The 8 best mid players at ESL One Birmingham 2026

ESL One Birmingham 2026 is inching closer and closer now as the days pass, with only about four days remaining until the world’s best teams do battle in the United Kingdom.

Yesterday, fellow Dota 2 writer Owen and I looked at the eight best carries coming into the event. Today, it’s time to do the same for the mavericks in the middle lane.

#1 — Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak

The embodiment of one half of Team Falcons’ usual win condition, Malr1ne is the epitome of unorthodox solo mid play. Now an International champion, he plays heroes that you wouldn’t normally expect to go in the middle lane — and that’s what makes him hard for opposing teams to plan for. His hero pool is his greatest strength, with there only being so many hero bans available for his opponents to use on him.

#2 — Danil “gpk” Skutin

The very definition of a high-impact player, gpk has personally carried BetBoom Team to more than a handful of deep tournament runs this season. Even as his teammates might try to throw his hard work away when they really should be winning, he is the one truly stable factor in this roster. He almost never loses his lane, making him an extremely dependable mid laner.

#3 — Ilya “CHIRA_JUNIOR” Chirtsov

CHIRA_JUNIOR is the most recent tier 1 LAN winner on this list, and he was absolutely a big part of why Team Yandex lifted the trophy at the end of PGL Wallachia Season 7. He is improving at a faster rate than I’m sure most fans and experts might have expected, and he may soon become more and more of a focal point of Yandex’s strategy. However, we hesitate to put him any higher than this right now, as he has only proven himself in one tournament so far — and placing him higher might just be recency bias.

#4 — Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov

With his claim to fame as the best Invoker player in the world, opponents always have to respect the possibility of bzm picking up the hero in any given game and destroying them as a result. And with tons of experience and accolades already under his belt, bzm is a proven quantity from the solo mid position. The problem as of late, though, is that he’s not been at his best mechanically — which showed in some occasions at PGL Wallachia Season 7.

#5 — Denis “Larl” Sigitov

Larl is finally back from his period of on-off absences, and thank the heavens for that. He was very solid at PGL Wallachia Season 7, and was often a reliable second option for Team Spirit whenever Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk had an off day. He’s warmed up now after missing some time, and we believe he’s ready to put the world on notice again from the middle lane.

#6 — Rafli “Mikoto” Fathur Rahman

Playing for one of the most rapidly improving teams in Aurora Gaming and trying to keep up with everyone else on the roster is never easy, but Mikoto takes it in stride as much as he can. While he’s not quite at the level of some of the superstar mid laners above him, he played pretty decently at PGL Wallachia Season 7. We did dock points from him for that loss as Monkey King to bzm’s Ember Spirit, which is a matchup that should have pretty much been a free win for the Southeast Asian player.

#7 — Volodymyr “No[o]ne” Minenko

A true veteran of the game, No[o]ne’s career renaissance from the 2024-2025 season should be studied by all pros close to the age of 30. We’re not sure if age has caught up to him lately, though, because he’s obviously lost a step or two this season. That Huskar game of his at DreamLeague Season 28 was the worst I’ve seen from him in a long time, as he somehow merely broke even against bzm’s Ember Spirit in the second group stage. If he can find his mojo again at ESL One Birmingham, though, PARIVISION might just start bringing up their win percentage this year.

#8 — Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng

MOUZ have not looked good in the slightest lately, and we are not absolving MidOne of any of the blame for the team’s failures over the last few months. He can be quite inconsistent in whether or not he wins or loses his lane — and even when he does win, he can sometimes fail to have an impact anyway. Nevertheless, he is more skilled right now than some of the other mid laners in Birmingham, so he barely makes the cut on our list.