Christmas is upon us yet again, Dota 2 fans — for The International 12 (TI12) is about to kick off. 20 teams from all over the world have since arrived in Seattle, Washington — the very home of Dota 2 and The International itself. Although the prize pool for this year’s tournament is a mere fraction of what it has been over the past few seasons, the spirit of competition is just as strong as ever.
via Valve
via Valve
If you need to get up to speed on which teams will fight for the Aegis of Champions this year, we’ve got your back. Here is the list of all 20 squads participating in the world championship tournament.
Qualified via Dota Pro Circuit Points
First up, we have the teams that qualified by earning Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) points throughout the season — either through the Major Championships or through the Regional Leagues. These teams were invited directly by Valve Corporation as a result of their overall long term performance this year.
In descending order, these teams are:
(Bold indicates the defending International champions.)
- Team Liquid (Western Europe) — 2,150 points
- Gaimin Gladiators (Western Europe) — 2,140 points
- Tundra Esports (Western Europe) — 1,660 points
- 9Pandas (Eastern Europe) — 1,496 points
- Evil Geniuses (South America) — 1,470 points
- PSG.LGD (China) — 1,284 points
- Shopify Rebellion (North America) — 1,170 points
- Talon Esports (Southeast Asia) — 1,120 points
- beastcoast (South America) — 1,040 points
- Team Spirit (Eastern Europe) — 1,020 points
- TSM (North America) — 900 points
- BetBoom Team (Eastern Europe) — 760 points
From this list, it’s clear that Western Europe is once again the one region favored to win it all at The International. WEU has of course always been one of the strongest regions in the Dota 2 pro scene, so this isn’t a surprise at all. Team Liquid and Gaimin Gladiators in particular are likely to face each other in the Grand Finals at TI12, given how much they’ve played against one another this season.
via Valve
In fact, they faced off in all three Major Grand Final matches this season, something that we haven’t seen probably since Na’Vi and Alliance dominated the pro scene in tandem back in 2013. This therefore puts the defending champions Tundra Esports in a tough spot, as they will have to contend with the sheer consistency and steadiness of the two aforementioned squads.
Qualified via Regional Qualifiers
Next we have the teams that didn’t make the cut above, and had to instead go through their respective Regional Qualifier tournaments. This list contains eight teams in total, coming from the six discrete DPC regions.
The teams that qualified through the Regionals are as follows:
- nouns (North America)
- Keyd Stars (South America)
- Thunder Awaken (South America)
- Entity (Western Europe)
- PSG Quest (Western Europe)
- Virtus.pro (Eastern Europe)
- Azure Ray (China)
- Team SMG (Southeast Asia)
The International is at this point no stranger to Cinderella runs by Regional or Open Qualifier teams. Heck, OG came all the way from the latter to win TI8, so truly anything is possible at the world championship competition. The question now is: which of these hopeful squads will unlock their latent potential and shock the world with an unexpected performance?
The International 12 begins on October 12th, starting with the Group Stage games in the first four days of play. Check out all the action through the official TI Twitch channel.
