Is Smurfing Allowed in LoL? Riot's 2026 Rules on Alt Accounts and Bans

"Is smurfing allowed in League?" gets two loud answers online — "everyone does it" and "it's bannable" — and both are half right. Riot doesn't ban players for owning a second account. It does ban for what many smurfs are used for: de-ranking to play with friends, buying accounts, sharing them and boosting. Since late 2025 Riot has also linked accounts that belong to the same person and switched on a Vanguard system that detects someone else playing on your account. This guide sets out exactly what's allowed in 2026, what isn't, and what each penalty looks like, from Riot's own pages.

What Riot calls smurfing

Riot Support defines smurfing as "creating a second account to play League of Legends" and says it doesn't endorse it because it can hurt other players' games — but also that it doesn't proactively remove most smurfs. When smurfing is proven, Riot says it acts against action on the account involved — and in some cases on the player's main account too. In Clash the rule is concrete: an account ranked more than 2 divisions lower than your highest-ranked account counts as smurfing in Clash, and the penalty is a ban from competing in Clash again, and the team can lose its Clash rewards.

Riot's September 2026 Anti-Boost post put numbers on it: about 9% of daily active ranked accounts were secondary accounts, about half of which Riot considered smurfs — a word it reserves for malicious use such as dodging bans or boosting — and over 70% of players have at least one alternate account.

What's allowed and what isn't

The penalties, step by step

Boosting penalties come with extras: all LP and MMR gained from boosting is reverted; Honor drops to level 1 or 2 until enough games are played without further penalties; and the account is excluded from the season's ranked rewards — rewards already received can be revoked. Riot's Anti-Boost post adds that players who repeatedly queued with smurfs or boosters lose the undeserved rank, even if unknowingly.

Account linking: penalties follow you

From 19 November 2025 (patch 25.23), queue delays, suspensions, bans and chat restrictions are shared across accounts Riot is confident belong to the same person. Riot says it links accounts only when it is "extremely certain" they're used by the same person, and Korea follows its own local policy. In practice that means a suspension on an alt can now delay or block your main — the old idea of a "throwaway" account is gone.

Vanguard Anti-Boost

Anti-Boost is a Vanguard classification layer that detects when a significant share of an account's ranked points come from a higher-rated player logged into it. It was first launched privately in League of Legends in September 2025, and by 17 September 2026 Riot reported 296,416 accounts actioned for rank manipulation across League of Legends and VALORANT since late 2025 — and said it isn't at full power yet. Escalating suspensions per offence, from three days up to three centuries; purchased or ownerless (smurf) accounts are banned permanently.

Playing with friends of a different rank

1. Check whether you can duo at all.

   Riot's Solo/Duo windows decide it — the duo checker tests any pair of ranks.

2. Use Flex.

   No Flex rank restrictions for Diamond and below; to play with Master+ players you must be at least Emerald.

3. Play normals or ARAM.

   No rank limits in normals, and Riot says a lower-MMR alt for ARAM with friends is fine.

4. Never de-rank an alt.

   Losing on purpose to reach a friend's rank is exactly what Riot's FAQ forbids.

What this means for boosting

We'd rather you hear it from us: Riot's rules forbid account sharing, and its 2026 Anti-Boost system is built to catch a higher-rated player on your account. Duo boosting on a booster's own account avoids sharing your login, but Riot lists paying boosters to queue with you on smurf accounts as suspendable too. Coaching touches no account at all. Our safety guide explains the risks of each option before you decide.