What the league is and why it matters now
1 is the official, team-based women’s professional Go league organized by 2. 3 It was launched as part of the Nihon Ki-in’s 100th-anniversary initiatives (the inaugural season began in 2024), and the Nihon Ki-in’s own materials frame it as Japan’s first “official women’s team competition” in Go. 4
Going into the current season, the headline is straightforward: the league is no longer “just a new tournament”—it’s being treated as a flagship product. The Nihon Ki-in explicitly positions the league as a centerpiece of its broader management reform, shifting emphasis from “quality of play alone” to a combined model of serious competition plus spectator experience (“show it, entertain, build hype”). 5 The league’s own branding push—adopting the nickname “Li LEAGUE,” where “Li” is explained as “Ladies + Igo,” and setting a theme around connection and strength—was announced ahead of the season along with a dedicated information hub. 6
On the board, the season is already underway. The opening round began in mid-January, with the first two match days producing early points and an immediate signal that mid-table teams can upset. 7
How the competition works
The league runs with five sponsored teams. Each team is built around one manager (監督) plus four women professionals, with an “overseas slot” option described in the rules (teams may add one overseas player if desired). 1
Selection is explicitly draft-based. For this season, each team can “protect” one player, while the remaining three roster slots are filled via team nominations; if multiple teams nominate the same player, the selection is decided by lottery. 1 (This “protect + draft” approach is itself a key change from the inaugural season, when rosters were simply drafted.) 1
The season has two phases:
League stage (double round-robin).
Teams play each other twice. Each match day is a best-of-three: three players vs. three players, and the team that wins at least two games wins the match and earns match points. 1 Each player must appear in at least two league games over the season, which forces rotation and makes roster depth matter. 1
Final (top two teams).
The league’s top two teams advance to a four-board final (all four rostered domestic players participate; the rules exclude the overseas slot if used). First to three wins takes the title. If it ends 2–2, the league winner gets a built-in advantage: the first-place team wins the championship if either its “captain” or “vice-captain” board wins, while the second-place team must win both of those top two boards. 1
Time controls and practical viewing impact.
A defining feature of this season is the switch to Fischer time: each player starts with five minutes and gains 15 seconds per move. 1 The Nihon Ki-in’s reform write-up is blunt about why: faster pacing, more “live” tension, and a format that’s easier to watch in real time. 5
Scheduling and venues.
Matches run from January through August with a final scheduled for late August, and the posted calendar includes both Tokyo-area and Nagoya-area venues (Tokyo main office and the Chubu headquarters are recurring sites). 8
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Teams, rosters, and what each lineup is built to do
The league field remains five teams, but roster construction is very clearly not static: between the inaugural season’s “all-draft” approach and the current “protect + draft” system, there has been meaningful player movement. 1
Team comparison table
The table below combines: official roster pages (for current rosters), official league pages (for last season’s standings and the current season’s early results), and the official schedule/results pages for match points and board records. 10
| Team | Sponsor identity | Coach | Roster | Previous season finish (match points; board W–L) | Current season start (match points; board W–L as of Jan 31) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 5 | 5 | 1; 11; 1; 5 | 1st in league, runner-up overall (7; 18–6) | Not yet played (0; 0–0) |
| 12 | 6 | 1 | 13; 3; 1; 14 | Champion (5; 14–10) | 1 (2–1) |
| 1 | 15 | 3 | 1; 16; 6; 17 | 3rd (4; 14–10) | 0 (1–2) |
| 1 | 1 | 16 | 1; 18; 19; 1 | 4th (2; 9–15) | 0 (1–2) |
| 1 | 8; 3; 1 | 1 | 16; 8; 17; 1 | 5th (2; 5–19) | 1 (2–1) |
Standings, results, and performance trends you can actually see
What last season told us about team strength
The inaugural season had a clean narrative: one team dominated the league table, but a different team won the title.
Team Senko Group finished first in the league stage with 7 match points and 18 board wins, while Team Igo & Shogi Channel finished second with 5 match points and 14 board wins—but then won the final (2–1) to take the championship. 20 That gap between “best across the season” and “best on the day” is exactly the kind of tension the league’s format is designed to create. 1
Below is a compact text chart of last season’s league-stage results (match points) and overall board performance (board wins out of 24 team games). Data is from the official season standings; board losses are derived as 24 minus board wins because each team plays 8 matches × 3 boards. 20
League-stage match points (previous season)
textCopySenko Group ████████████████████ 7
Igo & Shogi Channel ██████████████ 5
Wakagoi ███████████ 4
Fukuoka ██████ 2
Nagoya ██████ 2
Board record and board win rate (previous season)
textCopySenko Group ████████████████████ 18-6 (75.0%)
Igo & Shogi Channel ████████████████ 14-10 (58.3%)
Wakagoi ████████████████ 14-10 (58.3%)
Fukuoka ██████████ 9-15 (37.5%)
Nagoya ██████ 5-19 (20.8%)
The hard truth is that Nagoya’s −14 board differential last year (5–19) was a real competitive gap, and it’s the reason the team’s early win this season matters: it suggests the roster changes may be moving them out of “development team” status. 21
The season so far
Two match days are complete.
- On January 10, Team Igo & Shogi Channel beat Team Fukuoka 2–1 and earned the first match point of the season. 22
- On January 16, Team Nagoya beat Team Wakagoi 2–1 and earned the other match point. 19
That leaves the early table (match points and board record) as:
textCopyIgo & Shogi Channel ████████████████████ 1 pt boards 2-1
Nagoya ████████████████████ 1 pt boards 2-1
Fukuoka 0 pt boards 1-2
Wakagoi 0 pt boards 1-2
Senko Group 0 pt boards 0-0
The official league pages track match points (“勝ち点”) and board wins (“勝ち数”), and the per-player results confirm which boards produced the current 2–1 and 1–2 splits. 16
Players who should shape the season
You can follow the league purely as “team vs team,” but it’s built to make individual arcs visible, especially with the faster time controls and the league’s push toward personality-forward coverage. 5
The elite titleholders who raise a team’s ceiling
Rina Fujisawa enters the season with the women’s championship résumé you’d expect from the anchor of a defending team champion: she has just secured another successful defense in the Women’s Honinbo title match, extending a consecutive run and pushing her total Women’s Honinbo titles to a record-breaking count in the Nihon Ki-in’s own reporting. 23
Asami Ueno is the league’s other gravitational force—and she has gotten even bigger in January. The Nihon Ki-in’s match reporting confirms that she captured the Women’s Kisei title on January 22, 2026, defeating the defending champion in a direct head-to-head. 11 That matters for Li LEAGUE because the league is fundamentally a “star-driven” product right now: when a team has the current holder of multiple major women’s titles, it changes how opposing coaches allocate their three boards. 1
The sibling rivalry that could become the league’s signature storyline
The Ueno sisters are not a media invention; it’s directly stated in the Nihon Ki-in’s player profiles that Asami Ueno and Risa Ueno are sisters. 14 They have already met in a top-level women’s title match this winter (Women’s Kisei), and because they play on different Li LEAGUE teams, the league can realistically stage that rivalry in a completely different context: not “sister vs sister for a crown,” but “sister vs sister for a match point with teammates invested.” 11
If you want one concrete example of how the league can amplify individual narratives: Risa Ueno won her board in the January 16 league match (even though her team lost the overall match), while Asami Ueno’s team hasn’t yet taken the board this season—so the “which sister is driving her team right now?” conversation is real and measurable. 15
The youngest pros who will stress-test the new format
Two roster choices stand out if you care about the next generation:
- Nonoka Takayama is on the defending champion roster and is listed in the official team profile as born in 2010. 9
- Saki Yanagihara is on Team Fukuoka and is also listed as born in 2010. 18
These are not “future prospects”; they’re already rostered in an official team league. Given the league’s Fischer time control, they’ll have to handle time pressure and on-camera scrutiny that is very different from traditional long-form title matches. 1
The veterans who make teams stable across a long season
The league format rewards consistency and preparation across months, especially because every rostered player must appear at least twice during the league stage. 1 That’s where veterans matter:
- Yi-min Hsieh (born 1989, Taiwan-born per team profile) brings deep experience to the defending champion roster. 9
- Izumi Kobayashi (born 1977, listed as holding the Women’s Legend title in her team profile) gives Team Wakagoi a proven “big-stage” option in a format where all four players matter in the final. 12
- Akino Izawa (born 1978) and Chiaki Mukai (born 1987) form the experienced backbone around Asami Ueno on Team Senko Group. 2
Put bluntly: in a Fischer format, veterans don’t automatically have an advantage, but they often bring the one thing fast formats punish: emotional stability after a mistake. 5
Storylines, rivalries, and trends worth tracking all season
The revenge arc built into the schedule
Last season, Team Senko Group was the league-stage juggernaut but lost the championship match. 20 Their own official team page leans into that—specifically referencing the previous season’s dominant league performance and stating a clear “we want the title this time” goal. 2
The schedule gives them multiple shots at making that argument on the board, including league meetings with Team Igo & Shogi Channel in late winter and again in August. 8
Nagoya’s early signal: the middle tier may be real
Team Nagoya openly brands itself as a region-rooted team and explicitly says it wants to “join the title race” this season. 24 That statement would have sounded optimistic after last year’s 5–19 board record. 20 But starting the season with a match win and two board wins against a team that was third last year is the kind of early-season evidence you look for when you ask, “Did the roster changes work?” 15
Fukuoka’s identity shift toward youth and volatility
Team Fukuoka’s current roster skews young (including a 2010-born pro and a 2005-born pro per official profiles), and even the coach’s statement frames the team as “fresh,” energetic, and looking to create a stir. 18 They lost the opening match, but at this stage that’s not the real metric. The question is whether they can use the faster time control to steal points from more established teams as the season progresses. 3
The production shift is not cosmetic—it changes how fans engage
The Nihon Ki-in’s reform report is unusually specific about what changed: redesigned broadcast layouts to make the board easier to see, integrating coach/bench talk into the on-screen experience, moving many matches to Friday evenings, and explicitly treating “watchability” as a core product requirement. 5 This matters because a league is not a single title match—you need repeat viewers. The league is trying to create team allegiances (the report even references models like the J.League and M.League), and that’s a strategic pivot for modern Go presentation in Japan. 5
International crossover is already part of the ecosystem
The league is not operating in isolation: the Nihon Ki-in’s “Yugen no Ma” platform has promoted events explicitly framed as a “Japan–China–Korea women’s league champions” competition, with Japan represented by the Japanese league champion team. 13 That kind of crossover creates a longer-term trend to watch: whether Li LEAGUE becomes Japan’s route into more regular international women’s team events, and whether roster rules (like the optional overseas slot) start to matter more if international matchups become a recurring feature. 25
How to follow the season closely
The league’s official information stack is unusually complete for a new competition:
- The dedicated Li LEAGUE site is designed as the hub for schedule, results, videos, and (eventually) related goods; this was explicitly highlighted in the Nihon Ki-in’s release announcing the site and the rebrand. 6
- The posted calendar includes times and locations month by month (with most matches starting at 17:00 and several held at the Nihon Ki-in’s Tokyo and Chubu bases). 8
- Match results and per-player win–loss lines are tracked on the official results pages, which makes it possible to follow both the team table and each player’s season contribution. 16
- The Nihon Ki-in publishes weekly “broadcast schedule” pages that explicitly list Li LEAGUE streams on the official YouTube presence, including match-day start times and board order. 17
One practical note for new viewers: because the league now uses Fischer time and staggers the start of games within a match day (one game begins first, then two games start after that), it’s easier to “track the whole match” live than it was in the inaugural season. That is not an accident; it’s part of the league’s stated reforms. 1
