The International 2026 — whale money tracker

The story so far

The International 2026 runs 13–23 August at the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai. Sixteen teams opened with a Swiss-system group stage of best-of-three series (13–16 August): the top three advance straight to the Main Event, places 4th–13th drop into an Elimination Round contesting the five remaining playoff spots, and the bottom three go home. The Main Event (20–23 August) is a double-elimination bracket ending in a best-of-five grand final on the 23rd. Valve seeded the prize pool with $1.6 million, and in-game crowdfunding has pushed reported totals to between roughly $2.6M and $2.9M and climbing.

On the server, pre-event favourites TEAM VISION went 4-0 and were first to clinch a Main Event spot. Defending champions Team Falcons — with Sneyking and skiter chasing an unprecedented third Aegis — stumbled to 2-2 and must fight through the Elimination Round. Team Spirit, seeded only #8 in esports.gg's pre-event power rankings, sit 3-1 and are outperforming expectations, while HULIGANI, Xtreme Gaming and OG were eliminated after the groups.

The money followed the storylines. One account, GoldenKot, put $1,000,627.53 on Falcons over GamerLegion — the biggest main-event ticket so far — and collected $0.

Zoom out and the caution flag is the win rate. TI main-event bets are hitting 58.2% — below the 65.6% strike rate across all $70.0M of tracked Dota 2 money — and even at that Dota-wide rate the room is net down $1,501,620.69 (−2.1% ROI), because the wins come short and the losses come long. The exception that proves nothing: back in June a $1,000,627.53 parlay on Team Nemesis in the TI South America Closed Qualifier landed $0 — the biggest Dota 2 stake and payout in the site's records.