League of Legends may finally be getting team voice chat – 17 years after launch

Dataminer SkinSpotlights has found new lines of code in the files for patch 26.5 (16.5) of League of Legends that suggest team voice chat may be on the way.

Among the discovered lines, two stand out: an option to report players for "voice comms abuse" and the ability to switch between group and team voice chats.

Riot Games has been cautious about introducing this feature since the game's launch in 2009, consistently citing the risk of toxic behavior. In 2018, the studio did add voice chat for premade parties, but it never really took off – most players stuck with third-party services like Discord. Meanwhile, Valorant launched with voice chat not long after release, backed by AI-based moderation and a penalty system for toxic conduct.

An official release date for the feature hasn't been announced. Since the lines were found in PBE files for patch 26.5, dataminers believe team voice chat could go live alongside that update on March 4.