The International 2026 Betting: Format, Teams and Markets

Last reviewed: August 2026

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By Den Ivko, Senior Casino Analyst at SportBar.Casino. Last updated: August 7, 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 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	$2,594,491. A $1.6M base from Valve plus $994,491 raised from supporter bundle sales.
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.
Defending champions	Team Falcons, who beat Xtreme Gaming 3-2 in the 2025 final in Hamburg. Both teams are back, and Falcons kept the same five players.
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 play a Swiss system over four days, always best of three. When it ends, the top three qualify directly for the playoffs. Teams finishing fourth through thirteenth get a second chance in an elimination round, from which five more advance. Only the bottom three are knocked out on the group stage itself.

So thirteen of sixteen teams survive 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.

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	Top 3 straight to playoffs, 4th-13th to the elimination round, bottom 3 out
Elimination round	August 16	Best of three	Five teams advance, the rest are eliminated
Main event	August 20-23	Best of three	Eight teams, double elimination bracket
Grand final	August 23	Best of five	Winner takes the Aegis and the largest share of the prize pool

Four Teams Are Playing 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 have done it this year.

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 during the group stage, and a number printed a week before the first draft is worse than no number at all. What is stable enough to be useful is the shape of the market.

Team Spirit and Team Falcons sit at the top of most books, which is what you would expect from a two time champion and the reigning one. Falcons come in with an advantage that is rarer than it sounds: the same five players who took the Aegis in Hamburg are still together, along with the coach. Roster churn between Internationals is the norm in Dota, and continuity has historically been worth more than form.

Behind them, TEAM VISION and Team Yandex have been priced as genuine contenders rather than dark horses, with BoomBoys and Aurora Gaming close by. Xtreme Gaming are the interesting case. They lost the 2025 final 3-2 and would normally be shorter, but Chinese teams playing a home International carry a crowd factor that bookmakers price cautiously and bettors tend to overrate.

The practical advice: 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.

Why the Prize Pool Is $2.5M and Not $40M

In 2021 The International paid out over $40 million. This year it is $2,594,491. 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, which added $994,491 this year.

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 is an awkward slot for most of the audience. European viewers get afternoon and evening games, North American viewers get very early mornings.

Phase	Dates	Notes
Group stage, days 1-4	August 13-16	Swiss rounds, all best of three. The elimination round closes out day four.
Break	August 17-19	No matches. Odds settle here, and this is when outright prices are least volatile.
Main event, days 1-3	August 20-22	Double elimination bracket, upper and lower brackets running in parallel.
Grand final	August 23	Best of five.

Daily start times are published by Valve shortly before each stage. To convert once you have them: 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 now, 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 this event, 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.

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.