It’s been a really wild week in Dota 2. We have all sorts of stuff happening, from one of the largest Dota teams leaving, underdog teams leaving good impressions, and a familiar face up to his usual tricks.

Here’s everything that went down in this Dota 2 week that we think you should know about. Or that just happened to entertain us.

1,953 days, a TI victory, nine S-tier titles, and $14.8 million in prize money later – Tundra Esports has officially decided to pull the plug and exit the Dota 2 scene. 

It’s really concerning that the London-based organization was arguably the most successful squad of the 2026 season. They’ve won four S-tier titles – the most of any team this season – and earned themselves direct invites to both the Esports World Cup and The International, and they still couldn’t make it work.

The organization hasn’t specified a reason for its exit, but the roster will at least stay intact. 1win Team has acquired the players, meaning Neta “33” Shapira and company will play under a new tag for the rest of the season. 

It’s no surprise a squad like the Tundra boys quickly found a new home, but the optics really aren’t great. We’ve already seen paiN Gaming and HEROIC leave this year due to sustainability concerns, but those were mid-sized organizations with middling teams. 

Tundra was – and if we ignore recency bias, still is – the best team in the world this year. If an org as successful as Tundra decides the scene is no longer worth investing in, I wonder what that means for everyone else. 

I think we can all agree that Dota 2 esports isn’t on its best trajectory right now, and if Valve isn’t going to step in, the scene will have to figure it out on its own. Betting companies like 1win have become increasingly visible in the ecosystem, whether they’re funding teams through sponsorships or straight up owning them. 

Now, I’m not saying it’s a great solution, but it’s very possible that Dota 2 will have to lean more heavily on gambling sponsors in the near future. I don’t think it’s the most glamorous look for the scene, but with orgs continuing to drop like flies, that might simply be the reality we’re heading toward.

Whether that’s a good thing is an entirely different conversation.

Speaking of betting site orgs, Vitalie “Save-” Melnic has recently hit a milestone of 1,000 maps played under the BetBoom Team banner. He’s been a constant presence on this team since the 2023 season, weathering every roster shuffle thrown at him.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for BB Team, as they actually started out pretty rough. In Save-’s first year, the team couldn’t secure any notable results, but he stuck with them through thick and thin. 

Things started clicking in 2024, with three second-place finishes at S-tier events before the team finally won their first Tier 1 trophy at BLAST Slam I in December 2024, which was also his first LAN trophy. Three more S-tier titles followed, including a recent win at PGL Wallachia Season 8 just two months ago – bringing the BetBoom Team’s trophy count to four, all of which Save- has been a part of. 

In my opinion, Save- has always been one of the most mechanically skilled position four players in the scene, and it’s been like that for a while. This guy is a monster, and I’d go as far as to say he made this team. 

Only a couple of soft support players can rival him, and we’re only talking about the super veterans like Andreas “Cr1t-” Nielsen and Samuel “Boxi” Svahn. Save- easily clears all his new blood counterparts – except for maybe Edgar “9class” Naltakian – in both mechanics and experience.

To commemorate his milestone and loyalty to the team, Save- was gifted a custom 1,000-map BetBoom jersey. He’s definitely one of the most underrated players in the scene. 

With growing concerns about the esports scene, it’s important for players to treasure opportunities and make the most out of them – and that’s exactly what the former HEROIC boys are doing after LGD Gaming put their trust in them. 

Despite entering BLAST Slam 7 as one of the more middling teams, LGD Gaming is playing with no fear and tore through the group stage. The South Americans won 8 out of 11 matches, landing them the top spot in the entire bracket in such a stacked tournament. They’ve even earned themselves a fast pass to the second round of the upper bracket.

Not only do they have to fly to Copenhagen for the rest of BLAST Slam 7, but the LGD Gaming guys are also grinding out the qualifiers for the Esports World Cup. Since they’re currently bootcamping in Europe for BLAST, they registered for the Western European qualifiers instead. 

So, they’re playing qualifiers in the middle of a million-dollar event, and got the job done with ease. They rolled everyone in the qualifiers, taking down NAVI 2-1 in the upper bracket final to secure their spot at the Esports World Cup. 

While LGD Gaming is thriving and headed to the playoffs at BLAST Slam, GLYPH unfortunately got the shorter end of the stick. They’re an unsponsored Southeast Asian stack that dug into their own pockets to compete at this event.

As expected, GLYPH ended up as cannon fodder and was eliminated in last place with a 2-9 record. And though they were sent packing earlier than they’d like, they at least gave us one of the best clips of the year so far. 

In their Best of 1 against Tundra Esports, now 1win, Tri “Jhocam” Kuncoro’s Rubick stole Techies’ Proximity Mines and planted a minefield around the Twin Gate, which is a pretty common strat. 

Tundra was smoked up as four, looking to take the gate to the opposite side of the map and look for a pickoff. Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov’s Puck was sent through first, with the rest of the team right behind him.

After completing the teleportation, bzm immediately heard Mines going off and quickly reacted with Phase Shift to dodge the potential explosions. However, the rest of the team didn’t react in time, got blown up by six mines, and died instantly. 

This is hands-down one of the funniest plays we’ve seen this year, and GLYPH will at least be remembered for that. 

The infamous David “Parker” Nicho Flores is back with another band of brothers. This fella is notoriously known for being one of the most skilled carry players in the world, but can’t muster enough professionalism to stay on a team for more than three months.

However, he’s really proficient at forming stacks and carrying them through South American qualifiers for big events. He’s running it back with Estar Backs, where he’s currently competing for a spot in the Esports World Cup – and his chances are as high as they can get. 

South America has two big teams: LGD Gaming and PlayTime. As we covered earlier, the former is playing in the Western European qualifier for this event, while the latter has already secured their spot via direct invite.

So, Parker and the boys only have to go through Team Nemesis as the only worthy opponent. And with how oddly good Parker is at farming qualifiers, their odds look pretty darn good. 

The Estar Backs roster is as follows:

Are we going to get another repeat of the South American Rejects story? Only time – or whether Parker has finally learned his lessons – will tell.

Valve has revealed the direct invitations and slot allocations for The International 2026, and there are already multiple talking points surrounding the huge announcement. For the first time in recent memory, they’ve only invited seven teams instead of eight, but the biggest controversy lies in South America being handed just a single slot in the 16-team tournament. 

It’s safe to say the region, along with its players, coaches, and fans, are not very happy. 

For those living under a rock, Valve recently revealed the seven teams directly invited to The International, with six European teams and one Chinese team receiving the call.

The remaining nine slots go through regional qualifiers. China gets two, Europe gets four, and South America, Southeast Asia, and North America each get just one. That leaves the regional split for TI looking like this:

The idea of having 10 European representatives sounds bizarre at first, but it’s difficult to argue against it when Europe has comfortably been the strongest region throughout the season. Six of those teams also earned their places through direct invitations fair and square. 

However, the rest of the allocation has left a large portion of the Dota community in quite an uproar, as only one team from each of SA, SEA, and NA will make it out of the regional qualifiers alive. 

The biggest injustice surrounds South America receiving only a single slot. Two of the region’s representatives – LGD Gaming (formerly Heroic) and PlayTime (formerly South American Rejects) – have clearly shown throughout the season that they can hang with the big boys. 

The former Heroic roster has been a consistent playoff contender all year long. They kicked off the season by winning FISSURE Universe: Episode 7 and went on to secure six top-eight finishes across the nine S-tier tournaments they attended. 

If you ask me, that’s a pretty good success rate and strongly suggests they have consistently been hovering around the global top 10 for most of the season. 

More recently, we’ve also seen the rise of PlayTime, a squad that started out as the South American Rejects. They only really started getting the ball rolling in early 2026, but they’ve been getting better with every tournament and have proven they belong at this level. 

Sure, they’re a little late to the party, but they managed to claim an EWC invite in such a short time, which really says a lot – you can’t really fluke your way through the EPT Leaderboards. 

So, why are people complaining about the slot distribution? The main outlier here is China receiving three slots – one for the directly invited Xtreme Gaming, and two more coming through the regional qualifiers.

Sure, TI will be held in China this year, and the regional fanbase makes up a decent chunk of the Dota 2 playerbase. However, many, including myself, believe three slots is a step too far. 

Community stats expert and Team Liquid Technical Director Ben “Noxville” Steenhuisen recently posted a screenshot of DatDota’s Glicko 2 ratings for the top Dota 2 teams.

From the data, it’s clear to see Xtreme Gaming sit comfortably inside the top ten, with Vici Gaming – the only other competitive Chinese team this season – trailing at around 15th place. On paper, these two teams are completely justified to play at TI – I have absolutely no issues here. 

The concern comes with the third representative. China’s third-best team – Yakult Brothers – sits all the way down in 24th place. In a 16-team tournament of TI’s scale, it’s pretty difficult to justify that slot based on what we’ve seen this year. 

While stats don’t tell the full story, Yakult Brothers have qualified for seven S-tier tournaments this year and finished bottom five in every single one. If this is the likeliest candidate to take that third slot, it naturally raises questions about how competitive that slot will be at the actual tournament. 

If Valve had already decided on three Chinese slots well in advance, you can’t really argue with that. However, a compromise was still on the table that could have offered a better solution.

This year, Valve merged Western and Eastern Europe into a single qualifier bracket for four slots, but South and North America remain separate. 

This has effectively handed GamerLegion – a team that hasn’t made a single playoff appearance this season – an almost guaranteed path to The International, simply because they’re the only team in their region. A red carpet was laid out for them to claim that sole slot. 

What Valve could have done instead was merge the two regions into a single “Americas” qualifier and allocate two TI slots to it. That would have made for a much more interesting bracket, with LGD Gaming, PlayTime, and GamerLegion duking it out for two slots. Whoever comes out on top would have fully earned their spots, and nobody could argue otherwise.

At the end of the day, it was always going to be impossible for TI’s slot allocation to make everyone happy. But man, do I feel for South America. Back then, Valve awarded the region two TI slots even though it had only one competitive team. Now, just as they finally have two strong squads, that opportunity has been scaled back to a single representative. That’s just incredibly unlucky timing. 

It also sucks that PlayTime and LGD Gaming as organizations have both invested into these rosters, and one of them won’t even see the light of the TI stage. Considering what both squads have shown this season, it feels really unfortunate that they’re being forced into a gladiator fight for a single spot.