Team Spirit has won the title of The International 2026, Dota 2’s main event and one of the largest tournaments in esports. In the finals held in Shanghai, the team defeated the Russian Team Vision (Parivision) with a score of 3:2 in a fierce battle across five maps.
Image source: Team Spirit
The final series started with a confident win for Team Spirit on the first map. In the second game, Team Vision took the initiative and evened the score. The third map was still Spirit, but the opponent responded with victory again in the fourth game, sending the outcome of the game to the fifth map.
On the final map, the two sides were almost evenly matched for a long time, but Team Vision had a slight advantage. However, team spirit gradually turned the tide of the conference, taking control of most of the map and starting an attack with Aegis support. Team Vision took advantage of their opponent’s mistakes multiple times, but Spirit managed to regain the advantage before crushing his opponent and destroying his throne.
This victory went down in the history of the international team. Team Spirit became the first team to win three Valve main events. Previously, the team won the Champions Aegis, the main trophy of the International Invitational Tournament, in 2021 and 2023. Previously, in addition to Team Spirit, the record for the number of championship titles also belonged to OG with two championships.
Team players Ilya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk and Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov also became three-time winners of The International – both played on all three of Russia’s winning teams. Denis “Larl” Sigitov won his second Aegis, and Alexey “not me” Kosmin and Alexander “rue” Filin became international champions for the first time. Yaroslav “Miposhka” Nednov, who won the 2021 and 2023 championships with Spirit, is helping the team this time as a coach, so this is actually his third championship as well.
The 2026 International Invitational Tournament will be held in Shanghai. A total of 16 teams participated in the group stage, of which 8 teams entered the playoffs. In the decisive stage, Team Spirit first defeated Iron Wing with a score of 2:0, and then lost to Team Vision 1:2, advancing to the loser’s bracket. Since then, the team has defeated Team Liquid, BoomBoys and Team Yandex, and took revenge on Team Vision in the finals. Interestingly, the four best teams in The International 2026 are all teams from Russia.
According to the competition results, Team Spirit’s first-place prize was approximately $1.424 million. Team Vision won second place with a bonus of US$435,700, and Team Yandex won third place with a bonus of US$301,500.
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