Game developer Valve has announced that the next edition of The International, Dota 2’s biggest annual esports event, will take place this September in Copenhagen, Denmark later this year.
To celebrate the competition’s 13th edition, the event will take place in Copenhagen for the first time. This is the third time The International will be contested in Europe.
The event’s playoffs will be hosted in the Royal Arena in Copenhagen, a venue known for being home to several notable esports tournaments in the past. This is also the destination for CS2’s PGL Major Copenhagen 2024.
Previous locations of The International include Seattle (United States), Shanghai (China), Bucharest (Romania) and Cologne (Germany).
Regarding the event’s format, only a small amount of information has been revealed. However, Valve did note that 16 teams will compete in the tournament, meaning that there will be four fewer spots to fill than last year.
Valve also mentioned that teams will qualify through a “mix of open qualifiers, regional qualifiers, and direct invitations, similar to how invitations worked for the first few years of the International”.
Interestingly, The International featured 16 teams in 2015 and 2016 and had a similar format for invitations and qualifiers. In 2015, 10 teams were invited directly and six teams were invited in 2016. Valve stated that “the invited teams will be announced leading up to the event, and chosen based on team performance during the year.”
Apart from cementing Copenhagen as one of the top destinations for esports events in the world, the new edition of The International will see the Dota 2 teams return to Europe after taking place in Bucharest in 2021.
