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The International 13 Invites are out, a Dota 2 record is broken
The International 13 (TI13) is right around the corner and Valve has announced which six teams are directly invited to the tournament this year.
Valve also shared the dates for the upcoming regional qualifiers, as well as the slot allocation for each region.
Valve handed out direct invites to four regions
The International 13 invites are Team Spirit, BetBoom Team, Gaimin Gladiators, Team Liquid, Xtreme Gaming, and Team Falcons.
Each of the invited teams has at least one podium finish at a million-dollar event this year. Team Spirit won PGL Wallachia, Xtreme Gaming were champions of Elite League and Games of the Future.
BetBoom Team took second place at both ESL Birmingham and DreamLeague Season 22, Team Liquid took silver at BetBoom Dacha Dubai 2024, while Gaimin Gladiators matched that placement at DreamLeague Season 23.
Team Falcons rounds up the invite list, and their list of trophies would take all day to list.
Interestingly enough, The International 13 invites only include four regions. Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, and MENA. It's fascinating to see that Valve is committed to directly inviting only the best teams to TI13, instead of inviting the best team from each region.
The International 13 will only have one qualifier slot for North America
Teams who didn't receive a direct invite to TI13 have to go through the grueling gauntlet that is the regional qualifiers to book their spot.
Some regions got a lot more love than others from Valve this year, while one region was omitted entirely.
Southeast Asia, China, Western Europe, and South America will all have two teams advancing to the International 13.
Eastern Europe will have one spot allocated to them, the same thing applies to North America.
While it might seem odd for EEU to have only one regional qualifying team, bear in mind that they already have Team Spirit and BetBoom Team at TI13.
North America on the other hand isn't so lucky. No direct invites and only one Regional Slot means that there will only be one NA representative this year.
This is the first time since The International 2 that only one North American team competes at TI.
At least North America has Regional Qualifiers, MENA has been completely omitted as a Dota 2 region, though that is somewhat understandable considering the small pool of competitive teams there.
Falcons will attend the tournament, and the only other MENA teams are PSG.Quest and Nigma Galaxy. Both will instead compete in the Western Europe Regionals.
The Regional Qualifiers will begin on June 9th and go on till June 23rd. For more information on The International 13, check out Valve's official blog post.
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Featured Image Source: Valve
