Tundra Esports exits Dota 2 as its whole roster moves to 1win

Nine weeks after lifting the trophy at ESL One Birmingham, Tundra Esports has left Dota 2. The organization announced its exit from the competitive scene on June 1, 2026, in a statement on its X account, and Dot Esports reported it the same day. The statement gives no specific reason.

The team itself does not break up. The five players, 33, Pure, bzm, Ari and Whitemon, and their coach MoonMeander move together to 1win, which confirmed the signing on June 1 on its own channels and detailed it in a press release dated June 2. They now play as 1win Team, a name Dot Esports shortens to 1w Team.

So this is an organization leaving a game while its roster carries on unchanged: same players, same coach, same staff, a different owner and a different jersey. It is the third departure of an established organization from Dota 2 in less than two months, and the first of the three to involve a roster that had won a top-level tournament this spring.

What Tundra said, and what it left unsaid

Tundra's message is a farewell, not an explanation. The organization wrote that the team had brought passion, brilliance, joy and excitement to millions of fans, pointed supporters to 1win's Dota 2 account for news of the players, and thanked WINLINE, which it called a longtime partner, for supporting the team's competitive journey.

On its own future the statement holds one line: after six years in Dota 2, it says, Tundra Esports is preparing to begin a new chapter.

What that chapter is, the statement does not say. Dot Esports notes that no specific reason is given for the exit, and its report contains nothing on Tundra's plans in other games. The outlet, like the statement, counts the organization's time in Dota 2 as a six-year run.

Who moves to 1win

1win's release describes the operation as the signing of the full Tundra Esports Dota 2 roster, with coach and staff, effective June 1. It calls the contracts long-term and gives no duration and no fee.

The release quotes the captain. "We are excited for this new chapter," 33 said, using the same two words as the organization he had just left.

The new team is preparing in Belgrade, at a bootcamp, the name given to a period when a roster lives and trains in one place before a tournament.

A roster that was still winning

The timing is what sets this exit apart: the roster had been collecting titles up to the spring.

Dot Esports lists the trophies won under the Tundra name: The International 2022, the world championship of Dota 2, then FISSURE Universe Episode 4, BLAST Slam 3, 4 and 5, DreamLeague Season 28 and ESL One Birmingham 2026. The three BLAST Slam titles came back to back during the current season, the outlet notes. It describes 33 as a two-time winner of The International.

The most recent of those titles is nine weeks old. ESL One Birmingham was played from March 22 to 29, 2026, with 16 teams and a prize pool of US$1 million, according to Dot Esports's coverage of the event. Tundra won the grand final 3-1 against Team Yandex in a best-of-five series, a match that goes to the first team to win three games, and took the first prize of US$250,000, a quarter of the pool. A club reward of US$40,000 for the winner came on top of the prize, according to the same coverage.

The format of that week shows what the title required. The 16 teams were split into two round-robin groups of eight, in which every team plays every other. The top two of each group entered the upper bracket of the playoffs, the third and fourth the lower bracket, and the bottom four of each group went home. The playoffs were double elimination, meaning a team is out only after a second lost series, with best-of-three series up to the final. Team Yandex left with US$100,000 for second place, ahead of Xtreme Gaming and PARIVISION. Team Falcons, the 2025 Club Champion of the Esports World Cup, finished seventh to eighth.

The last tournament under the Tundra name went differently. At BLAST Slam 7 the team finished ninth to tenth and earned US$15,000, Dot Esports reports. One poor result after a season of wins is the whole of the recent record, and nothing in Tundra's statement connects the exit to it.

Third exit since April

The two earlier departures came from South America and were explained in the organizations' own words.

paiN Gaming had come back to Dota 2 on February 2, 2026, after six years away, and closed the division on April 12. Its statement, as Dot Esports summarized it, cited the demands of the project, structural challenges and the need to ensure the project's sustainability. At ESL One Birmingham, the tournament Tundra won, paiN had finished 11th to 12th.

HEROIC followed on May 4, after a little over two years in the game. Its statement said the roster had performed but that the financial results had fallen short, which made the division unsustainable in the long term. Its chief gaming officer, Robin Nymann, said on X that Dota was a hard game to commercialize for the organization. HEROIC's players were released as free agents and said they would look for a new name together.

Dot Esports places Tundra's exit in that sequence, noting that it comes less than two months after the other two. The differences are as clear as the pattern. paiN and HEROIC both named sustainability or finances; Tundra named nothing. Their rosters were left without an organization; Tundra's had a new one the same day. And the competitive level differs: HEROIC's last result was a seventh-to-eighth place worth US$40,000 at PGL Wallachia Season 8 and paiN's an 11th-to-12th place in Birmingham, while Tundra's roster had won Birmingham.

HEROIC's case had already shown that results and finances are judged separately. Its team won PGL Wallachia Season 2, which Dot Esports describes as the first top-level international title won in person by a South American team, and placed in the top six at The International 2025. Neither kept the division open. paiN's return lasted through two major tournaments and a first-place finish at a lower-tier event, the CCT Season 2 Series 8, before the organization closed it.

What a direct invite is worth

The roster holds one of those invitations. Dot Esports reports that it is among the seven teams invited directly to The International 2026, and that the move keeps it intact for its coming tournaments under 1win's ownership.

The calendar shows what that spares the players. Valve, the publisher of Dota 2, runs the world championship, and according to the dates Dot Esports published on February 12, open qualifiers for The International 2026 run from June 9 to 12 and regional qualifiers from June 15 to 28. A roster changing organization on June 1 without an invitation would have had eight days before the first of them.

The International 2026 is the 15th edition of the world championship. It will be played at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai, with a Swiss-style group stage of 16 teams from August 13 to 16, in which teams with similar records meet each round, and a main event for the top eight from August 20 to 23.

The summer ahead under a new name

1win's release names two events for its new team: the Esports World Cup and The International.

The Esports World Cup comes first. The Esports Foundation's release of January 20, 2026, announced the event from July 6 to August 23, with 25 tournaments across 24 games, Dota 2 among them, and a total prize pool of US$75 million. It was planned for Riyadh. The foundation confirmed on May 20 that the 2026 edition moves to Paris, HLTV reported that day, and a spokesperson told the site that the announced games, tournaments and formats are kept and that a slight shift in the schedule is possible. The 1win release gives no date for the team's first match there, and no tournament before it.

That event has its own club economy. The Esports Foundation published on March 31 the 40 organizations of its 2026 Club Partner Program, which pays clubs for audience work around the event. Neither Tundra Esports nor 1win is on that list. The program's rules state that membership gives no place in the tournaments and no competitive advantage, and that every club qualifies through each game's standard system, so a team outside the program enters the Dota 2 tournament on the same terms as a partner. HEROIC, by contrast, is one of the 40.

1win's release also describes what the company gets from the signing: its branding on the team's jerseys, on the players' social media accounts and in in-game integrations, and on the official 1win Team channels.

The International follows directly: its group stage opens on August 13, inside the window first announced for the Esports World Cup.

For Tundra Esports, the public record stops at the statement of June 1. The organization has announced a new chapter and has not said what it contains. For the players the next step is already fixed: the bootcamp in Belgrade, then two of the largest events of the Dota 2 year, under the 1win Team tag.

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