Along with the six directly invited teams to The International 2017 announcement, Valve has also disclosed the event format and regional qualifiers invites with their respective available slots.

Back in 2013, Valve added the Wild Card competition as the very last chance for a team to join the biggest Dota 2 event of the year. The qualifiers for the main event were split only into so-called Eastern and Western regions. Chinese and Southeast Asian teams fought head to head in the Eastern qualifiers while NA and European squads were placed in the Western ones. The runners up of these two qualifiers would then go into the Wild Card competitions where they played a bo5 series to decide which one of them will go to Seattle.

At The International 2014 Valve made some changes to the format. They cut down the direct invites from 13 to 11 and ran qualifiers in four distinctive regions: Americas, Europe, China and Southeast Asia. The winners of each of the regional qualifiers went to Seattle for TI4 but the Wild Card competition was included in the three stages of the playoffs scheduled ahead of the main event. The runners up from each regional qualifier leg went to Seattle as well and competed in the first phase of the playoffs in a single elimination bracket format from which the winner advanced into the second phase. The next two playoffs stages gave the final eight teams that reached the main event.

With The International 5, Valve cut the direct invites to 10, kept the four regional qualifiers but brought back the Wild Card competition where the runners up from each region qualifier fought for two spots into the event. Also, the group stage ahead of the main event was played only for seeding the teams in the main event’s double elimination bracket, as all the final 16 participants went on to play on the big stage of KeyArena. The International 5 format was kept for 2016 as well, however, the direct invites went down from 10 to 6.

Approaching the seventh edition of the International, Valve decided to stick to six directly invited teams, but changed the tournament format once again. The South American and CIS independent regional qualifiers, upped the regions number from six to eight and dissolved the Wild Card competition as more teams will get to win a ticket to Seattle. 18 teams will compete in two Round Robin groups from which the bottom team of each group will be eliminated.

The regional qualifiers slots for TI 7 are as follows:

The regional qualifiers will kick off on the 26th of June and the teams invited to duel for the available spots into the TI 7 group stage are the following:

EUROPE	CIS
Crescendo	Comanche
Danish Bears	Cyber Anji
Mousesports	Natus Vincere
Penta Sports	Gambit Esports
4 Protect Five	Effect
Team Secret	Team Empire
Singularity	Team Spirit
Open Qualifiers 1	Vega Squadron
Open Qualifiers 2	Open Qualifiers 1
Champions Cup Winner	Open Qualifiers 2

China	Southeast Asia
CDEC Gaming	Clutch Gamers
EHOME	Faceless
IG Vitality	Fnatic
LGD Gaming	Mineski
LGD Forever Young	Happy Feet
VG J	Geek Fam
Vici Gaming	TnC
Open Qualifiers 1	Open Qualifiers 1
Open Qualifiers 2	Open Qualifiers 2
Champions Cup Winner	Champions Cup Winner

North America	South America
compLexity Gaming	SG-Esports
Digital Chaos	Infamous
NP	Elite Wolves
Planet Odd	Midas Club
Team Freedom	Open Qualifiers 1
Team RED	Open Qualifiers 2
WWW	Open Qualifiers 3
Open Qualifiers 1	Open Qualifiers 4
Open Qualifiers 2	Open Qualifiers 5
Champions Cup Winner	Open Qualifiers 6

The International 2017 directly invited teams:

Europe OG
Russia Virtus.Pro
United States Evil Geniuses
Europe Team Liquid
China Invictus Gaming
China Newbee

Don’t forget that the open qualifiers registration have already started on faceit for SEA, European, CIS, North and South American teams and on the Perfect World website for the Chinese Teams.

The International 2017 Coverage HUB

Click here for results, VODs and all the other information

TI 7 format changes: No Wild Card spots available, teams will be eliminated in the group stage