The International, usually shortened to TI, is the yearly world championship of Dota 2, organised by Valve. It started in 2011 at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, and has been held every year since, except 2020, when the tenth edition was pushed back to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below is the full Dota 2 TI winners list from 2011 to the most recent edition in August 2026, with each year's runner-up, host city and total prize pool as recorded by Liquipedia.
Looking across the Dota 2 TI winners list, only three organisations have lifted the Aegis of Champions more than once:
Natus Vincere also deserve a mention. They won the first TI in 2011 and then finished second in both 2012 and 2013, so they reached the grand final of each of the first three editions.
Gaimin Gladiators have the opposite story: runners-up two years in a row, in 2023 and 2024. You can read more about their run in our Gaimin Gladiators team profile.
For the first two editions, the prize pool was a flat $1.6 million paid by Valve. From 2013, players could contribute through an in-game Compendium, later called the Battle Pass, with 25% of sales added to the prize pool. As the game's audience grew, so did the fund:
After that, the money dropped sharply. TI 2022 had about $18.9 million, and from 2023 the prize pool has stayed between roughly $2.7 million and $3.9 million. TI 2023's $3.38 million was the lowest since 2013. In the same year, Valve also cancelled the Dota Pro Circuit, the season-long series of leagues and Majors that had fed into TI, leaving The International as the only Dota 2 event Valve organises and sponsors.
So a TI title in the 2020s still carries great prestige, but the prize money is now a small fraction of what Team Spirit shared in 2021.
TI began in Cologne in 2011 and then spent six years in Seattle. Since 2018 it has moved more often: Vancouver, Shanghai, Bucharest, Singapore, back to Seattle in 2023, Copenhagen in 2024, Hamburg in 2025 and Shanghai again in 2026. The 2022 event in Singapore was the first TI held in Southeast Asia, the closest it has come to Filipino fans.
The Dota 2 TI winners list is interesting background, but it says little about the next match. Rosters change almost every season, and a team's name can stay the same while its players do not. If you bet on Dota 2, recent form, current line-ups and the latest patch matter much more than how many titles an organisation has won. Our guide on how to bet on Dota 2 explains the basic markets.
Betting is for adults 21 and over, and no result is certain. Even the favourites on this list lost plenty of series on their way to the Aegis.
