As the day for TI 2026 rolls in, many are wondering who might hoist the ultimate Dota 2 aegis after all. Early this season, it felt like it would be a bloodbath with many contenders, but two teams have now inched far ahead of others. If you’ve paid any heed to this year’s tier-1 Dota scene at all, this pair will be obvious to you.
If you haven’t been in the know, though, this is exactly the right article for you. In this one, I’ll go over a (mostly) stat-based prediction of the 5 teams likeliest to win it all, although the jumps in likelihood isn’t even between them.
Before I proceed, I of course need to declare that these are just my personal findings from another year of watching pro Dota 2.
The Internationals have eluded stat-based (or even momentum-based) predictions more often than not, and this year’s no exception. Treat this as a roundup of who the heavyweights are and why you need to watch them.
5 Dota 2 teams that could end up winning TI 2026
Due to some last-minute legislation from Valve, some Dota 2 teams have adopted an alternate name for the duration of TI 2026.
Without getting into the ethics of it all, this is targeted towards team names that are direct banners for betting organizations. So to clarify things, I’ll put their TI 2026 name, followed by their original name in brackets.
With that said, here are my entries for the biggest contenders in The Internationals 2026.
1) Team Vision (PARIVISION)
Roster: Satanic | No[o]ne | Noticed | 9Class | Dukalis (captain)
Team Vision are the clear favorites going into TI 2026. They have had their most successful year of Dota 2 so far since the formation of the stack.
I could recount the ridiculously flexible carry hero pool that Alan “Satanic” Gallyamov can play to a world-class level (think Yatoro from TI 10 main stage). Instead, I’m going to list how deep Parivision has made it into various tier-1 tournaments in recent history:
- Placed 3rd in DreamLeague S27
- 4th in ESL One Brimingham 2026
- 6th in DreamLeague S28
- Won DreamLeague S29
- Would have made a good showing in BLAST SLAM VII after topping the groups leaderboard, but couldn’t do playoffs due to “complications in travel permissions”
- Won Esports World Cup 2026
Earlier on (mostly last year) they had less consistent results, with notably bad runs in all Wallachia Seasons. Even so, with Wallachia Season 8 this April, they broke the curse for a half-decent position 5-6 finish.
There are a handful of teams who’ve started retracing the traditional Dota 2 strat of creating chaos to enable a hyper-farmer carry. PARIVISION, however, are the easily the best at that playstyle right now. As long as they have Satanic to translate all that farm into concrete results, it will keep working.
With Volodymyr “No[o]ne” Minenko in his indisputable second prime, and peaking right before TI season, there’s no team that will feel confident going up against PARIVISION. The very slim exception, of course, being my second pick below.
2) Yandex
Roster: watson | CHIRA_JUNIOR | DM | Saksa | Malady
Yandex are the natural rival of PARIVISION, and ocassionally even their predator. This is the breakout-hit team of the year, having improved massively over their jokingly self-proclaimed “Tier 1.5” status.
There’s only two tournaments in the entire calender year where Yandex have bombed out with poor results. For the rest, they’ve been an extremely consistent top-4 in this Dota 2 season, having held the 1st-place finishes in the last BLAST SLAM, Wallachia, as well as DreamLeague seasons.
It would be the most predictable sequence of events if Yandex and PARIVISION ended up in the TI 2026 grand finals.
Their fates are interwoven in many ways, some of them making for interesting storylines, too. A few months ago, the two teams swapped their offlaners, and it seems Dmitry “DM” Dorokhin fits into the Yandex fold just as well.
It’s not exactly the perfect meta right now for Yandex carry Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov, as the Terrorblades, Naga Sirens, and Phantom Lancers seem to be squarely out of the picture. Yet, their results have been strong in the 7.41 subpatch despite that.
I have a strong hunch that Yandex might end up winning it all, and it will be my personal TI 2026 Main Stage fantasy pick for that. All they have to do is not pick Enigma for DM.
Now that we’ve talked about the very clear-cut heavyweights of TI 2026, things get a bit dicey from here on out. Yandex and PARIVISION are on a league of their own, and it’s unlikely that they’ll be toppled. If they do get knocked out before the upper bracket finals, though, many new heads can rear up to the ocassion.
3) Team Falcons
Roster: skiter | Malr1ne | ATF (captain) | Cr1t- | Sneyking
If you’re the type of Dota 2 fan that only comes back on their annual revisit in TI season, you might be wondering why the defending champions from last year’s TI are third. You’d be surprised to know that calling them the third favorites might be construed a hot take right now.
Considering how scary they were to face last TI, the Falcons trajectory has been divebombing all right. They won the tier-1 FISSURE event right after TI 2025, and also were the runners-up in BLAST SLAM IV.
There on out, it’s all disappointing turnouts for an Aegis-defending roster in Dota 2.
Their best result was in the warm-up tournament 1Win Essence II from just a few days ago. This was a gauntlet without PARIVISION or Yandex, but they did manage to get to the finals, only to get walloped 3-0 by Team Liquid, who were themselves looking bent out of shape previously this season.
So, circling back, why are they still placed highly on my projected Dota 2 TI 2026 contenders ranking? I boil it down to two reasons.
First and foremost, 7.41e seems to be another Falcons patch. Picking absurdly tanky heroes and building Heart of Tarrasque is the trend creeping up on TI 2026, and strength cores are the most definitive signature of Team Falcons.
Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf specials like Mars and Razor are not considered pickworthy, but he can also do Timbersaw and Doom relatively well, and will Falcons opponents a few target-bans.
Meanwhile, position 4 Andreas “Cr1t” Nielsen has drawn the biggest end of the stick in TI 2026, as both Hoodwink and Clockwerk are at a premium. So is Earth Spirit, something they can flex between Cr1t and midlaner Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak should they get it.
The second factor is thier coach, Aui_2000.
Team Falcons have made some experiments recently with mixed results, including the borderline suspcious back-to-back mid Centaur in the 1Win Essence finals. I don’t want to directly say that coach Aui has been saving strategies, but I have a strong hunch we are going to see some new Falcons tech to supersede the old Sand King x Hoodwink classic.
Ultimately, they’ve proven themselves to be an extremely resilient team capable of adapting to playoffs matchup developments. If they don’t have the misfortune of facing Aurora and getting trounced in an elimination series again, they can crawl their way back to the finals, and might keep the Aegis this year.
4) BoomBoys (BetBoom Team)
Roster: Kiritych | gpk | MieRo` | Save- (captain) | Kataomi
On paper, BetBoom are the third-place crowd favorites rather than Falcons. After their decent results in TI 2025, they kicked their carry promptly, and picked up a more stable replacement in Ilya “Kiritych” Ulyanov.
Based on results, the move has unquestionably worked out for them.
Sure, they have dropped some random games throughout the year, and got an early exit from ESL One Birmingham. As a counterpoint, the trend has been favorable closer to TI season.
Most notably, they were the runners-up in Esports World Cup 2026. In grand finals game 1 against PARIVISION, they in fact looked like the best team in the world for a hot minute (before they got beaten back in a 1:3 series loss).
With volatile X-factor of ex-carry Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko out of the equation, current-day BetBoom is probably the best at winning without idiosyncratic gimmicks. They play straightforward and fair Dota 2, win their laning match-ups by individual outplays, and then carve out an advantage from there.
The only impediment is, of course, their propensity to tilting in dire circumstances. If they get the mental game in check, BetBoom could actually take on Yandex or PARIVISION head-on at TI 2026 without clear draft advantages.
5) Aurora Gaming
Roster: Nightfall | Mikoto | Ws | Mira | Kaori
Going from the 4th (BetBoom) to 5th position in this ranking is going to be a big jump of confidence. I am placing Aurora as the 5th likeliest, but the stars need to really lock in and align for them.
First, for the annual visitors, the quick summary. They’re very different from the Aurora you’ve seen in last year’s TI. They’ve gradually rebuilt their entire roster around Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko, and it’s stabilized more than I would have guessed going into 2026.
Aurora has strong individual talent juicing up their metrics (their carry and offlaner are the rank 1 and 2 on the EU leaderboards as I write this). Moreover, Nightfall has improved his individual game a lot in this season, and this might be the tournament where he peaks.
If you ignore the shocking upset and early exit in EWC 2026 at the hans of Rune Eaters, Aurora also had decent showing this year on average. This includes back-to-back second place finishes in Wallachia 8 and a DreamLeague S29. The latter was a very close best-of-five against tournament favorite PARIVISION, too.
Other than my hopeful dreams of Nightfall peaking, there’s a few other factors going for them in TI 2026.
Firstly, the trending Dota 2 midlaners for the TI meta are specialties for Rafli Fathur “Mikoto” Rahman: Puck, Storm Spirit, Ember Spirit, Pangolier, and Invoker. If Chung “WS” Wei Shen doesn’t get his hands on offlane Timbersaw, this leaves him more room to perform on his lesser-played meta options.
Secondly, once they reach the playoffs, they have two-time TI champ Myroslav “Mira” Kolpakov to be the X-factor for their mental game. That saidm, they’ll need some luck of the draw in main stage. Notably, BetBoom seems to have them on speed dial, winning most recent match-ups against them.
Aslo Read: EWC 2026 Dota 2: PTime disqualified as DarkMago and Vintage suspended
What about the Chinese teams (and the rest)?
TI 2026 is returning Valve’s flagship annual Dota 2 tournament back to China after a long time. This means Chinese teams (Vici Gaming and Xtreme Gaming) get the home turf buff, and no doubt some help from the crowd with smoke-ganks.
However, these rankings are mainly done based on the year-round tier-1 Dota 2 tourney stats. There’s also some degree of my personal bias involved that I can’t deny. But even leaving that aside, it’s unlikely that more than one Chinese team will make it out of the group stage.
As always, I’m well-prepared to have my personal Dota 2 TI 2026 group stage fantasy ranks tarnished. No one guessed that Ame’s Xtreme Gaming would become such an unstoppable force in TI 2025 group stages, and that can happen again.
I’ve also not counted for the intangible TI buff factor in Dota. Sleeping giants like Team Spirit (or even Team Liquid, with Nisha returning to form in grand fashion) may awaken at the right moment, carrying group stage momentum far forward.
I will personally root for the South American underdogs LGD Gaming, joined by Topias “Topson” Taavitseinen in short order right before TI 2026. That said, based purely off real Dota 2 game stats, the ones numbered above are the top potential champions.
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Edited by Sambit Pal
