We've known for some time now that the North American servers for League of Legends are going to be moved to Chicago, Illinois. This move, along with peering with a multitude of internet service providers to provide a more direct and stable connection, is intended to provide the vast majority of players with an improved LoL experience. What we haven't known, until know, is exactly when that move is taking place.

August 24th!

Given the importance of the date, it seemed appropriate to help it stand out. Beginning at approximately 5:00am PDT on the 24th, game starts will be steadily re-allocated to the Chicago servers, escalating over the course of the transfer period (estimated to be completed at approximately noon PDT.) During this time, ranked play will be disabled, but the servers will not be shut down. What this means is that users should not see any interruption, and should be able to play the game as normal.

Riot Games is aware that many North American players have transferred to other servers (usually LAN) in an attempt to play with much lower ping. Because of this, they will be offering free transfers to the NA server on the 25th for players located in the US and Canada.

Lastly, in the interest of performing a stress test on the new servers, Riot is encouraging as many players as possible to jump into games from August 28th - 30th. To facilitate this, they are offering party IP rewards during this time frame, ranging from a 100% - 300% bonus, depending on how many players are in your party.

Hopefully all goes smoothly, but the current Portland servers will remain active at first, so that they can be used if necessary.

Source/Image credit: Riot Games