The International 2026 Direct Invites Issued and Regional Qualifier Dates Set

Direct Invites

Seven squads have received direct entry to compete for the Aegis of Champions at The International 2026. The invited organizations are Aurora Gaming, BoomBoys, Team Falcons, Team Liquid, Tundra Esports, Xtreme Gaming and Team Yandex.

Aurora Gaming fields Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko, Rafli "Mikoto" Fathur Rahman, Wei Shen "Ws`" Chung, Myroslav "Mira" Kolpakov and Oleh "kaori" Medvedok. BoomBoys consists of Ilia "Kiritych~" Ulianov, Danil "gpk~" Skutin, Matvei "MieRo`" Vasiunin, Vitalie "Save-" Melnic and Vladislav "Kataomi`" Semenov. Team Falcons includes Oliver "Skiter" Lepko, Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak, Ammar "ATF" Alassaf, Andreas "Cr1t-" Nielsen and Jingjun "Sneyking" Wu.

Team Liquid features Michael "m1CKe" Vu, Michał "Nisha" Jankowski, Marcus "Ace" Christensen, Samuel "Boxi" Svahn and Erik "tOfu" Engel. Tundra Esports lists Ivan "Pure" Moskalenko, Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov, Neta "33" Shapira, Matthew "Ari" Walker and Matthew "Whitemon" Filemon. Xtreme Gaming comprises Chunyu "Ame" Wang, Jin Xiang "NothingToSay" Cheng, Jing "Xxs" Lin, Linsen "fy" Xu and Jian Wei "xNova" Yap. Team Yandex fields Alimzhan "医者watson" Islambekov, Ilya "CHIRA_JUNIOR" Chirtsov, Dmitrii "DM" Dorokhin, Martin "Saksa" Sazdov and Arman "Malady" Orazbayev.

Regional Qualifiers

Nine additional berths remain open and will be decided through regional events. Europe will run a single combined qualifier from June 21 to 28 with four slots. China holds its event June 15-18 for two slots, South America runs June 15-19 for one slot, Southeast Asia competes June 19-23 for one slot and North America plays June 24-26 for one slot.

Participating teams in each region include established organizations and additional entrants advancing from open qualifiers. The full field will be finalized after the last qualifier concludes on June 28.

The group stage begins August 13-16 in a Swiss-system format followed by playoffs August 20-23 in Shanghai.