Players who wanted to log into League of Legends on the evening of January 4, 2026, noticed: This does not work at all. This was due to a problem that occurred last 10 years ago.
What was the problem? As can be seen in a Reddit thread from January 4, 2026, some players were temporarily unable to log into LoL. The creator of the thread reported that the game had an endless loading screen after logging in.
As it turns out, a client certificate expired, preventing the correct login. However, there was a simple but absurd way to still play.
One tricks, like in Animal Crossing
How could the problem be circumvented? Vandiril, who regularly deals with bugs and errors in LoL on his channel, published a short YouTube video on the subject. There he also showed that the loading screen with the title League of Legends was loading indefinitely without starting the client properly.
In the video, he also shows the client certificate, which was created on January 7, 2026, and expired on January 4, 2026, at 21:03. The certificate has therefore expired after 10 years, but apparently no one remembered.
If you wanted to play during this time, you could simply change the date manually in Windows. As Vandiril shows in his video, this way the problem can be easily bypassed. This is reminiscent of games like Animal Crossing, where you change the time to reset certain events. Unlike that, you probably won’t be reprimanded by a grumpy mole here.
The same thing probably happened 10 years ago. In the current Reddit thread about the Vandiril video, a user found out that the problem apparently existed 10 years ago. In an old thread, a player reported that he suddenly could not log in anymore. He asked back then if the certificate had expired.
At that time, an employee from Riot (RiotBrentmeister) replied to the user’s question and explained that the certificate had expired, although it should have been automatically renewed.
As a user on x.com shows, the current certificate seems to be valid until 2125.
What is the situation now? At the time of writing the article, we were able to log in normally to League of Legends after a short update, so the issue seems to be resolved. In 2027, League of Legends is expected to receive its biggest update. Everything that is known about it so far can be found here: Riot announces one of the largest updates in LoL history, plans a comprehensive overhaul of the entire game
