Val Act 6: Dates, Rank Reset & What Happens Next

Act 6 went live with patch 13.08 on 13 October 2026 — Riot's patch notes that day opened with “Act 6 starts now”. Riot has not published an end date for Act 6. It is the last act of the 2026 competitive year, and the 2026 year itself opened with patch 12.00 on 6 January 2026 — so expect the next year's Act 1 around early January 2027, a projection rather than a confirmed date. One practical caveat: act boundaries roll out with the patch, so the exact switchover can shift by roughly a day depending on your region — don't leave a final ranked push to the last evening. We update this page the moment Riot confirms a date.

Every act applies a soft reset: you play placement matches — just 1 at most acts (2, 3, 5, and 6), or 5 at the season-opening Act 1 and the mid-season Act 4 — and your new starting rank comes out slightly below where you finished — your hidden MMR carries over with a small downward adjustment, typically landing you around one to two tiers under your previous badge. The developer doesn't publish the exact setback, and it can vary by rank, so treat that range as typical rather than guaranteed. Because MMR persists, your placement lobbies are full of players at your real skill level, not your reset badge — which is why the first week of an act feels harder than the rank on screen suggests.

Twice a year the reset digs deeper — a harder squish that pulls the whole ladder down further than the routine act adjustment. In between those, an act tick is a nudge, not a wipe: nobody drops to Iron because a new act started.

Act rank rewards lock to what you achieve within the act, so the final weeks are the highest-value ranked games you can play: a tier banked before Act 6 closes is banked for good. RR gains at mid ranks typically run about 15–25 RR per win (with performance bonuses at lower ranks), so a late push of even one tier is realistic if you start early. If the deadline is closing faster than your win rate, that final stretch is also the single most popular moment for a rank boost — the act end is a hard cutoff.

When the 2027 Act 1 opens, play your placement matches first — 5 games this time, because Act 1 opens the competitive year with the deeper reset — they set your starting point for the whole act, and early RR swings are more generous than mid-act gains. From there the climb back to your previous badge is a re-run through your own skill bracket: because MMR carried over, expect wins to come at a normal rate rather than a smurf-speed streak, and budget dozens of games to recover one to two tiers. The calculator above shows a range for your exact from→to, and the boost option shows a real price and ETA for the same journey if you'd rather skip the re-climb.

Act 6 closes the 2026 season structure: since 2025 the ladder runs on a year-long season split into six roughly two-month acts, replacing the old episode system. Each act brings the routine soft reset described above; the deeper twice-yearly resets bracket the ranked year. For the record: Act 4 ran from 24 June to 18 August 2026 and Act 5 from 18 August to 13 October 2026, when patch 13.08 opened Act 6. We log each act's confirmed dates here as they close, so this page doubles as the ladder's historical record.