Dota 2 Esports — 2026 Schedule

How the 2026 Dota 2 season works

Pro Dota 2 has no league. Valve shut down the Dota Pro Circuit after 2023, and the year is now a series of independent tournaments, most of them in Europe: BLAST Slam, DreamLeague, PGL Wallachia, ESL One and others. Each organizer invites top teams and fills the remaining spots through its own qualifiers, so the best teams play most of the same events.

Valve's The International (TI) is still the world championship. TI 2026 had 16 teams. Some were invited directly and the rest won their places through Valve's qualifiers: open qualifiers from June 9 to 12, then regional qualifiers from June 15 to 28. The event had two phases. The Road to The International, a Swiss-format group stage from August 13 to 16, cut the field to eight, and those eight played the main event from August 20 to 23 at Shanghai's Oriental Sports Center. TI returned to Shanghai for the first time since 2019 and marked the event's 15th anniversary.

The biggest Dota 2 events of 2026

Already played this year:

• BLAST Slam VI (February 3-15, Malta)
• DreamLeague Season 28 (February 16 to March 1)
• PGL Wallachia Season 7 (March 7-15, Bucharest)
• ESL One Birmingham (March 22-29, UK)
• Esports World Cup in Riyadh, with Dota 2 in July
• The International 2026 (August, Shanghai): Team Spirit won a deciding fifth game in the final to become the first organization to win three TIs. Yatoro and Collapse are the first players with three Aegis titles.

Still to come as of early October:

• BLAST Slam VIII (September 29 to October 11): online groups, then a double-elimination playoff on LAN at BLAST's studio in Malta from October 8 to 11, with a $750,000 prize pool.
• BLAST Slam IX (November 20-29): 16 teams, $750,000.
• DreamLeague Season 30 (December 2-13): $750,000, the last big event on the 2026 calendar.

Where to watch Dota 2 tournaments

All the big Dota 2 broadcasts are free. The easiest option is the Dota 2 client: the Watch tab lists live tournament games, and you can open finished matches as replays with full control of the camera and any player's view. TI streams on Valve's official Dota 2 channels. Other tournaments stream on their organizers' Twitch and YouTube channels, and BLAST.tv carries BLAST events with extra stats and player cameras. Russian-language and other language streams are a big part of Dota viewing, and co-streams by popular creators are common. Full series go up on YouTube afterward.

What time Dota 2 matches are on in Eastern Time

Most of the calendar is in Europe, so convert from European time. Malta is six hours ahead of ET, Bucharest seven, and Birmingham five. A noon start in Malta is 6 AM ET, so early playoff days usually start before or around breakfast in the US. Europe changes its clocks on October 25 and the US on November 1, so for that week each gap is one hour smaller. Events in China are 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time, which is why most of TI 2026 aired overnight and in the morning ET.

Tips for following Dota 2

Expect schedules to slip. Dota games have no fixed length, and the deciding game of the TI 2026 final ran 64 minutes, so a three-series day can easily finish hours later than listed. If you missed a match, the in-client replay lets you watch it from any player's view without sitting through the full broadcast. For the rest of 2026, BLAST Slam IX and DreamLeague Season 30 are the events to plan for.