What to watch this week in Dota 2; DreamLeague Season 23 edition

No rest for the wicked this week in Dota 2. Teams hop from PGL Wallachia Season 1 to DreamLeague Season 23 with matches kicking off today, May 20th. 

PGL Wallachia Season 1 witnessed the return of a formidable Team Spirit with the two-time TI championship team taking the title and trophy after a thrilling five-game grand finals against Xtreme Gaming. 

• Read Team Spirit claim their first championship title of 2024 at PGL Wallachia

But players and fans have little time to catch their collective breath as the action shifts into DreamLeague Season 23. 

Twelve teams will be competing at the last of this season's DL circuit. Of those 12, four teams have been directly invited – Falcons, Gaimin Gladiators, BetBoom Team, and Xtreme Gaming. The remaining eight teams were determined through the qualifiers. 

The teams have gathered in bootcamps in Europe to compete for a share of the $1,000,000 prize pool and and 26,100 EPT points. At this point with no DPC, many expect that the EPT points will be critical for participating in ESL's LANs and might be the biggest factor in determining The International 2024 invites. 

DreamLeague Season 23 will be followed by Riyadh Masters. This will be the least DreamLeague Season before The International 2024. Check out the ESL EPT Pathing and results so far:

• Read ESL Pro Tour 2024: A midway snapshot

Tundra Esports and Shopify Rebellion will both showcase their newly tweaked rosters. Roman "RAMZES666" Kushnarev has replaced Tobias "Tobi" Buchner on Tundra while SR welcomes Andrei "skem" Ong after biding farewell to Thiago "Thiolicor" Cordeiro. Both of these teams desperately want to perform well at the event. Tundra is sitting at 8th place currently, hoping to secure a place at Riyadh. Shopify Rebellion will need to climb a bit higher from its current 11th-place position. Neither can feel comfortable heading into the event. 

The first matches of Group A begin at 11:55 CEST:

HeroicvsTeam Liquid
Gaimin GladiatorsvsPSG Quest
AuroravsXtreme Gaming

DreamLeague Season 23

DreamLeague Season 23 Teams

•  BetBoom Team (EPT Leaderboard)
• Xtreme Gaming (EPT Leaderboard)
• Gaimin Gladiators (EPT Leaderboard)
• Team Falcons (EPT Leaderboard)
• Team Liquid (Western Europe)
• Tundra Esports (Western Europe)
•  Natus Vincere (Eastern Europe)
•  PSG Quest (MENA)
•   Azure Ray (China)
•  Aurora Gaming (Southeast Asia)
• Shopify Rebellion (North America)
•  Heroic (South America)

DreamLeague Season 23 Groups

Group A

Group B

DreamLeague Season 23 Format

• Participants
  • Twelve teams
    • Four teams from EPT Leaderboard
    • Eight teams from regional qualifiers
       
• Group Stage - May 20 - May 22, 2024
  • Two single round-robin groups of six teams each
  • All series consist of two games
  • The top two teams from each group advance to the upper bracket of playoffs
  • 3rd and 4th place teams from each group advance to the lower bracket of playoffs
  • The remaining teams are eliminated
     
• Playoffs - May 23 - May 26, 2024
  • Double-elimination bracket
  • All matches are Bo3
  • Grand Final is Bo5

DreamLeague Season 23 Tournament Prize Pool

• Prize pool: $1,000,000
• Total EPT Points: 26,100