The International 2026 Betting: Results, Bracket and Markets

Last reviewed: August 2026

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By Den Ivko, Senior Casino Analyst at SportBar.Casino. Last updated: September 11, 2026.

Independent editorial guide. Sportbar.casino may receive affiliate compensation if users register through links on this page. This does not affect our coverage. 18+. Play responsibly. Responsible Gambling.

The TI 2026 Playoff Bracket

Eight teams, double elimination, everything best of three until a best of five grand final. TEAM VISION won their first five series in Shanghai and reached the grand final a day early with a rest day in hand. Team Spirit lost to them in the upper bracket semifinal on August 21, dropped to the lower side and won four series in three days to get the rematch, then took it 3-2. The bracket removed the rest in order: Iron Wing and the defending champions Team Falcons on August 21, Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy on August 22, BoomBoys the same evening and Team Yandex in the lower bracket final.

Aug 20 CST	Upper bracket quarterfinal	Result
10:30	Iron WingvsTeam Spirit	Team Spirit won 2-0. Both were 3-2 in the Swiss and both came through the elimination round; Spirit needed three maps there and none here.
13:45	TEAM VISIONvsBoomBoys	TEAM VISION won 2-1. The 4-0 top seed dropped their first map of the tournament to the team that finished ninth at 2-3 and knocked out Aurora Gaming 2-0.
18:30	Team LiquidvsTeam Yandex	Team Yandex won 2-0. The upset of the round. Yandex were the last team into the bracket, in at 2-3 through the series nobody picked, and they swept a 4-1 Swiss side without dropping a map.
21:20	Nigma GalaxyvsTeam Falcons	Nigma Galaxy won 2-1. Nigma lost their Swiss opener and have now won six series in a row. The defending champions went to the lower bracket.

Losing a quarterfinal is not elimination, and day two proved how thin the margin is anyway. In the lower bracket a single defeat ends the tournament, and the first two exits came at the cost of $132,553 each.

Aug 21 CST	Match	Result
10:00	Lower bracket round oneIron WingvsBoomBoys	BoomBoys won 2-1. Iron Wing are eliminated. BoomBoys have now beaten a 3-2 Swiss team in the elimination round and another one here.
14:15	Lower bracket round oneTeam LiquidvsTeam Falcons	Team Liquid won 2-1. The defending champions are out in seventh or eighth. Falcons have now lost two of the three series they played in Shanghai after the Swiss.
18:20	Upper bracket semifinalTeam SpiritvsTEAM VISION	TEAM VISION won 2-1. The 4-0 top seed have still not lost a series in Shanghai. Team Spirit drop to the lower bracket quarterfinals.
22:10	Upper bracket semifinalTeam YandexvsNigma Galaxy	Team Yandex won 2-1. The last team into the bracket has now beaten the second seed and the third seed back to back. Nigma Galaxy's six-series run ends and they drop to the lower bracket.

Day three settled the rest of the bracket. Both semifinal losers came back down into the lower bracket quarterfinals and only one of them survived, TEAM VISION took the upper bracket final and the grand final slot that comes with it, and the evening semifinal cut the field to three.

Aug 22 CST	Match	Result
10:00	Lower bracket quarterfinalTeam SpiritvsTeam Liquid	Team Spirit won 2-0. Team Liquid are out in fifth or sixth. The second seed out of the Swiss lost 0-2 in their quarterfinal, knocked out the defending champions on the way down, then lost 0-2 again.
13:00	Lower bracket quarterfinalNigma GalaxyvsBoomBoys	BoomBoys won 2-1. Nigma Galaxy go out in fifth or sixth, their second defeat in two days after a run of six straight series wins. BoomBoys finished ninth in the Swiss at 2-3 and have now won three knockout series.
16:00	Upper bracket finalTEAM VISIONvsTeam Yandex	TEAM VISION won 2-1. Five series in Shanghai, five wins, and the first grand final slot with a rest day in front of it. Team Yandex drop to the lower bracket final.
19:00	Lower bracket semifinalTeam SpiritvsBoomBoys	Team Spirit won 2-0. BoomBoys finish fourth. Spirit's second 2-0 of the day guarantees them a podium place and a third meeting with TEAM VISION if they win once more.

That left three teams for the final day, and the lower bracket final removed one more before lunchtime in Shanghai.

Aug 23 CST	Match	Result
10:00	Lower bracket finalTeam SpiritvsTeam Yandex	Team Spirit won 2-0. Yatoro carried both maps, on Terrorblade and then Shadow Fiend, and the first game was over in 37 minutes. Team Yandex take third place in their first International after beating the second and third seeds back to back earlier in the week.
13:00	Grand finalTEAM VISIONvsTeam Spirit	Team Spirit won 3-2. Third meeting of the tournament and the first one Spirit won: VISION had taken the Swiss series 2-0 and the upper bracket semifinal 2-1. Game by game below.

1. Game 1 Team Spirit 46 min. Yatoro on Shadow Fiend, Collapse on Undying.
2. Game 2 TEAM VISION 64 min. The longest game of the series levels it at 1-1.
3. Game 3 Team Spirit 46 min. Decided by a team wipe at the 38 minute mark.
4. Game 4 TEAM VISION 43 min. The support pair of 9Class and Dukalis force a decider.
5. Game 5 Team Spirit Yatoro on Lifestealer, an 11k gold lead, and the Aegis.

The two arguments going into the final were the ones a double elimination bracket always produces, and the underdog side of it paid. TEAM VISION arrived unbeaten and rested, which is why they were favourites; Spirit arrived off eight series in four days, but they had played this opponent twice, taken a map off them, and a best of five gives a team that loses the first draft room to adjust. That is the case for not overreacting to a lower bracket run, and it is also why outright prices move less after an upset than the scoreline suggests. TEAM VISION lost one series all tournament and it cost them the Aegis.

Final standings and prize money

Place	Team	Prize
1	Team Spirit	$1,426,422 and the Aegis of Champions
2	TEAM VISION	About $436,000
3	Team Yandex	About $302,000
4	BoomBoys	About $201,000
5-6	Team Liquid, Nigma Galaxy	About $168,000 each
7-8	Iron Wing, Team Falcons	About $134,000 each
9-13	Vici Gaming, Aurora Gaming, Team Resilience, GamerLegion, LGD Gaming	About $60,000 each

Figures other than the winner's cheque are the published percentage split applied to a pool that was still moving on the day, so treat them as round numbers rather than quotes.

Subtract six hours for Berlin and Amsterdam, seven for London, twelve for New York. The 13:00 CST grand final slot is 07:00 in central Europe and 01:00 on the US east coast, which is worth checking against your own sleep before you plan to watch it live with money on the result.

How the Group Stage Finished

Five Swiss rounds finished on August 16. Three teams booked a playoff seat outright, three went home, and the ten in between played a single best of three later the same day for the last five slots in the main event.

The short version for anyone holding a ticket: both 2025 grand finalists failed to make the top three. Xtreme Gaming, who lost that final 3-2, went 1-4 and were eliminated. Team Falcons, who won it, went 3-2 and had to play their way in, which they did 2-0.

#	Team	Series	Maps	Status
1	TEAM VISION	4-0	8-2	Playoffs
2	Team Liquid	4-1	9-5	Playoffs
3	Nigma Galaxy	4-1	8-2	Playoffs
4	Team Spirit	3-2	6-5	Playoffs
5	Iron Wing	3-2	8-6	Playoffs
6	Team Falcons	3-2	8-7	Playoffs
7	Aurora Gaming	3-2	7-5	Eliminated
8	LGD Gaming	3-2	7-6	Eliminated
9	BoomBoys	2-3	5-7	Playoffs
10	Vici Gaming	2-3	4-8	Eliminated
11	Team Yandex	2-3	7-7	Playoffs
12	Team Resilience	2-3	7-6	Eliminated
13	GamerLegion	2-3	6-6	Eliminated
14	Xtreme Gaming	1-4	3-8	Eliminated
15	OG	1-4	2-9	Eliminated
16	HULIGANI	0-4	2-8	Eliminated

Two teams played only four series. TEAM VISION clinched a top three finish at 4-0 and had nothing left to play for in round five; HULIGANI were mathematically out at 0-4 and were not paired again. Everyone else played all five.

Six players who decided the group stage

Player	Team	What the Swiss did to them
Puppey	TEAM VISION (coach)	The only unbeaten run of the group stage, 4-0 with eight maps won and two dropped. Sits out the elimination round entirely.
Nisha	Team Liquid	4-1, second seed, and the messiest route of the three qualifiers at 9-5 in maps. Through on series wins, not on dominance.
SumaiL	Nigma Galaxy	Lost round one 0-2, then won four series in a row without dropping another map. Best map record in the field alongside TEAM VISION.
Yatoro	Team Spirit	Started 3-0, then lost rounds four and five 0-2 and 0-2. Had to take the elimination round to reach the bracket, and needed three maps against Team Resilience to do it.
Malr1ne	Team Falcons	The defending champions went 3-2 with the worst map difference of the 3-2 group, 8-7, then answered it with a 2-0 over Vici Gaming in the elimination round.
Ame	Xtreme Gaming	1-4 and eliminated. Last year's runner up, playing an International at home, did not survive the group stage.

Player and team images sourced from Liquipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.

The elimination round, August 16

Five best of three series, the five 3-2 teams against the five 2-3 teams, for the last five places in the main event. All five are finished.

Time (CST)	Result	Outcome
10:00	Team Falcons 2-0 Vici Gaming	Falcons through
11:00	Aurora Gaming 0-2 BoomBoys	BoomBoys through
12:30	Team Spirit 2-1 Team Resilience	Spirit through
13:45	Iron Wing 2-0 GamerLegion	Iron Wing through
16:00	LGD Gaming 1-2 Team Yandex	Yandex through

Subtract six hours for Berlin and Amsterdam, seven for London, twelve for New York. The 10:00 CST slot is 04:00 in central Europe and 22:00 the previous evening on the US east coast, which is worth knowing before you plan to watch a series you have money on.

The winners picked their own opponents

This part of the format gets left out of most previews, and it decided at least one of the elimination round results. The pairings were not fixed by seed. The five teams that finished 3-2 were seeded one to five among themselves, and each one chose which 2-3 team to play, in seed order. The last team to pick does not pick at all: it takes whoever is left.

Picking team	Seed	Chose
Team Spirit	1	Team Resilience, the 12th seed
Iron Wing	2	GamerLegion, the 13th and lowest seed available
Team Falcons	3	Vici Gaming, the 10th seed
Aurora Gaming	4	BoomBoys, the 9th seed
LGD Gaming	5	No choice left, drew Team Yandex

Aurora had a choice between the 9th seed and the 11th and took the 9th. BoomBoys beat them 2-0. LGD Gaming, the team with no choice at all, lost 1-2 to the 11th seed they were left with. Every team that picked lower down the table won; both teams that ended up against a stronger 2-3 side went home. That is one sample and not a law, but it is a reminder that in this format the matchup is a decision rather than a draw, and a market that prices "team X to reach the playoffs" before the picks are made is pricing an unknown opponent.

The wider point for anyone reading a bracket: these were the shortest priced matches of the tournament, because a 3-2 team met a 2-3 team in every pairing. They were not safe. Aurora Gaming finished seventh in the Swiss and are out in straight maps.

The main event field

All eight playoff teams are confirmed.

Qualified from the Swiss	TEAM VISION (4-0), Team Liquid (4-1), Nigma Galaxy (4-1)
Qualified from the elimination round	Team Falcons, BoomBoys, Team Spirit, Iron Wing, Team Yandex
Eliminated	Xtreme Gaming, OG, HULIGANI (Swiss); Vici Gaming, Aurora Gaming, Team Resilience, GamerLegion, LGD Gaming (elimination round)

The three Swiss qualifiers get three days off while the five that came through the elimination round played a fifth and sixth day of best of threes. That rest was supposed to be the one structural edge in the bracket, and the quarterfinals split on it: Nigma Galaxy and TEAM VISION used it, Team Liquid did not, losing 0-2 to a Team Yandex side that had played two extra days of best of threes. Read that as a warning about how much weight to put on schedule arguments in a game where the draft matters more.

The Tournament at a Glance

The basics, before we get into what any of it means for a betting slip.

Dates	August 13 to 23, 2026. Group stage August 13-16, main event August 20-23, three dark days in between.
Location	Shanghai, China. The playoffs are at the Oriental Sports Center.
Teams	16. Seven invited by Valve, nine through regional qualifiers.
Prize pool	Just over $3.35M by the final. A $1.6M base from Valve plus a little over $1.75M raised from supporter bundle sales.
Current stage	Finished. Team Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 in the grand final on August 23.
Group format	Swiss system, every series best of three. Top three go straight to the playoffs, places 4 to 13 drop into an elimination round, the bottom three go home.
Playoff format	Eight teams, double elimination. Everything is best of three except the grand final, which is best of five.
Champions	Team Spirit, who beat TEAM VISION 3-2. It is their third Aegis and the first time an organisation has won three. The 2025 champions Team Falcons kept the same five players, finished sixth in the Swiss and went out on August 21 in seventh or eighth; both 2025 finalists were gone before the semifinals.
Time zone	Shanghai is UTC+8. That puts it six hours ahead of Berlin, seven ahead of London and twelve ahead of New York during August.
Where to watch	Free on the official Dota 2 channels on Twitch and YouTube, and in the game client through DotaTV.

The Swiss Group Stage Is Softer Than It Looks

Most tournament guides print the format and move on. It is worth doing the arithmetic, because the numbers are unusual.

Sixteen teams played a Swiss system over four days, always best of three. The top three qualified directly for the playoffs. Teams finishing fourth through thirteenth got a second chance in an elimination round, from which five more advance. Only the bottom three were knocked out on the group stage itself.

So thirteen of sixteen teams survived day four, and eight of sixteen reach the main event. If you are looking at a "to reach the playoffs" market, remember you are betting on a coin flip rather than a long shot, and the price should reflect that. Markets that pay well on paper for a mid-table team often look generous only because bettors are pattern matching from tournaments with brutal group cuts.

This year's table shows exactly what that softness does. Only one team finished undefeated, one team finished winless, and ten of sixteen landed on 3-2 or 2-3. Team Spirit opened 3-0, lost two straight 0-2 and fell from a top three seat to fourth. Nigma Galaxy did the reverse, losing 0-2 in round one and then winning four series in a row without dropping a single map after it. Anyone who settled a group stage read after two rounds was working with noise.

Best of three everywhere also changes match betting. A single bad draft no longer ends a series, which flattens the upset rate compared to a best of one format. The volatility moves from the match line to the map handicap and the map total.

Stage	Dates	Series length	What happens
Swiss group stage	August 13-16	Best of three	Complete. TEAM VISION, Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy through, Xtreme Gaming, OG and HULIGANI out
Elimination round	August 16	Best of three	Complete. Falcons, BoomBoys, Spirit, Iron Wing and Yandex through; Vici, Aurora, Resilience, GamerLegion and LGD out
Main event	August 20-23	Best of three	Complete. TEAM VISION won the upper bracket, Team Spirit came through four lower bracket rounds
Grand final	August 23	Best of five	Team Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 for the Aegis and $1,426,422

Four Teams Played Under Different Names

This one costs people money every year, so read it before you place anything.

Valve does not allow gambling brands on jerseys or in team names at The International. Organisations sponsored by bookmakers therefore compete under temporary names for the duration of the event. Four of the sixteen did it in 2026.

Name at TI 2026	Known the rest of the year as
BoomBoys	BetBoom Team
Iron Wing	1win Team
TEAM VISION	PARIVISION
HULIGANI	L1ga Team

Bookmakers are inconsistent about which version they list. Some use the tournament name, some keep the regular one, and a few mix both across different markets on the same page. Check the roster, not the logo, if there is any doubt about which team you are backing.

Iron Wing has a second layer of confusion attached. The roster that competed as Tundra Esports was transferred to 1win Team, which then registered for TI under the Iron Wing name. If you see Tundra listed in an old preview or an outdated odds feed, that is the squad now wearing a third name in a year.

All 16 Teams and Their Rosters

Seven teams were invited directly on May 25. The other nine came through regional qualifiers, with Europe taking four slots, China two, and one each for Southeast Asia, North America and South America.

Invited teams

Team	Roster	Coach
Team Falcons	skiter, Malr1ne, ATF, Cr1t-, Sneyking	Aui_2000
Xtreme Gaming	Ame, NothingToSay, Xxs, fy, xNova	LaNm
Team Liquid	m1CKe, Nisha, Ace, Boxi, tOfu	Blitz
Aurora Gaming	Nightfall, Mikoto, Ws, Mira, kaori	kpii
Team Yandex	watson, CHIRA_JUNIOR, DM, Saksa, Malady	Accell
BoomBoys	Kiritych~, gpk~, MieRo, Save-, Kataomi	boolk
Iron Wing	Pure, bzm, 33, Ari, Whitemon	MoonMeander

Qualified teams

Team	Qualifier	Roster	Coach
Team Spirit	Europe	Yatoro, Larl, Collapse, not me, rue	Miposhka
TEAM VISION	Europe	Satanic, No[o]ne-, Noticed, 9Class, Dukalis	Puppey
Nigma Galaxy	Europe	SumaiL, lorenof, Davai, OmaR, GH	KuroKy
HULIGANI	Europe	ssnovv1, Mirage`, Corrupted, sayuw, RESPECT	TheChosenOne
Team Resilience	China	YSR-04E, Echozz, niu, planet, zzq	Super
Vici Gaming	China	shiro, Xm, Bach, XinQ, y`	Yao
OG	Southeast Asia	Natsumi, Yopaj-, Raven, TIMS, skem	343
GamerLegion	North America	Ghost, RCY, Fayde, Bignum, Speeed	Mangusu
LGD Gaming	South America	Yuma, TaiLung, Wisper, Thiolicor, KJ	kaffs

Two of those entries deserve a second look. OG, the only organisation to win The International twice, arrived through the Southeast Asian qualifier with an all Filipino lineup that has nothing to do with the 2018 and 2019 rosters. And LGD Gaming, a Chinese institution for a decade, qualified out of South America.

Reading the Market Without Chasing a Number

We do not publish a frozen odds table on this page, and the reason is practical rather than coy. Outright prices on a Dota major move several times a day, and a number printed yesterday is worse than no number at all. What is stable enough to be useful is the shape of the market and what the group stage did to it.

Before the first draft, Team Spirit and Team Falcons sat at the top of most books, with TEAM VISION and Team Yandex priced as contenders and Xtreme Gaming carried by a home crowd narrative. Four days later, none of that survived contact. TEAM VISION were the only team to go through the Swiss without losing a series. Spirit and Falcons both finished 3-2 and had to win an elimination match to reach the bracket, which they did. Yandex went 2-3 and squeezed in as the last team, through the only elimination series nobody chose. Xtreme are out.

The correction that followed was worth watching rather than chasing. Books shortened TEAM VISION, Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy on the group stage result plus the free three day rest the top three got. That rest was a genuine edge in a bracket where the other five teams arrived off a sixth day of Bo3s, but it was also the kind of edge that gets priced in fast and then overpriced. Half of that trade paid and half of it did not. Spirit came through their quarterfinal 2-0 without looking troubled; Falcons lost theirs to Nigma Galaxy 2-1 and then went out of the lower bracket to Team Liquid the next day, which is the shortest main event a defending champion has had in years. The other two rested teams did not fare much better: Team Liquid lost 0-2 to Team Yandex, the last side into the bracket, and Nigma Galaxy lost 1-2 to the same team in the semifinal. TEAM VISION stayed unbeaten until the grand final and then lost the only series that decided anything. The lesson is not that reputation is worthless, it is that at this tournament it was worth roughly one series. Team Spirit are the counterexample worth keeping: beaten in the upper bracket on day two, then four wins on the lower side, three of them 2-0, and the Aegis in five games.

The practical advice has not changed: open two or three books and compare the same team. Esports lines are thinner than football lines, which means the spread between operators is wider and shopping around is worth more per bet than it is on a Premier League match. That gap widens further in the hours around an elimination round, when prices move at different speeds across operators.

Why the Prize Pool Is $3M and Not $40M

In 2021 The International paid out over $40 million. This year it finished just over $3.35 million. Nothing went wrong, and it is not a sign that Dota is collapsing, but the mechanism is worth understanding because it shapes what the players are actually competing for.

The old number came from the Battle Pass. From 2013 onward, a quarter of every compendium and battle pass sale went into the prize pool, and the community funded a jackpot that grew every year. Valve retired that system. The pool now consists of a $1.6 million base plus 30 percent of supporter bundle sales, and those sales passed the base, adding a little over $1.75 million. Sales ran through the main event, so the figures moved a little every day of it.

The split is steep at the top. Team Spirit took 42.5 percent, $1,426,422, TEAM VISION 13 percent for second and Team Yandex 9 percent for third. Fourth place is 6 percent, fifth and sixth 5 percent each, seventh and eighth 4 percent, and the five teams knocked out in the elimination round took about $60,000 apiece, which is less than a seventh of what second place pays. The figures moved with bundle sales right through the event, so treat everything below the winner's cheque as a shape rather than a quote.

Punters sometimes read the smaller pool as a motivation problem and bet against favourites accordingly. That has not held up. Winning the Aegis remains the only trophy that matters in this game, and the sponsorship and salary value of a title dwarfs the prize money either way. Treat the pool as a fact about tournament economics, not as a handicapping signal.

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Dota 2 Betting Markets, Explained

If you have only bet on football, roughly half of the Dota card will be unfamiliar. There is no draw, series are decided over multiple maps, and several markets settle on things that happen in the first ten minutes of a game.

Market	What you are betting on	Worth knowing
Match winner	Which team wins the series	Two way market, no draw. The simplest place to start.
Map handicap	Series score, usually -1.5 or +1.5 maps	-1.5 in a best of three means a 2-0 sweep. The single most common way to lose a "correct" bet.
Total maps	Whether the series goes the distance	Over 2.5 in a best of three is a bet on a decider. Often better value than backing the underdog outright.
Map winner	A single game inside the series	Priced after the draft on some books, which is where the informed money goes.
First blood	Which team gets the first kill	Close to a coin flip and heavily influenced by lane matchups. Entertaining, not profitable.
First to 10 kills	Which team reaches ten kills first	Correlates with early game drafts far more than with overall team strength.
First Roshan	Which team takes the first Roshan	Usually the team with map control at the twenty minute mark, which is not always the team that wins.
Total kills	Combined kills over or under a line	Patch dependent. A high tempo meta pushes these lines up across the whole tournament.
Game duration	Over or under a time line, often 38 minutes	Chinese teams have historically played slower. Check recent series length rather than reputation.
Outright winner	Who lifts the Aegis	Your money is tied up for ten days. Price it against what you could do with the same stake on match lines.

For a first Dota bet, the match winner and the total maps markets are enough. Map handicaps look like better value and quietly are not, because a 2-1 win pays nothing on a -1.5 line even though your read on the match was correct.

Live Betting and the Stream Delay Problem

Live markets are where Dota gets genuinely interesting, and also where inexperienced bettors get punished by something that has nothing to do with the game.

Every official broadcast runs on a delay, usually a couple of minutes, to stop players and viewers gaining an advantage. The bookmaker's data feed does not have that delay. So the odds on your screen already reflect a teamfight you have not watched yet. If a price moves violently for no reason you can see on stream, the reason has already happened.

The second trap is comebacks. A gold lead in Dota is not a football scoreline. Buyback lets a dead player return immediately for gold, high ground defence favours the team on the back foot, and a single lost fight around an Aegis of the Immortal can undo twenty minutes of advantage. Live prices on a team that is 15,000 gold ahead look like free money and are not. Teams have thrown larger leads at every International in the tournament's history.

If you bet live, do it on the map you are watching, keep stakes smaller than your pre match ones, and accept that you are always a step behind the feed.

Schedule and Time Zones

Shanghai runs on UTC+8, which made for an awkward slot for most of the audience. European viewers got afternoon and evening games, North American viewers very early mornings.

Phase	Dates	Notes
Group stage, days 1-4	August 13-16	Five Swiss rounds, complete. The elimination round closed out day four, running from 10:00 to past 16:00 CST.
Break	August 17-19	No matches. Odds settle here, and this is when outright prices are least volatile. The eight main event teams are known from the end of August 16.
Main event, days 1-3	August 20-22	Double elimination bracket, upper and lower brackets running in parallel. Four matches a day on 10:00, 13:00, 16:00 and 19:00 CST slots; days one and two both ran late, so treat the later times as approximate.
Grand final	August 23	Lower bracket final at 10:00 CST, grand final at 13:00. Best of five.

Group stage days started at 10:00 CST and ran three series slots deep. The main event ran on a fixed four slot day, listed match by match in the bracket section above. To convert: subtract six hours for Berlin or Amsterdam, seven for London, twelve for New York.

Getting Paid: The Part Everyone Skips

The bet is the easy half. Every year we hear from people who called the bracket correctly and then waited three weeks for the money, and every year the cause is the same short list.

Verify before the tournament starts, not after you win. Identity checks take 24 to 72 hours on a quiet week. During a major event, support queues stretch. Upload your ID and proof of address before the next big event, while nothing is riding on it.

Check your withdrawal cap against your outright ticket. A €100 stake on a 6.00 outright returns €600. If the account has a €500 weekly withdrawal limit, that win leaves in instalments. Know the cap before you stake it, not after.

Watch minimum odds on bonus bets. Most sportsbook bonuses require qualifying bets above a minimum price, commonly 1.50 or higher. Heavy favourites in a Dota group stage frequently sit below that. A bet you thought was clearing wagering may not have counted at all.

Withdraw to the method you deposited with. Same method rules are standard anti fraud practice everywhere. E-wallets settle within hours of approval, cards take one to three business days, bank transfers up to five. Our rating methodology explains how we time these in testing.

Where to Bet on The International

Esports coverage varies more between operators than football coverage does. Some books list only the match winner for every series, others carry map handicaps, totals and first blood on the same match. Before depositing anywhere for an event like this, open the Dota section and check three things: whether map level markets exist, whether live betting is offered during the group stage rather than just the playoffs, and what the maximum stake is on esports specifically, since it is often lower than the site wide limit.

The brands listed on this page are the ones we have tested for licensing, deposit handling and withdrawal timing, the same checks we apply across our sportsbook guides and casino rankings. That testing covers the account and payment side. It does not tell you how deep a given operator's Dota line will be on any particular day, so look before you fund the account. If you follow American football as well, our Super Bowl LXI odds page tracks the NFL futures board through to the February final.

Where you are reading from narrows the field before any of that matters. Dutch players in particular lose most of this list to licensing rules, and the operators that do accept accounts from the Netherlands are covered separately in our Dutch-language casino guide, in Dutch, with the KSA and CRUKS situation spelled out.

Betting on Esports Responsibly

A ten day tournament with matches running from morning to night is a different risk profile from a single weekend fixture. Set a deposit limit before the group stage rather than during it, because the moment when limits matter most is also the moment you will least want to set one.

Every licensed operator offers deposit limits, session timers, cool off periods and self exclusion in account settings. If betting has stopped being entertainment, BeGambleAware and GamCare offer free, confidential help. Our responsible gambling page lists more resources by country.