ARAM mains, rejoice! This is the first major update to the game mode in a long, long while.
Riot Games announced today that two maps, a revived Butcher’s Bridge, and the new Koeshin’s Crossing that was designed to tie-in with the Spirit Blossom season, will be added to the pool in patch 25.13 on that releases on June 25, 2025.
This three-map random rotation is similar to what players experience already in Valorant.
Besides this, there’s a new Champion Select. Doing away with the old reroll system, players will instead get to choose one of two champions (three, if you’re lucky). Champions not picked go directly to the bench which teammates can pick up.
ONE Esports had the chance to playtest all the new maps and speak to Eduardo Cortejoso, Modes Product Lead at Riot Games to find out more about the new ARAM experience.
ARAM mains, listen up, for there might be even more maps coming in the future
Riot Games acknowledges all the player feedback received over the years, especially after the Bridge of Progress update.
“Updates has been met with mixed reception. There’s some positivity, for example, with the map that we developed for Arcane Season 2, that were really exciting, that we’re exploring some ideas, but others were not so thrilled that were changing what ARAM was supposed to be, at least in their estimation,” Eduardo told press during the Spirit Blossom Summit.
As a result, the Modes Team was cautious and more careful when developing Koeshin’s Crossing. It is a unique map with a beautiful environment with the addition of cross-bridge portals in the middle. Other than that, they wanted to keep the “core essence” of ARAM present.
There might even be more new maps added in the future, Eduardo told ONE Esports when we asked if there’s a world where the number of ARAM maps could rival the number in the current Valorant map pool. They plan to evaluate this big update before investing more in that direction.
These major changes were initiated three years ago, Eduardo revealed. It was only then that maps and modes “started to build competency in the space.” The team took some time to get Arena out before evaluating future projects, which also helped them build proficiency.
Speaking on behalf of ARAM mains, ONE Esports wanted to find out just how much more Riot is planning to invest into the future of this mode. After all, there is a significant number of players who only experience League of Legends through ARAM and never touch Summoner’s Rift.
“We have long felt it on our own team. When I first joined the team, it’s like, hey, you’re in charge of new modes and ARAM. I was like, great. But also, we’re going to build arena and ARAM’s just going to sit there for a second until we finish building Arena. And then it was Swarm,” Eduardo said.
“This has been a long held desire from the team who are also full of ARAM enjoyers and ARAM mains. We want to make sure that feels represented in our entire ecosystem,” he added.
After all, despite Howling Abyss having little to no changes over the years, ARAM mains keep coming back and Riot Games wants to reward them for their patience and loyalty.
“For random maps, it’s largely because we want to maintain healthy variety, which is the core essence of ARAM,” Eduardo commented. “A lot of people misinterpret ARAM as a silly queue where I don’t need to stress out or anything. And that’s only partially true. It’s actually for players who just don’t have ranked in them anymore, I guess, is one way to put it. Or they just want to find a different vehicle to enjoy that core League of Legends gameplay in a low stress environment.”
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