After extensive consideration of the global health emergency stemming from COVID-19, we have made the difficult choice to delay The International. We have been exploring various date possibilities, but it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021. Given the highly volatile landscape for local gathering restrictions, virus trajectory, and global travel policies, we don’t expect to have enough confidence to communicate firm dates in the near future. In the meantime, we are working on restructuring the DPC season for the fall, and will be providing more information as soon as we have it.

The 10th International prize pool will be funded by 25% of sales of the next Battle Pass, which we are planning to release soon instead of closer to the event itself. However, with our team working from home and things taking longer to complete, the release date of the Battle Pass will be at least a couple of weeks later than usual.

We hope everyone in the Dota community is staying as safe a...

Today’s update features a change to the rank system that replaces the Core/Support separation with a single rank that uses handicaps for each of the five ranked roles, representing your relative strength playing each position. This change will help the matchmaker better account for a player’s different performance levels between various roles. Winning or losing games will modify your single rank.

When queuing for your best role(s), the matchmaker will consider your full MMR. Queuing for your weaker role(s), however, will result in the matchmaker placing you into a match at a lower MMR.

When you match into a game, it will display the adjusted badge levels that were used to match each player. Regardless of which role you queue for and play, the results of the match will affect your actual MMR value.

Your initial levels for each role are calculated based on your previous Core/Support MMR values and analysis of your past 100 games. You can track your current role adjustments in the R...

Starting after TI10, the Dota Pro Circuit will introduce a new system that presents competitive Dota in a more scheduled and consistent way during the year and features a better structure for the development of Tier 2 and Tier 3 teams.

The year will be divided in 3 seasons. Each season will be composed of 6 regional leagues, leading into a Major with the best teams in the world. The Dota year will conclude, as usual, with The International.

Regional Leagues:

Each of the six leagues will feature a prize pool of USD 280,000 per season. Leagues will feature two divisions with 8 teams in the Upper Division and 8 in the Lower division, for a total of 96 teams participating across the world. After each season, the 2 bottom teams of the Upper Division will swap places with the top 2 of the Lower Division. The bottom 2 teams of the Lower Division will be eliminated from the league and replaced with 2 new teams coming from Open Qualifiers to allow for new teams and talent to be introduced into...

Just in time for Lunar New Year and the Rat’s time in the cyclical place of honor, the Treasure of Unbound Majesty is now available.

Packed full of sets for Drow Ranger, Visage, Undying, Storm Spirit, Dazzle, Kunkka, Arc Warden, Dark Willow, and Rubick, this treasure also includes the chance to unbox a rare Puck set, very rare Legion Commander set, or an extremely rare Templar Assassin set.

Available for $2.49 in the Dota 2 store, you can claim one of these treasures as a gift for completing the New Bloom rewards line—which also unlocks this year’s seasonal New Bloom Celebrations and giftable spins on the rewards wheel.

Join the pros who battled in The International Grand Finals — World Champions OG and runners-up Team Liquid (now the newly-dubbed Nigma) — alongside a live theater audience in Berlin, Germany on January 28th for the world premiere of True Sight: The International 2019.

OG made history in Shanghai last August by successfully defending their hold on the Aegis of Champions, becoming not only the first team to win The International in back-to-back years, but the first ever to carve their names into the Aegis for a second time.

Now, fans from around the globe can tune in live on Tuesday, January 28th at 7:00 p.m. CET to see exactly how the story unfolded as the teams themselves relive the epic journey at the world premiere event — hosted by Grand Finals casters ODPixel and Fogged, and joined by The International broadcast stalwarts Kaci and Slacks.

Tickets for the live event go on sale January 6th at 9:00 p.m. CET.

Details:

True Sight: The International 2019 Grand Finals
Live World Premie...

In today’s update, two heads are better than one, and three heads are better than that, as the all-new Flockheart’s Gamble Arcana item for Ogre Magi makes its grand debut.

Featuring all-new custom animations and effects—including a new Firelark mount, Multicast streak counter, enhanced ability effects, and more—the Flockheart’s Gamble Arcana ushers in a new era of Ogre supremacy and bestows even more blessings from the Goddess of Luck. With three heads available to plan cunning new battle tactics, Ogre Magi might just be the most advanced hero Dota has ever seen.

Not content to arrive without fanfare, Flockheart’s Gamble also brings with it a special Frostivus rewards line, filled with a hoard of seasonal delights like gifts, penguin-inclusive celebrations, chat wheel sounds—and even a Winter Treasure.

Win normal matchmaking games to progress along the rewards line and collect your haul. Additional Winter Treasures are available for $2.49, and feature new item sets for Ancient Apparit...

Today’s update unleashes two new heroes — Snapfire and Void Spirit — and unveils the 7.23 Gameplay Update, featuring a host of changes, all-new features, and multiple reworked items and abilities.

Head over to The Outlanders update page for a full list of all the changes now available.

We know that queue times have increased across the board recently, and the most significant factor contributing to this has been the stricter requirements that Ranked Roles imposes on the formation of matches. Prior to the introduction of Ranked Roles, the matchmaker had a wider pool of people to draw upon because of the few restrictions. In the past, when one or more players desired the same role, this conflict was resolved during the game itself, often with unpleasant results. This conflict is now resolved at queue time, but a price of this is that the matchmaker is often starved for players in the least-queued roles. The matchmaker must wait for players in the desired roles to enter the queue, or form sub-optimal matches with the players currently in queue to satisfy all role requirements. Usually the role most in demand by the matchmaker is Hard Support, but this is not always the case, and historically this has varied based on time of day, skill bracket, region, etc.

To address r...

Today’s update is once again centered on improving our Matchmaking system, focusing primarily on fixing issues that arose from our previous update.

We understand that some players, especially at the high end, have experienced a significant drop in matchmaking quality as a result of our recent iterations. We appreciate all of the feedback and match IDs that we’ve been receiving—your input has been very helpful and we hope you’ll continue to give us feedback after this update as well. We are committed to making matchmaking as good as it can be.

Please check out some more detailed information on the different aspects of today’s update below.

High MMR Partying
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Due to the unusually high frequency of matchmaking abuses found in party games in high level matches–we’re adding a new rule to party matchmaking for Immortal ranks to help reduce some of the negative behaviors that have become common at these ranks and to help make solo queuing more viable. For any party that includes an Immor...

Today’s patch brings a few features to Dota Plus in the wake of the Battle Pass season, as well as the addition of all-new item sets for Lion, Slardar, and Crystal Maiden to the Dota Plus Rewards section.

Plus subscribers can now use the Avoid Player feature to exclude unwanted players from their matchmaking pool, get precise stacking info with the Creep Pull Timers, ward more effectively with the Ward Suggestions, and see your total incoming damage breakdown by type.

This update also replaces the old machine learning hero suggestions with the Friends and Foes feature from the Battle Pass, transfers some new Chat Wheel Sounds into your Dota Plus reward options, and adds the ability to customize your Chat Wheel phrases with emoticons.

To top it off, we’ve also introduced the Season 4 Matchmaking Quests and some new hero quests to add some more ways to bump up the number of shards in your stash, and players who queue into the Hard Support role in Ranked Matchmaking can even earn bonus ...

The new Ranked season is here. Today’s blog will go over the changes we are doing as well as areas we are still thinking about. The changes in this update will be rolled out gradually over the next two days as we iron out bugs. The calibration part of the new season will begin this Thursday.

Role Symmetry
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One big observation that we had since the previous update was that matches with misaligned roles had a meaningful impact on game quality. An example of this is when the mid player for one team has the highest rank on their team, and the mid player on the other team has the lowest rank. This tended to cause games to be really volatile and not enjoyable. In the past we used to prioritize rank spread between the two teams as one of the main criteria for the matchmaker to judge success, however as part of this update we are changing its priorities. It will now put a big emphasis on making sure that the roles are more symmetric rather than other criteria. This will also be something...

Road to the Aegis
Congratulations to OG, Grand Champions at The International 2019.

OG rebuffed every challenger and silenced all critics as the first reigning champions in the history of The International to successfully defend their hold on the Aegis of Champions.

After a dominating Group Stage that saw them drop only two games to their fourteen wins, OG squared off against a Newbee squad that was eager to prove themselves on the Main Stage. Newbee eked out a small advantage in the early goings of game one before OG took over and snowballed to victory. The defending champs never trailed in game two, and Newbee failed to kill ana’s Juggernaut even a single time.

Next up would be the stalwart Evil Geniuses, who smashed through OG’s defenses for a convincing victory in game one that saw EG’s top cores at their best. In game two, the teams traded blows for thirty minutes before OG took over and never looked back–taking the win to push the series to a decisive game three in which OG’s an...

The Trove Carafe for The International 2019 is now available, featuring all-new items for Bounty Hunter, Crystal Maiden, Nature’s Prophet, Arc Warden, Templar Assassin, Chaos Knight, and Tusk. In addition, each treasure you open offers the chance to receive a rare item set for Techies, very rare golden versions of the Tusk or Crystal Maiden items, or an ultra rare set for Monkey King.

The Trove Carafe also lets you support your favorite broadcast talent at this year’s event by purchasing autographed versions of the treasure. Select the desired talent from the dropdown menu when purchasing to inscribe their autograph onto the item that you unbox.

Attendee Item Drops

Fans watching the tournament live at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shanghai will once again have the chance to receive special item drops during the Main Event. At First Blood in each individual game, a limited number of exclusive Attendee Treasures will drop, each containing visually-unique versions of items selected from this ye...

Today’s update rolls out the exclusive ‘Majesty of the Colossus’ prestige item set for Tiny at Battle Level 255—along with the ‘Reptilian Refuge’ custom Radiant and Dire creeps at level 182—to fill out the Battle Pass rewards line as we approach The International.

Featuring completely new models for each of his Grow states, plus custom animations and effects for Avalanche and Tree Grab, the ‘Majesty of the Colossus’ can only be earned by increasing your Battle Level to 255 before the conclusion of The International 2019 Battle Pass. Players who’ve already grown to level 255 can claim this item set from the rewards line and roll into the lanes in splendor and style.

To accommodate the release of this new item set, Tiny’s item slots have also been updated and simplified to correspond to his four levels of Grow, and his materials have been optimized to allow for more robust content creation. This means he will soon become available on the workshop, and that artists will only need to focu...

Today’s update delivers the second half of the Summer Scrub, focused on bug fixes and some quality of life improvements just in time for The International.

One of the first changes you’re likely to notice is the implementation of a new version of the customizable hero grid. Players can now create multiple grid presets, each with their own unique layouts and categories. You can drag and drop heroes around the grid and rename or resize different buckets to suit your needs for any situation.

We’ve also added a new alternate layout for the in-game item shop that allows you to toggle the classic column view to a new grid-style layout that retains the Basic and Upgrade sections while adding multiple grouped sub-categories for ease of use.

On the game side, we decided to do a little house cleaning related to players exploiting matchmaking, botting or transferring accounts, resulting in a fresh ban wave for cheaters today. We’ve also made multiple performance improvements focused on minimiz...

The International Group Stage is almost upon us. As the teams, fans, and broadcast crews make their final preparations for the crowning esports event of the year, it’s time to unveil some of the final details for everyone watching.

Tournament News

Head over to the in-game Compendium for a complete list of Casters and Talent for this year’s event. Don’t forget to fill out your predictions for hero picks, team results, player performance, and tournament meta. Predictions lock before the start of Group Stage play.

We’ve also launched the official tournament website for The International 2019 as a hub for keeping up with the daily tournament proceedings. As the Group Stage and Main Event progress, you’ll be able to see updated standings and new social media content posted each day from Shanghai.

• Group Stage: August 15th – August 18th, 2019 – As before, two best-of-two groups of nine teams. Top four teams in each group advance to Upper Bracket, five – eight advance to Lower Bracket, botto...