The LoL jungle tier list for patch 26.19 has a surprise at the top: Wukong and Cho’Gath jungle, not the Lee Sins and Viegos you see in every other game. Wukong wins 52.14% at Emerald+ and Cho’Gath wins 51.50% on a bigger pick rate, with Lillia and Warwick joining them in our S tier. The numbers come from op.gg’s Emerald+ Ranked Solo/Duo data on patch 26.19, last checked 28 September 2026. Riot publishes no official win rates, so everything below is third-party match sampling, dated and hedged.
This is the patch version, rebuilt every time the patch changes. For the evergreen picks that climb whatever the patch notes say, read our best junglers to climb guide. Here you get the full S-to-D table with a first-clear time for every jungler, why each S-tier pick is there, which junglers you can blind pick, how the best pick changes from Iron to Diamond+, and who moved since 26.18.
Patch 26.19 context: what changed for junglers
Patch 26.19 landed on 22 September 2026, and junglers took a big share of the direct balance changes. Riot’s official patch 26.19 notes list these for the champions junglers actually play:
- Elise (buff): passive damage 12/22/32/42 to 14/24/34/44, and W attack speed 60-120% to 70-130%.
- Lillia (buff): base armor 22 to 24, and her R sleep lasts 2.5 seconds instead of 2.
- Kha’Zix (buff): passive damage up to 22-141, evolved W slow 2 to 2.25 seconds, evolved E range bonus +200 to +300.
- Master Yi (buff): Q cooldown refund changed to a flat 1 second.
- Nocturne (nerf): R cooldown 140/115/90 up to 160/130/100 seconds.
- Vi (nerf): base AD 63 to 61 (growth 3.5 to 3.9), passive shield 12% to 10% max health.
How we built the list: op.gg’s jungle champion stats, using the Emerald+ sample for 26.19 (about 919,000 ranked games when we pulled it), compared against the full 26.18 sample, then our own judgment on top. The clear-time column comes from LoL Recommender’s jungle clear times for patch 26.19, updated 28 September 2026. It is the median time for the jungler to hit level 4 in ranked solo queue games where they did not fight, die or gank first, with at least 12 games per champion. We have not found another public source that times first clears this way, so it is the benchmark we use.
LoL jungle tier list: the patch 26.19 master table
Win rate and pick rate are op.gg Emerald+ jungle data for patch 26.19, last checked 28 September 2026. First clear is the LoL Recommender median time to level 4 on the same patch. The average jungler wins about 50%, so anything above 51.5% is pulling real weight and anything under 48.5% is losing you games.
| Tier | Champion | Win rate | Pick rate | First clear | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | Wukong | 52.14% | 6.35% | 2:58 | Best win rate among popular junglers, top 3 in every bracket |
| S | Cho’Gath | 51.50% | 6.74% | 3:00 | Pick rate up a third this patch and still winning |
| S | Lillia | 51.17% | 4.08% | 3:00 | Buffed, fast clear, longer R sleep |
| S | Warwick | 51.89% | 3.10% | 3:18 | Slow clear, huge first gank, forgiving |
| A | Rammus | 52.55% | 2.09% | 3:08 | Highest win rate in the role, counter-pick into AD |
| A | Briar | 51.25% | 4.41% | 3:12 | Low-elo monster, fades with rank |
| A | Shyvana | 51.01% | 4.71% | 3:00 | Farm-and-scale, 53.36% below Platinum |
| A | Master Yi | 50.85% | 6.42% | 3:02 | Buffed, banned in 15.33% of games |
| A | Nidalee | 51.34% | 3.06% | 3:11 | Best jungler in Diamond+ at 52.50% |
| A | Elise | 51.10% | 3.20% | not measured | Biggest riser of the patch |
| A | Fiddlesticks | 51.64% | 2.20% | 3:14 | Teamfight ult that ends games |
| A | Sejuani | 51.24% | 2.17% | 2:58 | Fast tank clear, great with melee lanes |
| A | Zac | 51.01% | 2.93% | 3:11 | Counters a lot of the S and A tier |
| A | Rek’Sai | 51.74% | 1.36% | 3:19 | Strong but niche, 1.36% pick rate |
| A | Evelynn | 50.86% | 2.43% | 3:03 | Punishes low-vision games |
| B | Talon | 50.57% | 6.14% | 3:07 | Popular, even, needs early kills |
| B | Shaco | 50.64% | 4.32% | 3:05 | Above 51% in Diamond+, 48.91% below Platinum |
| B | Sylas | 50.24% | 7.78% | 3:19 | Popular flex pick, banned in 19.09% of games |
| B | Ekko | 50.40% | 4.30% | 3:10 | Stable, slipping a bit this patch |
| B | Bel’Veth | 50.51% | 2.69% | 3:09 | Strong low elo, even at high elo |
| B | Udyr | 50.65% | 2.01% | 2:53 | Second-fastest clear in the game |
| B | Nunu & Willump | 50.63% | 1.96% | 3:16 | Objective control, better in Diamond+ |
| B | Amumu | 50.17% | 1.97% | 3:07 | 52.76% below Platinum, average above it |
| B | Ivern | 51.28% | 1.13% | 2:46 | Fastest clear in the game, specialists only |
| B | Lee Sin | 49.31% | 13.04% | 3:04 | Most picked jungler by far, loses more than he wins |
| B | Kayn | 49.50% | 6.91% | 3:03 | Fine below Emerald, drops after |
| B | Hecarim | 49.34% | 5.41% | 2:59 | Improves with rank, 50.08% in Diamond+ |
| C | Graves | 49.11% | 8.39% | 2:55 | Fast clear, under 50% in every bracket |
| C | Viego | 49.10% | 8.63% | 2:58 | Very popular, losing record |
| C | Jarvan IV | 49.24% | 5.89% | 2:59 | Good early, falls off |
| C | Kha’Zix | 48.90% | 8.23% | 3:06 | Buffed, pick rate jumped, win rate fell |
| C | Nocturne | 48.58% | 4.56% | 3:01 | Ult nerf, biggest faller of the patch |
| C | Qiyana | 48.55% | 6.32% | 2:59 | 45.57% below Platinum, 49.31% in Diamond+ |
| C | Naafiri | 49.23% | 3.42% | 3:08 | Snowballs or disappears |
| C | Diana | 49.19% | 2.65% | 3:01 | Playable, not winning |
| C | Kindred | 49.58% | 2.02% | 3:08 | Hard in low elo, fine in Diamond+ |
| C | Xin Zhao | 49.30% | 2.21% | 3:16 | Up on last patch, slow clear |
| D | Karthus | 48.79% | 1.36% | 2:56 | Fast clear, nobody to protect him |
| D | Vi | 48.10% | 4.18% | 3:01 | Nerfed, dropped more than a point |
| D | Rengar | 48.08% | 3.94% | 3:04 | 44.36% below Platinum |
| D | Zed | 46.72% | 2.67% | 3:01 | Banned in 24.18% of games, loses when picked |
| D | Locke | 45.76% | 0.66% | 3:25 | Slowest clear in the game, wrong role for him |
We disagree with op.gg’s own tier score in two places. op.gg ranks Lee Sin and Sylas as tier 2 junglers, top five in the role, mostly on pick and ban volume. We have Lee Sin in B because 13.04% of Emerald+ junglers are playing a champion that wins 49.31%. He is popular because he is fun and has a high ceiling, and the average Lee Sin player is paying for that in LP. Rammus goes the other way. His 52.55% is the highest win rate in the role, but he is a counter-pick into AD-heavy teams, so he sits in A.
The S-tier junglers, one by one
All four S-tier junglers are durable, clear without drama and still do their job from behind. There is no assassin among them this patch.
Wukong
Wukong is the best jungler in the game right now. He wins 52.14% at Emerald+ and is top three in all three of our rank brackets, the only jungler who manages that. His clear is fast for a fighter (2:58 median to level 4), his ult wins teamfights on its own, and his clone makes him slippery in skirmishes. The main thing to watch out for is Nidalee, who beats him 45.7% of the time over 584 Emerald+ games by poking and out-tempoing him early. Zac also gives him trouble. Players who hate teamfighting should skip him, because a Wukong who splits instead of looking for a five-man ult is wasting the pick.
Cho’Gath
Cho’Gath jungle is the patch’s weird winner. He was not touched in 26.19, his pick rate went from 5.05% to 6.74%, and his win rate still went up (51.23% to 51.50%). Feast gives him the best objective secure in the game with no Smite fight needed, and he scales into an unkillable front line. Lee Sin, the most popular jungler in the game, wins only 45.6% against him over 3,349 Emerald+ games. Gwen and Trundle are the champions that trouble him most. He is a poor fit if you like ganking before level 6, since his early ganks are average and his power comes from farming and stacking.
Lillia
Lillia got the buff that matters most: her R sleep went from 2 to 2.5 seconds, and she gained 2 armor, which helps her early clear. Her win rate went from 50.52% to 51.17% and her pick rate from 3.06% to 4.08%. She clears in 3:00, kites every melee jungler in the game and makes teamfights miserable for the enemy. She struggles against early invaders; Pantheon beats her in a small sample, and Evelynn does over 302 games at 45.7%. She is also mechanically demanding, so if you are learning her in ranked, expect a few rough games first.
Warwick
Warwick shows how little clear speed decides. His 3:18 first clear is among the slowest in the game and he still wins 51.89% at Emerald+ and 52.31% in Iron to Gold, the best of any popular jungler in that bracket. His level 3 gank is lethal, his healing lets him skip recalls, and his ult is point-and-click in all but name. Zac is his nightmare, beating him about 60% of the time in a 312-game sample, and any jungler who invades before he finishes clearing gives him a bad time. Skip him if you want to carry late. He peaks early and falls off from about 30 minutes.
Clear speed: what the first-clear column tells you
Clear speed matters less than junglers think. The whole range across 59 champions in LoL Recommender’s data is 2:46 (Ivern) to 3:25 (Locke), a 39-second spread. Most junglers you actually see in ranked land between 2:55 and 3:10. When we lined up clear time against Emerald+ win rate for the 45 junglers with at least a 1% pick rate, the relationship was weak and pointed the wrong way: slower clearers won slightly more, a correlation of about +0.25. That is mostly tanks. Warwick, Rammus, Zac and Fiddlesticks clear slowly and win a lot, while Graves, Viego and Qiyana clear fast and lose.
A fast clear buys you options. A 2:55 Graves can reach the scuttle crab before the enemy jungler and then decide whether to fight it, gank, or reset. A 3:18 Warwick shows up late to scuttle and has to make up for it with a gank. If you want to use a fast clear properly, our jungle pathing guide covers which route to take and when, and our breakdown of jungle camp gold and XP values shows exactly what each camp is worth to you.
| Clear speed band | Examples (first clear) | Emerald+ win rate of those examples | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Very fast (under 2:57) | Ivern 2:46, Udyr 2:53, Graves 2:55, Karthus 2:56 | 48.79% to 51.28% | First to scuttle, first to invade |
| Fast (2:57 to 3:02) | Wukong 2:58, Viego 2:58, Hecarim 2:59, Cho’Gath 3:00, Lillia 3:00 | 49.10% to 52.14% | Where most of the meta lives |
| Average (3:03 to 3:10) | Lee Sin 3:04, Kha’Zix 3:06, Rammus 3:08, Ekko 3:10 | 48.90% to 52.55% | Clear speed barely matters here |
| Slow (over 3:10) | Briar 3:12, Fiddlesticks 3:14, Warwick 3:18, Sylas 3:19 | 50.24% to 51.89% | Needs a strong gank or teamfight to make up the time |
Blind-pickable vs counter-pick only
Jungle is more forgiving to blind pick than top, since you rarely have a lane opponent, but invades and early skirmishes still decide games. Worst-matchup figures are op.gg Emerald+ data and we only cite matchups with a few hundred games.
| Champion | Tier | Pick it | Worst common matchup (Emerald+) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wukong | S | Blind safe | Nidalee 45.7% (584 games), Zac 46.2% (769) |
| Cho’Gath | S | Blind safe | Trundle 46.4% (435 games), Gwen 45.7% (289) |
| Lillia | S | Blind, if you can handle invades | Evelynn 45.7% (302 games) |
| Warwick | S | Blind, avoid into Zac | Zac 40.4% (312 games) |
| Rammus | A | Counter-pick only | AP-heavy teams that ignore his armor |
| Master Yi | A | Blind in low elo, counter-pick higher | Rammus 44.9% (1,225), Shaco 45.2% (1,038), Wukong 45.4% (1,569) |
| Elise | A | Counter-pick lean | Zac 43.1% (360 games) |
| Shyvana | A | Blind safe | Early invaders who deny her farm |
| Zac | A | Blind safe | Champions who can burst him before his blobs heal |
| Lee Sin | B | Blind, but it costs you | Cho’Gath 45.6% (3,349 games), Fiddlesticks 46.4% (871) |
| Nocturne | C | Counter-pick only this patch | Evelynn 43.0% (414 games) |
Zac keeps coming up. He is in the worst three matchups for Warwick, Wukong and Elise, and Warwick wins only about four games in ten against him. If you have last pick and the enemy locked one of those three, Zac is the answer.
Best jungler by rank bracket
Low elo and high elo reward very different junglers. We split the same op.gg patch 26.19 data into Iron to Gold (3.55 million jungle picks), Platinum to Emerald (2.45 million) and Diamond+ (741,000), counting only champions with at least 0.8% of the role’s picks in that bracket.
| Iron to Gold | Platinum to Emerald | Diamond+ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Highest win rate | Rammus 53.95% | Rammus 53.50% | Nidalee 52.50% |
| Second | Shyvana 53.36% | Wukong 52.78% | Rek’Sai 51.95% |
| Third | Wukong 53.30% | Warwick 52.39% | Wukong 51.77% |
| Best popular pick (4%+ of the role) | Warwick 52.31% | Master Yi 50.82% | Sylas 50.04% |
| Worst pick | Rengar 44.36% | Rengar 46.20% | Jayce 46.53% |
| Gets better as you climb | Rengar 44.36% | Rengar 46.20% | Rengar 49.15% |
| Gets worse as you climb | Shyvana 53.36% | Shyvana 52.09% | Shyvana 49.65% |
The pattern holds from top lane: easy, durable champions win in low elo, and mechanical ones catch up as the lobby improves. Shyvana loses almost four points between Iron to Gold and Diamond+. Rengar gains almost five and still does not reach 50%. Below Platinum, the right answer is a tank or a farm-and-fight jungler (Rammus, Shyvana, Wukong, Warwick). From Diamond up, Nidalee and Rek’Sai reward players who have put the hours in.
We see this on orders every week. Our boosters’ default jungle pool below Emerald this patch is short: Wukong, Warwick and Cho’Gath, because all three win without needing the other four players to cooperate. If you would rather hand the climb to someone who plays the role at Master and above every day, our League of Legends division boost covers it on your schedule.
Rising and falling vs patch 26.18
The buffs worked, mostly. Both columns are op.gg Emerald+ jungle data, 26.18 against 26.19, last checked 28 September 2026.
| Champion | 26.18 win rate | 26.19 win rate | Pick rate | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Elise | 49.84% | 51.10% | 1.79% to 3.20% | Passive and W buff, rank 39 to 14 |
| Lillia | 50.52% | 51.17% | 3.06% to 4.08% | Armor and R sleep buff, rank 21 to 11 |
| Master Yi | 50.36% | 50.85% | 6.12% to 6.42% | Q refund change, rank 8 to 3 |
| Warwick | 51.32% | 51.89% | 3.04% to 3.10% | No change, still went up |
| Cho’Gath | 51.23% | 51.50% | 5.05% to 6.74% | No change, pick rate up a third |
| Kha’Zix | 49.57% | 48.90% | 5.47% to 8.23% | Buffed, but the new players lose |
| Nocturne | 50.41% | 48.58% | 5.96% to 4.56% | Longer R cooldown, rank 9 to 36 |
| Vi | 49.28% | 48.10% | 4.92% to 4.18% | AD and shield nerf, rank 31 to 43 |
| Kayn | 49.99% | 49.50% | 6.94% to 6.91% | No change, slow slide |
| Rammus | 52.84% | 52.55% | 2.15% to 2.09% | No change, still the highest win rate |
Kha’Zix is the classic buff trap. His pick rate went up by half after the buff, and his win rate fell from 49.57% to 48.90%, because a lot of players who do not usually play him picked him up. Give it a patch and those players move on, and his number usually recovers. Nocturne went the other way: 20 extra seconds on his ult at rank 1 was enough to drop him almost two points and 27 places in op.gg’s ranking.
Where this tier list is wrong
Our numbers have three weak spots, and you should know them before you copy a pick.
First, the data is early: six days of 26.19 against a full patch of 26.18. Buffed champions like Kha’Zix and Elise usually look different once players have figured them out, and patch 26.20, the Worlds patch, is due in early October and will reshuffle things again.
Second, trackers run hot or cold. Lolalytics’ Emerald+ jungle list for the same patch has Wukong at 53.79% and Cho’Gath at 53.37%, more than a point and a half above op.gg, because its bracket average is 51.65% instead of 50%. The order mostly agrees and the decimals do not, so trust the ranking more than any single number.
Third, the clear-time samples are small. LoL Recommender’s clear times are medians of as few as 12 games (Wukong is exactly 12, Lee Sin 15), filtered to games with no early fight. Treat a gap under 5 seconds as noise. Win rate also says nothing about how hard a champion is to pilot. The community tier list in this r/Jungle_Mains thread on how hard junglers are to win with sorts the roster by execution difficulty, and on that axis Lee Sin, Nidalee and Elise sit at the hard end. Their win rates are an average across everyone who plays them, good or bad.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the best jungler in LoL right now?
Wukong. He wins 52.14% at Emerald+ on a 6.35% pick rate in our read of op.gg data for patch 26.19, last checked 28 September 2026, and he is top three in all three rank brackets. Cho’Gath is a close second at 51.50% on an even higher pick rate.
What is the easiest jungler in LoL?
Warwick and Rammus are the easiest junglers that also win right now. Warwick wins 52.31% below Platinum and Rammus 53.95%, and neither needs mechanical skill to do his job.
Which jungler has the fastest clear?
Ivern, at a 2:46 median to level 4 in LoL Recommender’s patch 26.19 data. Among common junglers, Udyr (2:53), Graves (2:55) and Karthus (2:56) are next. Locke is the slowest at 3:25.
Is Lee Sin still good in patch 26.19?
He is playable but not strong. He is the most picked jungler at 13.04% and wins 49.31% at Emerald+. He is better in Diamond+ (49.69%) than below Platinum (47.71%), which fits a champion with a high skill ceiling.
Why is Cho’Gath played in the jungle?
His Feast secures dragons, Baron and the rest without a Smite fight, and his clear is a solid 3:00. He wins 51.50% in the jungle at Emerald+, and a large share of his games are played there rather than top.
How often does the jungle tier list change?
Every patch, which is roughly every two weeks. Patch 26.20, the Worlds patch, is scheduled for early October, so check the patch label before you trust any tier list.
So for patch 26.19: durable, simple junglers on top (Wukong, Cho’Gath, Lillia, Warwick), Elise and Lillia rising, Nocturne and Vi falling, and clear speed less important than everyone thinks. Pick from the S tier if you are unsure, reach for Zac when the enemy locks a Warwick or Wukong, and check the rank table before you copy a Diamond player’s champion pool. If you would rather someone else took the climb, our League of Legends boost handles division climbs, placements and duo queue with boosters who play jungle at Master and above.
