Guide to all Dota 2 qualifiers in April 2026

ESL One Birmingham 2026 may be in the rear view mirror now, but there’s plenty of Dota 2 qualifiers for everyone to munch on in April. There’s two qualifier tournaments this month for tier 1 events — and with the current competitive season being about halfway done, teams will be clawing and scrapping at every opportunity to stamp their names on these events.

If you’re trying to scope out how to watch, I’ve got you covered. Here’s all you need to know about the April 2026 Dota 2 qualifier tournaments.

RES Unchained 4/BLAST Slam 7 China qualifier

First on the docket is RES Unchained 4: A BLAST Dota Slam Qualifier. Yup, that is literally the name of the series. This qualifier is going to run in a similar way to BLAST Slam 6 qualifiers too.

What you need to know is that BLAST Slam 7 Copenhagen will take three out of the four qualifying teams from RES Unchained 4. Specifically, two European teams (including both Eastern and Western Europe) as well as one Southeast Asian team will qualify for BLAST Slam 7 this way. This was the same for RES Unchained 3 for the most recent BLAST Slam, so nothing particularly new here.

The remaining qualifying team will come from China, but instead of being from RES Unchained, whoever wins there will do so under BLAST’s direct watch. Thus, the Chinese qualifier for BLAST Slam 7 will not have any RES Unchained branding attached to it.

RES Unchained 4 will run from April 2nd to the 3rd, for all regions involved. Notable teams that’ll be there include:

China

• Vici Gaming
• Yakult Brothers
• Xtreme Gaming

Europe

• Aurora Gaming
• MOUZ
• Natus Vincere
• PARIVISION
• Virtus.pro

Southeast Asia

• Execration
• PlayTime
• REKONIX
• Team Nemesis

You can catch RES Unchained 4 on Relog Media’s official Twitch and YouTube channels. Curiously, the only way to watch the Chinese qualifier is through BetBoom’s Twitch channel, as it was for BLAST Slam 6.

DreamLeague Season 29

It’s not even been than long since Team Yandex won DreamLeague Season 28, but already we’re looking at the qualifiers for Season 29. The ESL Pro Tour (EPT) is still ongoing, after all, and I know every professional Dota 2 club out there is looking to score as many EPT points as possible in order to qualify for the Esports World Cup in July.

Unlike the more compact qualifiers for BLAST Slam 7, DreamLeague Season 29 will feature all of the major regions in Dota 2. As of the time of writing, all of the regions involved apart from China are scheduled to run their respective qualifier tournaments from April 12th to the 14th. I’ll update this article once I have more information about China.

As the list of teams directly invited to DreamLeague Season 28 has not yet been revealed by ESL, the list of squads that will have to go through the qualifiers is still unknown right now. As before, I’ll be updating this article when that information comes in, likely within the next several days. What we do know, however, is that two teams will qualify to DreamLeague Season 28 through DreamLeague Division 2 Season 4, which will take place from April 19th to May 1st — so there’s that for now.

PGL Wallachia Season 8…?

Amazingly, PGL Wallachia Season 8 will not follow in the footsteps of the two tournaments in the series that came before it in this competitive season. That is to say that there will be no qualifier tournaments to determine even one or two of the participating teams.

🐺 The lineup is STACKED 🐗

16 of the world’s best Dota 2 teams are heading to Bucharest 🇷🇴 for PGL Wallachia Season 8!

📍 PGL Studios, Bucharest
📅 April 18–26
💰 $1,000,000 prize pool#PGLWallachia pic.twitter.com/nC5hgruaUb

— PGL (@pglesports) March 25, 2026

Instead, all 16 teams will be invited directly to the tournament. Crazy, I know. To my knowledge, this is the first time that organizer PGL will be conducting things this way — looking through each edition of the tournament that has ever existed on Liquipedia shows that all of them had qualifier tournaments. I mean, even Season 7 did, though only with four slots instead of the usual six or eight.

This is a huge boon for teams that have been hot or even just lukewarm lately, because that’s one less qualifier tournament that they have to grind for. This was noted by OG coach Adam “343” Shah in our interview with him at ESL One Birmingham 2026, so it’s nice to know that top squads will be burdened less by the possibility that they might not even make it to the tournament.

That said, it kind of sucks for more up-and-coming clubs. Teams like REKONIX, Yellow Submarine, or L1GA Team would have at least wanted the chance to make it to Bucharest.