Valve has revealed the direct invitations and slot allocations for The International 2026, and there are already multiple talking points surrounding the huge announcement. For the first time in recent memory, they’ve only invited seven teams instead of eight, but the biggest controversy lies in South America being handed just a single slot in the 16-team tournament. 

It’s safe to say the region, along with its players, coaches, and fans, are not very happy. 

For those living under a rock, Valve recently revealed the seven teams directly invited to The International, with six European teams and one Chinese team receiving the call.

The remaining nine slots go through regional qualifiers. China gets two, Europe gets four, and South America, Southeast Asia, and North America each get just one. That leaves the regional split for TI looking like this:

The idea of having 10 European representatives sounds bizarre at first, but it’s difficult to argue against it when Europe has comfortably been the strongest region throughout the season. Six of those teams also earned their places through direct invitations fair and square. 

However, the rest of the allocation has left a large portion of the Dota community in quite an uproar, as only one team from each of SA, SEA, and NA will make it out of the regional qualifiers alive. 

The biggest injustice surrounds South America receiving only a single slot. Two of the region’s representatives – LGD Gaming (formerly Heroic) and PlayTime (formerly South American Rejects) – have clearly shown throughout the season that they can hang with the big boys. 

The former Heroic roster has been a consistent playoff contender all year long. They kicked off the season by winning FISSURE Universe: Episode 7 and went on to secure six top-eight finishes across the nine S-tier tournaments they attended. 

If you ask me, that’s a pretty good success rate and strongly suggests they have consistently been hovering around the global top 10 for most of the season. 

More recently, we’ve also seen the rise of PlayTime, a squad that started out as the South American Rejects. They only really started getting the ball rolling in early 2026, but they’ve been getting better with every tournament and have proven they belong at this level. 

Sure, they’re a little late to the party, but they managed to claim an EWC invite in such a short time, which really says a lot – you can’t really fluke your way through the EPT Leaderboards. 

So, why are people complaining about the slot distribution? The main outlier here is China receiving three slots – one for the directly invited Xtreme Gaming, and two more coming through the regional qualifiers.

Sure, TI will be held in China this year, and the regional fanbase makes up a decent chunk of the Dota 2 playerbase. However, many, including myself, believe three slots is a step too far. 

Community stats expert and Team Liquid Technical Director Ben “Noxville” Steenhuisen recently posted a screenshot of DatDota’s Glicko 2 ratings for the top Dota 2 teams.

From the data, it’s clear to see Xtreme Gaming sit comfortably inside the top ten, with Vici Gaming – the only other competitive Chinese team this season – trailing at around 15th place. On paper, these two teams are completely justified to play at TI – I have absolutely no issues here. 

The concern comes with the third representative. China’s third-best team – Yakult Brothers – sits all the way down in 24th place. In a 16-team tournament of TI’s scale, it’s pretty difficult to justify that slot based on what we’ve seen this year. 

While stats don’t tell the full story, Yakult Brothers have qualified for seven S-tier tournaments this year and finished bottom five in every single one. If this is the likeliest candidate to take that third slot, it naturally raises questions about how competitive that slot will be at the actual tournament. 

If Valve had already decided on three Chinese slots well in advance, you can’t really argue with that. However, a compromise was still on the table that could have offered a better solution.

This year, Valve merged Western and Eastern Europe into a single qualifier bracket for four slots, but South and North America remain separate. 

This has effectively handed GamerLegion – a team that hasn’t made a single playoff appearance this season – an almost guaranteed path to The International, simply because they’re the only team in their region. A red carpet was laid out for them to claim that sole slot. 

What Valve could have done instead was merge the two regions into a single “Americas” qualifier and allocate two TI slots to it. That would have made for a much more interesting bracket, with LGD Gaming, PlayTime, and GamerLegion duking it out for two slots. Whoever comes out on top would have fully earned their spots, and nobody could argue otherwise.

At the end of the day, it was always going to be impossible for TI’s slot allocation to make everyone happy. But man, do I feel for South America. Back then, Valve awarded the region two TI slots even though it had only one competitive team. Now, just as they finally have two strong squads, that opportunity has been scaled back to a single representative. That’s just incredibly unlucky timing. 

It also sucks that PlayTime and LGD Gaming as organizations have both invested into these rosters, and one of them won’t even see the light of the TI stage. Considering what both squads have shown this season, it feels really unfortunate that they’re being forced into a gladiator fight for a single spot.