The International 2018 and the History of The International DOTA2 Championship

The International 6 (2016)

TI6 Venue

March 31, 2016 Valve announced the annual dota2 championship TI6. Open qualifiers started on June 21 with regional qualifiers following on June 25. The International 2016 was also the fourth Major tournament of 2016. The tournament was hosted in Seattle for the 5th consecutive year, 3rd consecutive year in KeyArena. Open qualifier, Regional Qualifier, Wildcard qualifier and Direct Invites decided the teams that will play in the main event. 16 teams played in the main event in a double elimination format over 6 days. The prize pool was a record-breaking $20,770,460.

Wings Gaming played in the finals against Digital Chaos as Wings snatched the Aegis of the Championship emerging as another new champion of the Valve hosted annual event.

The International 7 (2017)

TI7

TI7 began with the online regional qualifying tournaments on June 2017. CIS, China, Europe, North America, South America and South East Asia Regional qualifiers started prior to the group stage event on August 2-5. The main event was held at KeyArena, Seattle with 16 teams. Evil Geniuses, Invictus Gaming, Newbee, OG, Team Liquid and Virtus Pro received direct invitations. 16 teams played against each other for a prize pool of $24,787,916 USD.

Team Liquid played against Newbee in the finals and won the championship by a shocking 3-0 becoming the first team in the history of TI to whitewash a Final.