appearing alongside it.

That decision effectively merges two of Riot’s largest entertainment projects. The annual Worlds anthem traditionally functions as an esports time capsule, while groups such as K/DA and True Damage exist inside an alternate League music universe centred on the champions themselves. Know My Name uses the sound and branding of the fictional group while its video remains almost entirely concerned with real professional competition.

The result is less a True Damage narrative video than a Worlds retrospective soundtracked by True Damage.

The group is also returning to League with an entirely new look

The musical comeback extends into the game. Riot has already previewed True Damage Know My Name cosmetics for Akali, Ekko, Qiyana, Senna and Yasuo, scheduled to arrive with Patch 26.21 on October 21. Instead of simply re-releasing their 2019 costumes, the five champions receive a new stage-era wardrobe built around the comeback.

Yasuo occupies an especially important position because True Damage Know My Name Yasuo is the featured Worlds 2026 skin. Riot has confirmed that sales from the skin and related Worlds offerings will contribute to the competitive ecosystem through revenue shared with Tier-1 LoL Esports teams.

The complete Worlds in-game programme also includes tournament chromas, team icons, regional emotes and the Season 3 Act II Worlds Pass. Riot is therefore connecting Know My Name to both sides of League’s ecosystem: the song celebrates competitive history, while the cosmetics built around it financially support the teams attempting to create the next part of that history.

The anthem arrives just before a World Championship Faker has not yet won

For all the retrospective celebration, Riot has released the video at a deliberately awkward moment for T1: Worlds 2026 has not happened yet. Nineteen teams are heading to the United States with the specific objective of preventing the reigning champions from extending the story the music video has just spent several minutes celebrating.

The tournament begins with the Play-In Stage in Los Angeles from October 15–18, followed by the Swiss Stage at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen from October 23–31. Quarterfinals and semifinals remain in Allen from November 3–8 before the competition moves to Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the Grand Final on November 14.

T1 enters directly into the Swiss Stage as one of four Korean representatives alongside Gen.G, Hanwha Life Esports and Dplus Kia. China sends Anyone’s Legend, Bilibili Gaming, Top Esports and Invictus Gaming, while G2 Esports, Movistar KOI and Karmine Corp represent the LEC. North America, the LCP and the expanded CBLOL allocation complete a 19-team field in which the reigning champion is only one contender among many.

True Damage will perform the anthem live in Brooklyn

The comeback will ultimately return to where True Damage began: the Worlds Final stage. Riot has confirmed that the group will perform Know My Name during the November 14 Opening Ceremony presented by Mastercard at Barclays Center.

That will create a seven-year gap between True Damage’s first major Worlds performance in Paris and its second in New York. The production has changed, most of the vocal lineup has changed and League esports has accumulated another generation of champions in the meantime, but SOYEON and Akali provide a direct link between both eras.

The location also fits the group’s musical identity unusually well. Riot has always positioned True Damage around urban fashion, hip-hop and a mixture of international influences, while New York gives the comeback a setting with an obvious connection to those traditions. Riot is leaning into that identity across its Worlds merchandise and Fan Fest programme as well, with the final weekend expanding beyond Barclays Center into a three-day celebration at Pier 36 in Manhattan.

Riot has chosen legacy over introducing the 2026 challengers

There is an interesting trade-off in dedicating an annual World Championship video so heavily to the reigning champion. Many previous Worlds cinematics have used the anthem to introduce multiple stars from different regions, effectively creating a fantasy preview of the tournament about to begin. Know My Name is far less interested in doing that.

Players from Gen.G, G2, BLG, Team Liquid or the other qualified teams do not receive equal billing because the video is not trying to predict the 2026 tournament. It is an explicit celebration of Faker and T1’s historical legacy, something Riot announced before the music video even premiered.

That approach will naturally divide some viewers. Fans wanting the annual anthem to belong equally to every qualified team may prefer a broader cast, while T1’s extraordinary dominance makes the decision easy to understand historically. Three consecutive championships and six individual Worlds titles create a story large enough that Riot can justify giving it an entire anthem rather than compressing it into another brief cameo.

The more interesting possibility is what happens next. If somebody finally stops T1 this year, Know My Name becomes a closing monument to an unprecedented dynasty. If Faker wins again, Riot will have released a retrospective about a legend whose most absurd chapter still had not happened yet.

Worlds 2026 begins with everyone chasing the name Riot just spent four minutes immortalising

Riot’s official theme for this year’s championship is “This Is Our Moment.” Nineteen teams have qualified, one will leave Brooklyn with the Summoner’s Cup and the tournament is deliberately being framed around the idea that esports history is created by the players and supporters occupying the present rather than by the legends who came before them.

Know My Name creates a productive contradiction with that message. Its music video is overwhelmingly about the past, but that past becomes the standard the 2026 field now has to confront. Faker’s six championships, T1’s three-peat and the moments recreated throughout the animation are already fixed. The next month determines whether they remain the final chapter of the dynasty or merely the introduction to another one.

That is ultimately why True Damage’s return fits Worlds better than another standalone comeback single would have. The group disappeared for seven years and returned under a title built around refusing to be forgotten. Faker spent seven years between his third and fourth World Championship and now enters 2026 having won the last three in succession.

Both stories are built around the same idea: being known is one thing; surviving long enough to make people remember why is something else entirely.

The 2026 League of Legends World Championship runs from October 15 through November 14 across Los Angeles, Allen and Brooklyn, with True Damage scheduled to perform Know My Name during the Worlds Final Opening Ceremony at Barclays Center. The song and official music video are available now across Riot’s channels and major streaming platforms.