How The International 2026 was filled: invites and qualifiers

The International is the world championship of Dota 2, staged by Valve, the publisher of the game. Its field is small: 16 teams in 2026, the 15th edition, played at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai from August 13 to 23.

There are two doors. Valve invites some teams directly, on the strength of their season. The others have to win a place in qualifiers played in June, region by region. This guide explains both paths as they worked in 2026: who decides the invitations and on what basis, how many places each region received and why Europe was handled differently this year, how a regional qualifier is played, and what happened to the 16 teams once they reached Shanghai, from the Swiss-style group stage to the grand final.

Esports Insider, May 27, 2026, and Dot Esports, August 11 and August 23, 2026, reporting Valve's invitations and qualifier slots.

Two doors into the same tournament

The structure was announced in two steps. On February 12, 2026, Valve set the venue, the dates and the outline of the format, as Esports Insider and Dot Esports reported that day. The field would hold 16 teams. Some would be organizations invited directly to the event, and the rest would come through Open Qualifiers from June 9 to 12 and Regional Qualifiers from June 15 to 28.

What Valve did not say in February was how many teams it would invite, or how many places each region would play for. Dot Esports noted then that the invitations were expected close to the start of the qualifiers. They came at the end of May. Esports Insider reported on May 27 that Valve had revealed its direct invitations and its slot allocations, and the figures add up to the field announced in February: seven invited teams and nine qualifier places.

Once in Shanghai, invited and qualified teams entered the same group stage. The difference lies in the months before: an invited team has no match to play for its place, while a team without an invitation has to win one in June.

What a direct invite is, and who received one

A direct invite is a place in the tournament that Valve gives a team without making it qualify. In 2026, according to Dot Esports, Valve awarded its seven invitations on the basis of teams' performances in the 2025-26 competitive season so far.

The seven teams, as Dot Esports lists them, were Aurora Gaming, BetBoom Team, Team Falcons, Team Liquid, the 1w Team roster, Xtreme Gaming and Team Yandex. Esports Insider counted six of them as European teams and one, Xtreme Gaming, as Chinese.

Two of the seven reached Shanghai under other names. BetBoom Team played the event as BoomBoys, and the 1w Team roster as Iron Wing, Dot Esports reported. The second case is a roster that kept its invitation through a change of organization. It had played the season as Tundra Esports. When the organization left Dota 2 on June 1, its five players and coach moved together to 1win, and Dot Esports reported that the roster kept its place among the seven invited teams.

Team Falcons arrived as the defending champion: it won The International 2025 in Hamburg, beating Xtreme Gaming 3-2 in the grand final, according to Dot Esports. Both finalists of that year were therefore invited back.

Seven invitations instead of eight

The number of invitations is not fixed from one year to the next. The International 2025 had eight direct invites and the 2024 edition six, Dot Esports recalled in February. For 2026 Valve settled on seven, a cut from eight that Esports Insider called a first in recent memory.

With a field of 16 fixed in advance, every invitation Valve does not hand out becomes a place in the qualifiers. Dot Esports put it in those terms: only seven teams received direct invites instead of eight, leaving an extra slot to be earned through qualifiers. Nine places were therefore open to the teams that had not been invited, against eight a year earlier.

The rest of the structure stayed in place. Sixteen teams, a Swiss-style group stage over four days, a three-day break and an eight-team bracket over four more days: the 2026 edition kept the shape Valve introduced in 2025, about three weeks earlier in the calendar.

Nine places, five regions

The nine qualifier places were shared between five regions, each with its own closed tournament. The table gives the share of each, with the number of teams that took part in each regional qualifier and its dates, as Dot Esports recorded them.

The five qualifiers together gathered 48 teams for nine places, and they did not run at the same time. China and South America started on June 15, Southeast Asia followed on June 19, Europe on June 21 and North America on June 24. Europe's was the longest, eight days, and the last to finish, on June 28, the closing date Valve had announced in February.

The allocation weighs heavily toward one region. Counting the invited teams and the qualifier places by region, as Esports Insider did on May 27, the places came to ten for Europe, three for China and one each for South America, Southeast Asia and North America. Europe received both the most invitations and the most qualifier places.

One Europe instead of two

The biggest change of 2026 was in Europe itself. For 2026 Valve merged Western Europe and Eastern Europe into a single qualifier bracket for four places, Esports Insider reported, while North America and South America remained separate.

The merged bracket carried the largest allocation of any region. Dot Esports described its four places as the highest allocation among all regional qualifiers, and as nearly half of all qualifier places.

South America moved the other way. Esports Insider wrote that the region received a single place, and recalled that Valve had previously given it two. The outlet called that single place the biggest controversy of the allocation, and cited reactions from the community posted on May 26. It gave China's allocation a section of its own as well, calling the region's third place in the field a real question mark.

Neither outlet gave a reason from Valve for the allocation. The result was four places for one European bracket, two for China, and one for each of the other three regions.

Inside a regional qualifier: the European bracket

A regional qualifier is a tournament in its own right, broadcast and played over several days. The European one, broadcast on the official Dota 2 channels of PGL, a tournament organizer, on Twitch, YouTube and Kick, is documented in detail on Dot Esports's page of June 28.

Its 16 teams came from two sources. Eight were invited directly into the regional qualifier: TEAM VISION, also known as PARIVISION, Team Spirit, Natus Vincere, MOUZ, Virtus.pro, Nigma Galaxy, Enjoy and Power Rangers. The other eight had come through the Open Qualifier: HULIGANI, Rune Eaters, Yellow Submarine, VP.Prodigy, Team Bald, IC x Insanity, MODUS and 4ikibamboni.

The bracket was a double elimination, a format in which a team is out only after its second defeat. A first loss sends it from the upper bracket to the lower bracket, where every series is an elimination match. Every series was a best-of-three, won by the first team to take two games, the deciding qualification matches included.

The four places were awarded in two pairs. The two teams that won their matches in the third round of the upper bracket qualified at once. The two winners of the fourth round of the lower bracket took the last two places. There was no final to play: once a team won its qualifying series, its tournament was over.

On June 25, Team Spirit beat Nigma Galaxy 2-1 and TEAM VISION beat Virtus.pro 2-1 in the third round of the upper bracket, and both were through. Their opponents had a second chance. On June 28, Nigma Galaxy beat Yellow Submarine 2-1 and HULIGANI beat Virtus.pro 2-1 in the fourth round of the lower bracket, and the European list was complete. Virtus.pro thus lost two qualifying series, each by a single game.

The Open Qualifier: the door anyone can use

The Open Qualifier is the widest entry point of the system: a tournament any team may enter, whatever its record, with no invitation needed. In 2026 it was played from June 9 to 12, the dates Valve set in February, before any regional qualifier began.

Its role is to feed the closed stage. In Europe, half of the regional bracket came from it: eight of the 16 teams. That gives a team with no ranking and no invitation a route to the world championship in two steps, first through the Open Qualifier, then through the regional bracket.

One team used it all the way. HULIGANI was one of the eight European teams that came out of the Open Qualifier, and one of the four that left the regional qualifier with a place in Shanghai, beating Virtus.pro, a team invited into the bracket, in the deciding series.

The nine teams that came through

By June 28, the nine qualifier places were filled, and the 16 teams of the field were known. Dot Esports listed the qualified teams by region.

• Europe: Team Spirit, TEAM VISION, Nigma Galaxy and HULIGANI.
• China: Team Resilience and Vici Gaming.
• Southeast Asia: OG.
• South America: LGD Gaming.
• North America: GamerLegion.

Most of the teams invited into the European bracket did not make it. Natus Vincere, MOUZ, Virtus.pro, Enjoy and Power Rangers, five of its eight invited teams, all went out without a place.

The group stage: a Swiss system and an elimination round

All 16 teams met for the first time in Shanghai on August 13, in a group stage that ran to August 16. It was played as a Swiss system, Dot Esports explained. In a Swiss system there are no fixed groups: after each round, teams are paired with opponents that have the same record, so that strong teams meet strong teams as the stage goes on and nobody plays every other entrant. Every match of the stage was a best-of-three.

The stage had three outcomes. The top three teams went directly to the main event. The teams ranked fourth to 13th, ten in all, moved to an elimination round, where five advanced and five were eliminated. The bottom three teams were out of the tournament.

The elimination round is where invited teams and qualified teams were most clearly mixed. Team Spirit, one of the European qualifiers, finished the Swiss rounds with three series won and two lost and had to play it: it beat Team Resilience 2-1, Dot Esports recorded. TEAM VISION was the only team unbeaten in the group stage, with four series won. HULIGANI lost its four series and finished 16th.

The format was a year old. Valve introduced it for The International 2025, where Esports Insider described five Swiss rounds of best-of-three series: teams that reached four wins went to the playoffs, teams that reached four losses were eliminated, and the ten that remained played the elimination round, the best-ranked against the lowest-ranked. Valve said at the time that it wanted every match to have stakes, to let fans know in advance when their teams would play, and to spare any team with a winning record from playing two series in a row.

The main event and the grand final

The eight survivors, three from the top of the Swiss stage and five from the elimination round, played the main event from August 20 to 23 in what Dot Esports calls a classic double-elimination bracket. Every series was a best-of-three except the grand final, a best-of-five, which goes to the first team to win three games.

The four days followed a fixed order, as listed by Dot Esports. The first round of the upper bracket was played on August 20. August 21 held the first round of the lower bracket and the upper bracket semifinals. August 22 held the lower bracket quarterfinals, the upper bracket final and the lower bracket semifinals. August 23 closed the tournament with the lower bracket final and the grand final.

Team Spirit won it, beating TEAM VISION 3-2 on August 23, with a prize pool of more than US$3.3 million at stake, according to Dot Esports. The champion took US$1,416,786, or 42.5% of the pool, and the runner-up US$433,431.

How the two paths compared in Shanghai

In 2026 the qualified teams went further than the invited ones. Both finalists, Team Spirit and TEAM VISION, came through the European qualifier.

The invited teams finished lower. The best of them was Team Yandex, third, followed by BoomBoys in fourth. Team Liquid finished fifth to sixth, Iron Wing and Team Falcons seventh to eighth, Aurora Gaming went out in the elimination round, and Xtreme Gaming finished 14th to 15th, Dot Esports recorded.

The qualified teams spread across the whole table. Behind the two finalists, Nigma Galaxy shared fifth to sixth place with Team Liquid. Team Resilience, Vici Gaming, LGD Gaming and GamerLegion all went out in the elimination round and shared ninth to 13th place with Aurora Gaming. OG finished 14th to 15th beside Xtreme Gaming.

The prize table shows the same split in money. Adding the per-team shares Dot Esports published, the nine qualified teams took 69.2% of the pool and the seven invited teams the other 30.8%. The four European qualifiers alone account for 61%, with both ends of the scale among them: the champion's 42.5% and HULIGANI's 0.5% for last place.

In Shanghai, an invitation bought a team a quieter June, not a better August.

The figures describe one edition, and the system is Valve's to change every year: the number of invites moved from six to eight to seven in three editions, and the European map changed between 2025 and 2026. In 2026 the outline was this: a season of results earned a direct invitation; without one, the road ran through an open bracket, a regional bracket and two stages in the host city before the Aegis of Champions, the trophy of The International, was lifted.

The .esports registry publishes Esports Observer, so the whole scene can read its news for free.