Throughout the year, Dota teams around the world battle to prove themselves worthy of direct invitation to The International — and a chance to compete for the Aegis of Champions on the world's biggest stage. Teams that secure invites can begin to focus on their final preparations, while the remaining contenders face one last chance to fight their way in. Direct Invites With less than three months until we raise the curtains on the big show, we’re excited to extend these seven teams invitations to Shanghai, China to compete in The International 2026: • Aurora Gaming [expand type=details] Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko Rafli "Mikoto" Fathur Rahman Wei Shen "Ws`" Chung Myroslav "Mira" Kolpakov Oleh "kaori" Medvedok [/expand] • BoomBoys [expand type=details] Ilia "Kiritych~" Ulianov Danil "gpk~" Skutin Matvei "MieRo`" Vasiunin Vitalie "Save-" Melnic Vladislav "Kataomi`" Semenov [/expand] • Team Falcons [expand type=details] Oliver "Skiter" Lepko Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak Ammar "ATF" Ala