The next big Teamfight Tactics update will swap in 20 champions this month

Teamfight Tactics: Festival of Beasts — (Image credit: Riot Games)

Teamfight Tactics is due for a major shakeup in just a few weeks. Though the Fates expansion launched several months ago, the mid-set refresh, called Festival of Beasts, is coming on January 20 and swaps in 20 new champions, seven new abilities, a new battle pass, and a lot more.

Riot Games detailed all of these changes in a post today, but the biggest news is the change to the Champion roster, with 19 champions rotating out and 20 being added in. If you've been playing TFT for a while, you'll recognize some of the returning faces, including Aurelion Sol, Shivana, and Braum, but two champions are joining TFT for the first time ever: Tryndamere and Samira. As someone who used to main Tryndamere in LoL, I am very excited and hope he's every bit as cheesy.

Festival of Beasts also adds seven new Traits that replace the six that will be leaving the game alongside their associated Champions. Dragonsoul, for example, buffs your champions and gives them a powerful dragon breath attack if you manage to rope together enough Dragonsoul Champions into your team. But I'm particularly interested in the new Slayer trait—and not just because that's the one Tryndamere has.

As the post explains, "[Slayers are] all about dealing tons of damage and powering through the hurt. The lower a slayer's health is, the more lifesteal they get allowing them to recover from their wounds. The lower a slayer's target is, the more damage they deal, allowing them to destroy wounded targets."

In addition to all of that, Festival of Beasts will also introduce a new battle pass with cosmetic rewards, new arenas, and a new ranked season with new ranked rewards. It's a lot!

If you want to read about all the nitty-gritty changes, check out Riot's blog post here. Teamfight Tactics' Festival of Beasts launches on January 20.

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.