I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been comfortable playing games in a foreign language, even if it is only reflected in the menu and in-game descriptions. Especially in a game where too much depends on your understanding of what’s going on.
However, Riot Games goes their own way, so you can’t easily change the language just by pressing a couple of buttons. Instead, you need to change the server and only then will you get that server’s language as the interface language in the game.
Still, there are several ways to change the language and bypass the restrictions to play in a language you are comfortable with.
How to change a language in League of Legends new client
In 2020, Riot Games updated the client so that you can now at least choose one of the regionally available languages for a particular server. If your language is included in the language set for the server you play on, you need to do the following:
- Login to the client without signing in
- Click on the ‘Settings’ button (it’s located on the bottom right corner)
- Go to ‘General’, then look at ‘Language’ and choose your one
Note that the choice of languages depends on the server you have.
If your language is not in the list of available languages, then you have to either change the server or get into the game files to select your language.
Note that for example if you are a Quebec player and speak French, but play on the NA-server, you will not be able to select French. Of course, you can change the server to Europe, but mind the ping and other inconveniences.
If you do decide to change the server, here’s what you need to do:
- Open the client
- Click on the stack of coins icon on the top
- Select ‘Accessories’
- Choose ‘Server Transfer’
- Choose another region you want to play on
How to manually change language in League of Legends on PC
Note: From legal point of view, changing a language to one not supported by League of Legends in your region goes against Riot Games rules. However, I don’t think that can cause any problems, as this change doesn’t impact your gameplay and doesn’t give you any additional gameplay benefits.
If you decided to make that change, here’s what you should do:
- Open League of Legends directory (you can check it in shortcut properties)
- Then create a new shortcut by clicking ‘Send to’ – ‘Desktop (create shortcut)
- Go to your newly created shortcut and change the target field to the desired language (write -locale=lan_REG). Here are codes for almost all popular languages:
- -locale=ja_JP (Japanese)
- -locale=ko_KR (Korean)
- -locale=tr_TR (Turkish)
- -locale=zh_CN (Chinese)
- -locale=es_ES (Spanish for Spain)
- -locale=es_MX (Spanish for Latin America)
- -locale=en_US (English)
- -locale=fr_FR (French)
- -locale=pl_PL (Polish)
- -locale=ru_RU (Russian)
- -locale=hu_HU (Hungarian)
- -locale=it_IT (Italian)
- -locale=de_DE (German)
- -locale=zh_TW (Taiwanese)
- el_GR (Greek)
- pt_BR (Portuguese for Brazil)
- Then open the ‘General’ tab and check ‘Read only’
- Choose ‘Accept’
- Run League of Legends using this shortcut to enjoy selected language
In case this doesn’t work, you should do the following:
- Go to League of Legends directory
- Go to ‘Config’ folder
- Open ‘LeagueClientSettings.yaml’ by mouse right-click and selecting ‘Edit with Notepad’
- Find the ‘locale’ line and change the language using the list above
- Save changes
- Create a new shortcut and do everything from the previous method
- Run the game using new shortcut
