The International 2026

Welcome to the Philippine hub for the fifteenth running of Dota 2's showpiece world championship. Shanghai stages it across 13 to 23 August 2026. The verified base prize pool reads 1,600,000 USD. A sixteen-team field will chase the Aegis of Champions.

What this event is and why it matters

Dota 2's competitive season builds, all year, toward a single climax in China. Sixteen of the strongest sides on the planet will gather to settle who lifts the Aegis of Champions. For fans across the Philippines, this is the calendar's centrepiece and the week that decides bragging rights for a whole year. The headline facts are now confirmed, even though plenty of finer detail is still being finalised. Everything below is sourced from official confirmations rather than speculation.

Shanghai will host the action across August, putting the matches into a timezone that suits Southeast Asian viewers. The whole spectacle runs from a Swiss group phase into a high-stakes playoff week. That alone makes this edition far easier to follow live than several recent ones. The build-up has already begun through regional play spread across five parts of the world. We track each of those routes on the qualifiers guide so nothing slips past you.

The tournament at a glance

The shape of the event is familiar to anyone who has followed the series before. At its core, it keeps a group phase feeding into a playoff bracket where the title is actually decided. The dates, the host city and the team count are no longer rumours but settled facts. What stays open is the granular layer, from daily start times to the final seeding. We refresh this hub as each of those pieces is officially published.

Notice how many cells in that table are deliberately left as unannounced. We refuse to fill them with a confident guess just to look complete. If a number is not on the official channels, it does not appear here as fact. The table only gets richer as real details arrive.

The International 2026 schedule and dates

Get a feel for how the week breathes and planning your viewing turns simple. The International 2026 schedule breaks into a mid-August group block followed by a main-event block seven days later. That gap hands both travelling and remote fans a clean pause between the two phases. Each confirmed window gets its own treatment on the page linked below.

Both August windows are nailed down, though the finer timing still is not. When we wrote this, the per-series kick-off hours had yet to be released anywhere. The full daily grid goes up here only once it is official, and not a minute sooner. For now, mark the group week and the playoff week and look back in as the dates close.

One thing outweighs everything else for anyone organising a watch party. The full The International 2026 schedule, exact daily slots included, is the piece most readers keep refreshing for. The week's outline is already obvious from the locked blocks. Only the hour-by-hour plan still awaits a formal drop, and our full schedule breakdown will carry it first.

The TI 2026 prize pool

No subject attracts more online misinformation than the money. The TI 2026 prize pool currently sits on a confirmed base of 1,600,000 USD. Nobody has announced a crowdfunded layer stacked above that figure. Every other claim here is pinned to that verified base. Should an official revision land, the number changes here at once.

This run uses the newer publisher-set structure, not the enormous community pools that defined earlier years. We will not echo viral graphics touting far bigger totals without a real source behind them. Accuracy beats drama every time for us. The complete backstory waits on its own page whenever you want the context.

The comparison with the record seasons keeps coming up. Set against the all-time crowdfunded peaks, the TI 2026 prize pool is the smaller figure, which is just the model of the moment doing its work. Exact historical totals we cannot verify stay off this page. For those past numbers, the official records are the dependable source, gathered on our prize pool page.

TI 2026 teams and standings

Interest in the line-up always spikes this long before a major. When this page went live the complete set of TI 2026 teams was unsettled, with invites reported and qualifiers still in motion. Direct invitations landed in late May, and five regional routes supply the rest of the field. The reported sides appear here without being branded final.

Rosters here reshuffle right down to the wire. Only after every region has run its course will the set of TI 2026 teams be settled. No side gets called confirmed here until an official source says so. Holding back like that keeps you from acting on a list that could still move.

Attention swings to the live tables the second the games tip off. Across the Swiss group stage, the TI 2026 standings will chart every side as it happens. Before a single match is played the tables sit empty by definition, so we refuse to seed them with predicted finishes. Where you land in that table decides the playoff routes, all of which our standings and bracket tracker lays out.

Lining the tables up with the calendar is the fastest way to read a day. Climbing teams show up in the TI 2026 standings, while the schedule pins down when each of them plays next. Read together, the pair reveals which series carry weight on any given afternoon. We park the two next to each other so context never sits far away.

Following the road through TI qualifiers 2026

Most of the field gets settled well before anyone touches down in Shanghai. Spread over five regions, the TI qualifiers 2026 set Europe, China, Southeast Asia, North America and South America chasing slots. Late May brought the invitations, and these regional routes fill the places left over. Naturally, fans in Southeast Asia hold the tightest stake in the SEA bracket.

A deep local run is precisely the storyline that grips a Philippine crowd. Any home-region angle gets flagged here the moment it turns real rather than rumoured. Read the reported invitations as a guide, never a finished roster. Every name stays provisional until the bracket is fully drawn.

That regional thread rewards following from the opening round onward. Our rundown of the TI qualifiers 2026 sets all five routes alongside one another. Nothing on it gets called final before an official result lands. You can follow a team from its regional path straight through to the group stage on the qualifiers guide.

Supporter bundles and attending in person

A lot of fans wonder about the optional extras that tend to ring the broadcast. As this page went live, nothing on The International 2026 supporter bundles had been published yet. Should a bundle or compendium actually launch, we will lay out its exact contents once that is official. No guessing at contents or prices happens here in the meantime.

The extras questions keep arriving, so a second pass is worth it. The second any word on The International 2026 supporter bundles turns official, it gets reported here, contents and all. A bundle nobody has confirmed to exist will not be described on this page. Earlier editions offer a hint, never a promise.

Showing up in Shanghai is the next big practical question for travellers. At the time of writing, nothing on The International 2026 tickets, including on-sale dates and pricing, had been released. The official details go up here the instant they surface, rather than us repeating unverified figures. Anyone planning to attend should keep an eye on the official channels for the on-sale call.

At an event this big, demand for seats usually runs ahead of supply. Once The International 2026 tickets reach sale, moving fast will count toward landing the best dates. The official ticketing detail gets mirrored here the moment it exists. Until that point, take any circulating price as unverified.

How the group and playoff format works

The competitive structure rewards consistency from the very first day. The opening Swiss-system group stage runs entirely in best-of-three series, pairing sides by record each round. The top three teams advance straight into the playoff bracket. Places four through thirteen then fight through an elimination round, where five more survive. The exact main-event bracket layout has not been published yet.

What sets this championship apart

Newcomers often ask how this differs from the regular Major circuit. Majors happen several times a season and feed a points race, while the TI 2026 teams treat this once-a-year championship as the only title that crowns a true world champion. The winners lift the Aegis of Champions, a trophy that cannot be bought and is handed back each year for the next holders to earn. That scarcity is why a deep run here outweighs a stack of smaller titles for most players.

Where to bet on the matches from the Philippines

A fair few readers like to stake a little on the team they fancy. For Philippine readers the platform we point to is SpinBetter, where fresh sign-ups can pick up a welcome package worth up to 500 USD under the terms in force. For any tournament, the markets and prices tend to surface nearer the opening whistle. The predictions page covers how to wager sensibly before a single peso goes down.