Who are the new Dota 2 teams at DreamLeague Season 27? – Amaru Gaming, Pipsqueak+4 and Passion UA

DreamLeague Season 27 will see a few team names that will likely prove unfamiliar to most Dota 2 fans — at least to those that mostly follow the tier 1 scene and ignore the tier 2 scene entirely.

There are three teams I can see in the list of participants that fall under this description, with two of them coming from the new DreamLeague Division 2 that came along with the changes to the ESL Pro Tour that were announced several months ago. So who are these guys, anyway? I’ve got the rundown on the new squads that’ll get their taste of the spotlight at DreamLeague.

Amaru Gaming

Formerly known as Chimpanzini Bananini and TaiLung Mafia, Amaru Gaming is a South American roster that has been in the tier 2 scene in that region for quite some time now. They were last seen attempting to qualify for PGL Wallachia Season 6, where they got as far as the grand final match before losing to Team Cobra. They seem to have made up for it by qualifying for DreamLeague Season 27, through the Americas regional qualifier.

Finally confirmed! A new South American organization is in town called Amaru Gaming, formed by the ex-Regional SA Director of beastcoast 🤩

Their roster will be TaiLung Mafia, and they will debut on DreamLeague Season 27 🙌 https://t.co/EmPs1eFgdJ

— Dota 2 South America (@D2SouthAmerica) December 3, 2025

Interestingly, they were also directly invited to the FISSURE Playground 2 closed qualifier, despite playing as Chimpanzini Bananini and being eliminated from the open qualifier in the same tournament. According to the notes on the tournament’s Liquipedia page, it is unclear as to why FISSURE decided on this.

Anyway, team namesake Santiago “TaiLung” Agüero Gustavo is perhaps the most important member of this team. He’s a very young Peruvian pub star, who was born in 2009 — making him 15-16 years old. His Dotabuff profile indicates that he is top 100 Immortal in the Americas, at rank 86 as a mid player.

The rest of the squad is made up of tier 2 mainstays in South America. Oscar “Oscar” Jimenez, Antony “Gardick” López, and the others have all played for different South American organizations before, such as Hokori, Infinity, Thunder Awaken, etc.

Pipsqueak+4

Composed of various European players that have played on different tier 2 rosters before, Pipsqueak+4 is one of those random EU stacks that you see playing in regional qualifiers every now and again.

The most notable player here is Philipp “Copy” Bühler, who played for Natus Vincere between May and July last season. He also played for Nouns Esports before their disbandment in early November 2024, and was on the roster that participated at The International 2024 (TI13). However, Copy has only been playing for Pipsqueak+4 since the first lower bracket round in Division 2, while Estonian mid player “xn丶e” played for the squad before that.

According to the DreamLeague Season 27 rulebook, xn丶e should be invited to the tournament itself, since he has participated in a higher number of series than Copy has to this point. We’ll have to wait and see who ends up attending between the two, but for now, I’m going to assume that it’s xn丶e.

Other notable members include Marcel “Ekki” Hołowienko, formerly of AVULUS and MOUZ, and Ivan “Kidaro” Bondarev, formerly of OG, Alliance, PuckChamp, and Into the Breach.

Passion UA

Full Ukranian stacks are always nice to see, and that’s exactly what Passion UA is. This team is led by Vladyslav “Crystallize” Krystanek (not to be confused with Remco “Crystallis” Arets), who once served as Na’Vi’s carry player between 2017 and 2020. He was touted during that era as an up-and-coming talent from Eastern Europe, once placing fourth with Na’Vi at DreamLeague Season 8 and even making it to TI9 with the same organization.

The rest are more or less unknowns to me, with the exception of Vitaliy “QBFY” Ivanov, who was the Na’Vi captain for a short time in the previous season. He was at PGL Wallachia Season 3 with the organization, where they ended up finishing 9th-11th. I could not for the life of me tell you much about the others, so hopefully they make some sort of splash at DreamLeague Season 27.