To try new League of Legends champions and skins early, you need a PBE account, and search results are full of outdated claims about honor requirements or VPNs that make the first step confusing. This guide sticks to what Riot's official PBE FAQ says as of September 2026 and covers only the account side: how to sign up, how to confirm your access, and how to fix the spots where people commonly get stuck, like login errors and queues. For what the PBE server itself is, plus install size and patch cadence, see our companion PBE server guide.
Before you start: which step do you actually need?
If you already made a PBE account in the past, you do not need a new one; just log into the Riot Client with it, and use the CAN'T SIGN IN? button on the sign-in screen if you forgot the password. If this is your first account, follow the steps below on the official sign-up page. Riot's current FAQ states there are no sign-up requirements, so older conditions you may have read about, like honor levels, are not in today's official documentation. One rule is explicit, though: sharing a PBE account can lead to a permanent suspension, so do not split one account with friends.
Make a PBE account in 5 steps
- 1Open the official PBE info page and press SIGN UP FOR PBE. — If the button errors out, refresh and try again.
- 2Log in with your Riot account and follow the instructions to create a dedicated PBE account. — Its username and password are separate from your live account, so store them safely.
- 3Launch the Riot Client and log in with the PBE account you just created, not your live account.
- 4Select League of Legends, click the small arrow next to the Play button, and choose League of Legends PBE. — Per the official FAQ, you no longer need a separate client.
- 5After your first login, complete the PBE daily mission to receive 3000 RP for the PBE store and start testing new content right away.
Common PBE account problems and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-up page will not open or shows 404 | Opening the sign-up URL directly can error out | Enter through the official PBE info page and press the SIGN UP FOR PBE button again |
| Username or password rejected | Trying to log in with your live Riot account | PBE is a separate account; use the PBE-only credentials you created at sign-up |
| Long login queue | Traffic spikes right after new content lands | Retry later; per the official FAQ the queue timer may not update correctly when the server is full |
| No PBE option in the client | You are logged in with your live account | Log out of the Riot Client and log back in with the PBE account |
| Cannot connect at certain hours | Weekday maintenance, 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific | Wait for maintenance to end; the server status shows Unavailable during it |
Pre-sign-up checklist
- Make sure you can log into your live Riot account; sign-up asks you to authenticate with it
- Pick a PBE username and password different from your live account and record them somewhere safe
- Never share the PBE account; the official FAQ lists sharing as grounds for permanent suspension
- Check your live-server penalty history; a ban on one side means a ban on the other
- Mind the clock: weekday 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific is the regular maintenance window
Record your first PBE game automatically with DOR
After the work of setting up an account, the worst outcome is letting your first game on a new champion pass unrecorded. DOR is a free Windows desktop app that detects when a game starts, records the full match in the background, and automatically cuts kill highlights into short clips. NVENC encoding is the default, so the load stays low even in a less-optimized test environment, and every match lands in a full-match library you can trim in the browser clip editor. Share a finished clip as a dor.gg link and anyone can play it right in a phone browser.
Sources and verification
The sign-up requirements, client switch steps, queue, maintenance, ping, and account-sharing and penalty policies in this article were checked directly against the official Riot PBE FAQ and the official PBE info page on September 2, 2026. Riot changes procedures over time, so re-check the FAQ before you start.
