The International 2026 prize money: what each of the 16 teams received

US$1,416,786 for the winner, US$16,741 for the team that finished last: the prize table of The International 2026 is now final. Dot Esports published it on August 23, 2026, the day Team Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 in the grand final at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai. The outlet gives the pool of the Dota 2 world championship as more than US$3.3 million, shared between the 16 teams of the event.

The table has nine lines, from 42.5% of the pool for the champion to 0.5% for 16th place. The two finalists together account for 55.5% of the money, and the eight teams of the lower half for 11.5%.

Every one of the 16 teams is on the list: no placing went unpaid. The event was the 15th edition of The International, the tournament Valve, the publisher of Dota 2, stages as the game's world championship.

The full table, from first to 16th

Dot Esports lists each placing with the amount paid per team and the share of the pool it represents.

The percentages add up to 100 once each shared placing is counted for every team on it: two teams at 5%, two at 4%, five at 1.8% and two at 1%.

The drop after first place is the steepest of the table. The champion's share is more than three times the runner-up's, and 85 times the share of 16th place. The four best teams hold 70.5% of the pool between them.

Dot Esports's page gives the size of the pool and its division. It does not say how the pool was built.

One series worth nearly a million dollars

The largest gap between two lines is the one the grand final decided. First place paid US$1,416,786 and second US$433,431, a difference of US$983,355.

That final was a best-of-five, a series won by the first team to take three games, and it used all five. Team Spirit won the first, third and fifth games, TEAM VISION the second and fourth, according to Dot Esports's report on the final. The deciding game lasted 64 minutes and 22 seconds. More than 500,000 viewers watched the final live on Twitch and YouTube, the outlet wrote.

The title is Team Spirit's third. Dot Esports calls it the first organization to win three Aegis of Champions, the trophy given to the winner of The International. Inside the roster the count differs from one player to the next. Yatoro and Collapse are now three-time champions, in six appearances at the event. Larl has two titles. For rue the win came at his second International, and for not_me at his first. Miposhka, now the team's coach, reached a third championship after two as a player.

TEAM VISION, third a year earlier according to the same report, moved up one place and takes the second-largest line of the table.

The published amounts are per team. The table does not say how an organization divides its line between players, staff and the club.

Why the placings come in uneven groups

Five teams share ninth to 13th place, two share 14th to 15th, and one is alone in 16th. Those groups come straight from the format of the tournament, which Dot Esports describes on the same page.

The event opened with a group stage from August 13 to 16, played as a Swiss system: 16 teams, every series a best-of-three, with a ranking at the end. The top three went directly to the main event. The teams ranked fourth to 13th played an elimination round. The bottom three were out.

Those bottom three are the last two lines of the table. Xtreme Gaming and OG finished the group stage with one series won and four lost and were eliminated after the fifth round. HULIGANI lost its four series and was eliminated after the fourth, which is why it stands alone in 16th place.

The elimination round, on August 16, was five series, and the five losers make up the ninth to 13th line: Vici Gaming, Aurora Gaming, Team Resilience, GamerLegion and LGD Gaming. The five winners joined the top three of the group stage in a main event of eight teams, played from August 20 to 23 as a double-elimination bracket, in which a team is out after losing two series.

Inside the main event, the same logic separates the lines. The two teams that lost in both the first round of the upper bracket and the first round of the lower bracket, Iron Wing and Team Falcons, share seventh to eighth place: each lost its second series 1-2 on August 21, to BoomBoys and to Team Liquid. The two teams beaten one round later, Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy, share fifth to sixth. Between those two lines the table puts US$32,883 per team, the difference between US$166,673 and US$133,790.

The eight teams that reached the main event took 88.5% of the pool. Reaching it was worth at least the seventh to eighth line, US$133,790, against US$60,158 for a team beaten in the elimination round: one best-of-three with US$73,632 between its winner's minimum and its loser's line.

Team Spirit climbed the table from eighth

The champion did not start at the top. Team Spirit finished the group stage with three series won and two lost, a record shared by five teams, and was listed eighth in the standings Dot Esports published. That sent it to the elimination round, where it beat Team Resilience 2-1.

In the main event it won its first series, 2-0 against Iron Wing on August 20, then lost 1-2 to TEAM VISION in the upper bracket semifinals on August 21. One more defeat would have ended its tournament.

There was none. On August 22, Team Spirit beat Team Liquid 2-0 and BoomBoys 2-0. On August 23 it beat Team Yandex 2-0 in the lower bracket final, then won the grand final against the team that had sent it down. Counting the group stage, it played 12 series in Shanghai and won nine.

Each of those last steps can be read in the table. Team Liquid's exit left it on the fifth to sixth line. BoomBoys' defeat fixed it in fourth, at US$200,034. Team Yandex's defeat fixed it in third, at US$299,984, which is US$99,950 more than fourth.

TEAM VISION took the opposite road. It was the only team unbeaten in the group stage, with four series won, and did not lose a series in the main event until the grand final.

Nine qualified teams took more than two thirds

Seven of the 16 teams were invited directly to Shanghai, and nine came through regional qualifiers, according to Dot Esports's record of the event. The money did not follow the invitations.

Both finalists were qualifiers: Team Spirit and TEAM VISION each came through the European qualifier. Adding the per-team shares of the nine qualified teams gives 69.2% of the pool. The seven invited teams account for the other 30.8%.

One qualifier weighs more than all the others. Four teams came through the European one: the two finalists, Nigma Galaxy, which finished fifth to sixth, and HULIGANI, which finished 16th. Their four lines of the table add up to 61% of the pool, with both ends of the scale among them: the 42.5% of the champion and the 0.5% of the last place.

The best-placed invited team was Team Yandex, third. BoomBoys finished fourth, Team Liquid in the fifth to sixth group, Iron Wing and Team Falcons in the seventh to eighth. Aurora Gaming went out in the elimination round, and Xtreme Gaming, the finalist beaten by Team Falcons a year earlier in Hamburg, finished 14th to 15th.

Team Falcons arrived as the defending champion. Its line this year is US$133,790, or 4% of the pool.

The same game, another scale

The International is not the only seven-figure pool in Dota 2 this year. The Esports World Cup, moved to Paris for 2026, sets US$2,000,000 for its Dota 2 competition in its rulebook for 2026, with 24 paid placings and a separate US$25,000 award for the most valuable player.

The two tables agree on fourth place, at 6% of the pool, and differ above it. The International gives its winner a larger share, 42.5% against 37.5%, and its runner-up a smaller one, 13% against 17%. The distance between first and second is therefore wider in Shanghai: the champion's share is more than three times the runner-up's, where the rulebook of the Esports World Cup sets it at a little more than twice.

The lower lines differ too. The rulebook of the Esports World Cup pays US$70,000 to each team placed fifth to eighth, 3.5% of its pool, where The International paid 5% and 4% on its two lines for the same places.

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