The first five direct invites to the $400,000 ESL One Fall were handed to teams from South America, Southeast Asia, Europe and CIS.
ESL One Fall is set to take place at the end of the month, from 21st to 29th of August, about one month before the big TI 10 battle. A total of 12 teams will play for a share of the $400,000 prize pool and a shot at claiming the championship title.
As perhaps many anticipated, the Southeast Asia number one team, T1, who has recently taken home the ESL One Summer title and placed second at the WePlay AniMajor, is now headlining the invites for ESL One Fall 2021.
They will be joined in their quest of defending their title by Thunder Predator, Alliance, Team Spirit and Team Liquid. While five more invites are yet to be revealed, it is worth mentioning that from all the squads confirmed to attend the tournament thus far, four of them are also on the TI10 line-up. Team Liquid are one of the European teams that will have to watch the biggest event of the year from home, but before that, they will surely look to redeem themselves at ESL One Fall.
“We are looking forward to giving teams an opportunity to test and sharpen their skills in preparation of TI10,” said Dirk Niemeyer, Senior Product Manager for Dota 2 at ESL Gaming. “But more importantly, we are looking at a highly competitive, $400,000 tournament with top-tier teams and talents. It will be a great Dota 2 show,” he added in the official press release.
While five more directly invited teams will be confirmed over the next few days, the regional qualifiers for the event will kick off this coming weekend, August 7, with the open brackets followed by closed qualifiers happening August 9-11. The closed qualifiers will be held between four squads coming from opens, joined by four more that will receive an invite to the closed rounds. At the end of the qualifier gauntlet, the top two teams will advance into the main event.
