OG rebuild their Dota 2 roster around Topson, SSS and OneJey

One month to the day after The International 2026 ended, OG showed the team it will field for the season that follows. The organization posted a photo of five players on its X account on September 23, 2026, and Dot Esports detailed the roster the same day: three new players, a new coach, and two members of the previous line-up kept.

The name that draws the eye is Topson, the Finnish midlaner who won The International twice with OG and comes back after a gap of three years. The larger fact is how much of the team has changed around him. Of the six people who made up OG's team at The International in August, five players and a coach, four have gone.

Dot Esports reports of August 23 and September 23, 2026. The six days run from September 23 to September 29.

Three arrivals, three departures and a new coach

Dot Esports lists the incoming players by position. Topson takes the mid lane. SSS arrives as the offlaner from PARIVISION. OneJey, who previously played for Virtus.pro, is the new soft support. The coaching seat goes to kaffs.

Leaving the organization are the players Yopaj-, Raven and Tims and the coach 343. Dot Esports does not say where any of the four goes next, and OG's reveal carried no contract details: no length, no fee, and no word on whether any of the arrivals is a loan.

Two players provide the continuity. Natsumi stays as the carry and skem as the hard support, and skem keeps the captaincy.

The five positions of a Dota 2 team are fixed roles more than places on the map. The carry is the player the team feeds with gold so that he can decide the end of a game. The midlaner plays alone in the central lane. The offlaner starts the fights. The two supports give up their own resources to protect the other three and to control the map. OG has changed the three roles in the middle of that list and kept the two at its ends.

What the old line-up had reached

The reason for a rebuild is in the results. OG went to The International 2026 in Shanghai with what Dot Esports describes as an all-Filipino line-up and finished 14th-15th, a result the outlet calls disappointing. The tournament had 16 teams. According to Dot Esports's results page, OG shared its placing with Xtreme Gaming, a place the page lists at US$33,481 in a prize pool of more than US$3.3 million; only one team finished lower.

The format shows how early that exit came. The 16 teams began with a group stage played on the Swiss system, in which teams with the same record keep meeting each other, all in best-of-three series. The top three went straight to the main event, the teams placed fourth to 13th played an elimination round, and the bottom three went home. A 14th-15th place means OG was among those three and never reached the knockout part of the tournament.

The event before had gone the same way. At the Esports World Cup in Paris in July, OG was drawn in Group D, where each team met the five others over two games. It drew 1-1 with Team Yandex and with 1w Team, beat IC x Insanity 2-0, and lost 0-2 to LGD Gaming and to Virtus.pro. With four games won and six lost it finished fifth of six in the group and was eliminated before the knockout rounds, in 17th-20th place among 24 teams, with US$10,000, Dot Esports's page for that tournament shows. The group winner went to the playoffs and the teams placed second to fourth to an extra knockout round; the last of those places went to Virtus.pro, which beat OG on July 12.

Two tournaments, two early exits: that is the record the three departing players and their coach leave with, and the one Natsumi and skem carry into the new team. With a Finnish midlaner, the all-Filipino description no longer applies.

A returning name in the middle

Topson is 28 and his history with the club is the best-known part of the announcement. He won The International with OG in 2018 and 2019, the two editions that make OG a two-time winner of the Aegis of Champions, the tournament's trophy. Dot Esports's page of team records, dated August 11, 2026, lists those two titles and credits OG with five Major championships as well, a total it shares with Virtus.pro and Team Secret.

His route back was indirect. After leaving OG he took a break, then played for T1 and for Tundra Esports, and he announced his retirement after Tundra finished third at The International 2024, Dot Esports recalls. He returned to competition in 2026, first in the open qualifiers for The International with a group of veterans, then as a stand-in, a temporary replacement, for LGD Gaming at the tournament itself.

LGD finished 9th-13th in Shanghai after losing to Team Yandex in the elimination stage. That was higher than OG, and it was Topson's only tournament with that team: in the LGD line-up for PGL Wallachia Season 9 that Dot Esports reported on September 18, SumaiL held the mid lane and Topson had left.

For OG the signing answers a practical question, who plays the central lane, with a player who has already won the game's biggest tournament in that seat and under that name.

SSS and OneJey fill the other two seats

The other two arrivals come from different situations. SSS was still attached to PARIVISION, but on its inactive roster, the list of players under contract who are not in the playing five. He had lost his starting place there earlier in 2026 to Noticed, according to Dot Esports. PARIVISION went on to reach the final of The International, where it was listed as TEAM VISION and lost 3-2 to Team Spirit. SSS joins OG from the bench of the runner-up.

OneJey is described more briefly. Dot Esports says only that he previously played for Virtus.pro. That club disbanded its roster on August 24, the day after The International, following a third straight failure to qualify, and said it would stay in Dota 2 and name a new team later. OneJey was not among the five players Dot Esports listed in that line-up.

Both moves answer a need on OG's side. The club had an offlaner and a soft support to find after parting with three players, and in SSS it has taken a player who was under contract elsewhere without a place in the five.

One rebuild among several

OG's reveal lands in the middle of the reshuffle that has followed The International. In the week before it, Dot Esports reported two other moves by teams that finished above OG in Shanghai.

The background to those moves is a crowded market. Team Falcons, the champion of 2025, left Dota 2 on September 6, which put its five on the market; ATF and Sneyking both come from that roster. At Team Yandex, ATF takes the place of DM, who had been in the starting five for about six months and had helped the team win PGL Wallachia Season 7 and BLAST Slam VII. LGD's line-up for Bucharest is almost entirely new: Dot Esports lists Wits, SumaiL, Davai and Sneyking around Thiolicor, the one player kept from the team that played The International. Virtus.pro's five and their coach were let go on August 24; the coach, BuLba, is listed as LGD's coach in Bucharest by Dot Esports.

The season has in fact already begun without OG. PGL Wallachia Season 9, the first top-level event after The International, started on September 19 in Bucharest with 16 invited teams and a prize pool of US$1 million. Its group stage is a modified Swiss system and its top eight go on to a playoff bracket, according to Dot Esports's page for the event. OG is not among the 16. LGD and Team Yandex are, and LGD came through the group stage, which ended on September 23, with three wins and two defeats.

First test at BLAST Slam VIII

OG's new five will not have long to wait. Its first tournament is BLAST Slam VIII, which runs from September 29 to October 11 with 16 teams and a prize pool of US$750,000, Dot Esports reports. That leaves six days between the reveal and the opening day.

The list is a fair summary of the task. Team Yandex, for one, beat Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy in Shanghai before losing the upper-bracket final to the eventual runner-up and the lower-bracket final to Team Spirit, according to Dot Esports. The champion, the runner-up and the third-placed team of The International are all in the field, and so is LGD, the team Topson stood in for in August. Only Xtreme Gaming, level with OG in Shanghai, did not finish in front of it.

Nothing else has been announced. OG has not said how long the contracts run. "The boys in green," the caption of the reveal read, and the first chance to see them play together comes on September 29.

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