Due to Visa issues, three members of Gambit Gaming cannot attend the European LCS next week. 


?In an unfortunate of events, top laner Darien, jungler Diamondprox, and midlaner Alex Ich of Russian team Gambit Gaming will not be able to fly out to Germany for EU LCS Week 6. In a post from Gambit's website, it is stated that their Visa will expire on the 19th of February, and the organization was not able to renew it.
 

To clarify the issue:

We are the only professional League of Legends team, whose entire roster not only has to spend a lot of time travelling back and forth on a weekly basis, but also to deal with visa related questions. We were aware of this date approaching beforehand, but were not able to receive new visas. In order to receive them one requires five business days, whereas over the past month and a half we had two business days per week at most, since games this split are played on Thursdays and Fridays, and we are departing to Cologne from Russia on Wednesdays. Last year we were able to receive visas freely, since games were played over the weekend. We started acquiring visas already in November prior to IEM Cologne. Edward and Genja got visas for a year, whereas Alex Ich, Diamond and Darien for three months. The duration of visas depends on the employees of an embassy, whose decision we cannot influence.

After our trip to China to Tencent Gaming Carnival, our players didn't have enough space in their passports required to get new Schengen visas according to the legislation. We applied for new foreign passports immediately, but this process lasts for one-two months, therefore we managed to get them only during the split.

Replacements for the three players have yet to be announced.

Source: Gambit Gaming official site