Team Spirit Beat PARIVISION to Win a Record Third Aegis of Champions

Team Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 in the grand final of The International 2026 on August 23 at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai, becoming the first organization in Dota 2 history to win the Aegis of Champions three times. Spirit took the $1.4 million grand prize from a total prize pool of $3.33 million, boosted by Compendium sales on top of a $1.6 million base, in a series that went the full five games before Spirit closed it out after a grueling 64-minute decider that neither side controlled from start to finish.

Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk and Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov became the first players to win three International titles, having also lifted the Aegis with Spirit in 2021 and 2023, while coach Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naidenov became a three-time champion of his own, adding a title as coach to the two he won earlier in his career as a player.

Results reported by GosuGamers, Oriental Sports Center, Shanghai, August 23, 2026.

A final that swung both ways

Spirit dominated the opening game before TEAM VISION leveled the series in Game 2, and Spirit won a close Game 3 only for TEAM VISION to rout them in Game 4 to force a decider. Spirit overcame an early TEAM VISION lead in Game 5, eventually closing out the 64-minute game to secure the title, a finish that made the grand final's back half far tighter than Spirit's opening dominance had suggested it would be.

Spirit's dramatic route through the bracket

Spirit's run to a third Aegis was far from straightforward: after winning their first three Group Stage rounds, including sweeps of Xtreme Gaming and Aurora Gaming, the team was swept by TEAM VISION in Round 4 and then lost to Nigma Galaxy in the final round, dropping into the Elimination Stage rather than qualifying directly for the Playoffs. Spirit beat Team Resilience in three games to escape the Elimination Stage, then swept 1w Team in the Playoffs' upper bracket quarterfinal before losing to TEAM VISION again, this time in the upper bracket semifinal, sending Spirit into the lower bracket for a gauntlet that included sweeps of Team Liquid and wins over BoomBoys and Yandex before the grand final rematch with TEAM VISION.

TEAM VISION's cleaner path, and a familiar result

TEAM VISION went undefeated through the Group Stage, beating Team Resilience, Falcons, BoomBoys and Spirit to qualify directly for the Playoffs, then beat BoomBoys and Spirit again before beating Yandex to reach the grand final without ever passing through the lower bracket. Despite that cleaner run and a 2-0 head-to-head record against Spirit heading into the final, TEAM VISION fell in five games, a result that left the organization with a second-place finish, an improvement on the previous year's third-place result but still short of the title the team had entered Shanghai as the clear favorite to win.

Puppey's latest runner-up finish

TEAM VISION coach Clement "Puppey" Ivanov, who won the first-ever International back in 2011 as a player, finished as runner-up for a fourth time in Shanghai, having also lost grand finals in 2012, 2013 and 2022. The result extended one of the longest and most storied careers in Dota 2's competitive history without adding a second Aegis to a résumé that already includes the very first one awarded.

A Compendium-boosted prize pool

The International's prize pool has long drawn most of its size from Compendium sales on top of Valve's base contribution, and this year's $3.33 million total, built on a $1.6 million base, continued that pattern even as the overall figure sat well below the tournament's peak years. Spirit's $1.4 million grand prize still represented the single largest payout of the Dota 2 season, giving the three-time champion the year's biggest individual tournament check to go along with the trophy itself.

A roster with history across multiple games

Team Spirit's Dota 2 program has long been the organization's flagship, with the current core of Yatoro, Collapse, Larl, not me and rue representing the latest iteration of a roster that has anchored the team's identity since its first International win in 2021. The same organization's move into Mobile Legends: Bang Bang in 2024, and the Mid-Season Cup title that roster had already won in Paris three weeks before this Dota 2 result, gave Spirit a case as one of the most successful multi-title esports organizations of the 2026 season, with championship rosters in two different games within the same month.

Beyond Yatoro and Collapse's shared distinction as the first three-time TI champions, Denis "Larl" Sigitov became the 13th player to win the tournament twice, while Alexey "not me" Kosmynin and Aleksandr "rue" Filin both won their first Aegis in the run. That mix, two players securing a record third title, one reaching a milestone second, and two newcomers winning for the first time, gave Spirit's roster a title shared across very different points in its players' individual careers, each with their own stake in Sunday's result.

Why TEAM VISION wasn't PARIVISION in Shanghai

TEAM VISION competing for the Aegis was in fact PARIVISION, the organization that had drawn with Spirit at the Esports World Cup in Paris in July, playing under a tournament-specific identity rather than a new brand. Valve required four of the International's 16 teams to drop bookmaker branding for the Shanghai event specifically, a rule tied to gambling-advertising restrictions in jurisdictions broadcasting the tournament, including China, where such advertising has been banned since 1949. PARIVISION, named for title sponsor Pari since 2022, competed as Team Vision with a neutral tag and modified logo for the event alone, while BetBoom Team, the organization Spirit had beaten as BB Team in Paris in July, competed in Shanghai as BoomBoys under the same rule. Both organizations kept their usual names in other competitions, including Counter-Strike 2 events, with the rebrand applying only to their International 2026 run in Shanghai specifically.

A rematch from Paris, under new names

Spirit's path through Shanghai, two defeats to the rebranded PARIVISION roster before the decisive grand-final win, extended a rivalry that had already produced a group-stage draw between the same two organizations at the Esports World Cup five weeks earlier. That the two teams met again at the sport's biggest event, under names that obscured the continuity for anyone not following the earlier result closely, made Shanghai's grand final as much a rematch of an existing rivalry as it was a fresh meeting between unfamiliar opponents on the biggest stage either had played on that year.

What the third Aegis means for Spirit

Team Spirit's third International title cements the organization's case as the most successful in the tournament's history, with Yatoro and Collapse's shared record giving the roster's core two players a claim to being among the greatest competitors the game has produced. The dramatic route to get there, including a stretch in which the team lost consecutive series to the eventual runner-up, adds to the story of a champion that had to fight through real adversity across the event rather than simply dominate the field from start to finish.

The weight of a third title

Winning The International once established Spirit as a top-tier organization in 2021; winning it a second time in 2023 confirmed the roster's staying power through a changing competitive landscape. A third title, five years and multiple roster tweaks after the first, moves the conversation about Spirit's place in Dota 2 history away from any single generation of players and toward the organization itself as a standard the rest of the scene is now measured against, regardless of exactly which five players happen to be on the active roster in a given competitive year.

What comes next

The Dota 2 calendar moves on from Shanghai toward the next season's qualification cycle, with Spirit's third Aegis setting a new benchmark that every other organization in the scene will now measure its own ambitions against. PARIVISION's second straight improvement on the previous year's International finish, now twice a runner-up in the tournament's recent history under its usual name and its Shanghai-only identity alike, leaves the organization with a case to be considered among the favorites again whenever the next International comes around, while Puppey's own search for a second Aegis of his career continues into another year.

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