The International 2026 Dates Are Locked In — Here’s the Schedule

Valve confirmed The International 2026 dates this week — October 16-25, in Berlin’s Mercedes-Benz Arena.

Group stage runs October 16-19, double-elimination playoffs October 21-25, with grand finals on the Sunday. Twenty teams across the tournament — twelve direct invites from the DPC, eight regional qualifiers. Prize pool currently sits at $5M base with crowdfunded additions on top.

The bigger story is venue. Mercedes-Benz Arena holds 17,000 and Valve is building out the entire bowl, which is a return to the pre-2022 TI scale that fans have been asking for. Single-day tickets and full-week passes both went on pre-sale this week.

Format-wise, the only real change is the new lower-bracket reseed introduced after the upper-bracket finals. It is a small tweak but should produce more competitive grand finals than the recent edition’s upper-bracket walks.