The International 2026's Group Stage opened with all favoured teams emerging victorious.
The International (TI) 2026 kicked off on Thursday (13 August), with 16 of the best Dota 2 teams in the world beginning their campaigns to claim this year's Aegis of Champions in the tournament's Group Stage.
The TI 2026 Group Stage pits the participating teams into a Swiss-system with best-of-three matches across five rounds of play from 13 to 16 August. At the end of the Group Stage, the Top 3 teams will advance directly to the Playoffs, the fourth to 13th-placed teams will proceed to the Elimination Round, while the bottom three teams will be eliminated early.
Eastern European juggernauts 
TEAM VISION (aka PARIVISION) and 
BoomBoys (aka BetBoom Team) reigned supreme in the opening day of the Group Stage after winning both of their matches and advancing to round three with 2-0 records. Defending champions 
Team Falcons, South America's 
LGD Gaming as well as Western Europe's 
Iron Wing (aka 1w Team) and 
Nigma Galaxy ended the day with 1-1 standings. Meanwhile, China's 
Team Resilience and Southeast Asia's 
OG lost both of their matches in the first two rounds and fall to the 0-2 bracket.
Read on as we break down all of the action in Day 1 of the TI 2026 Group Stage.
TEAM VISION, BoomBoys start strong in opening day of TI 2026
The opening day of TI 2026 saw all 16 teams play in round one of the Group Stage, followed by the first half of round two featuring eight teams.
Europe notably reigned supreme in day one, with all Western and Eastern European squads winning against all the other regions. But while the day's results panned out as many expected, this is not to say that the games themselves were all one-sided. Of the 29 games played in day one, eight were decided past the 60-minute mark.
Round one of the Group Stage opened with Falcons spoiling 
Topias Miikka “Topson” Taavitsainen's debut with LGD in a 2-1 reverse sweep. Iron Wing and BoomBoys then swept Nigma Galaxy and OG, respectively. Eastern Europe's 
Aurora Gaming and 
Team Yandex also dispatched 
GamerLegion and 
HULIGANI.
Meanwhile, the Chinese teams suffered a poor start in their campaign on home soil. 
Xtreme Gaming were swept by 
Team Spirit while 
Vici Gaming fell to 
Team Liquid. Resilience had by far the best performance out of all the home teams, as they managed to take a game away from the biggest favourites to win the tournament in a 2-1 loss to VISION.
In round two, the first match between teams with a 0-1 record saw LGD pull off a 2-1 reverse sweep over Resilience in a hard-fought grinder of a series that totaled a whopping 212 minutes of game time. Resilience won the series opener in 65 minutes, but LGD forced a decider after winning the 76-minute game two then sealed the deal by outlasting their Chinese opponents in 71 minutes.
The other 0-1 matchup then featured fan-favourite squads Nigma Galaxy and OG. Nigma Galaxy improved to a 1-1 record and dropped OG to the 0-2 bracket by outlasting their Filipino opponents in 53 minutes in game one and 74 minutes in game two.
Over in the 1-0 matches, BoomBoys became the first team to secure a 2-0 record after they defeated Iron Wing in three games. The day then closed with a highly-anticipated showdown between defending champions Falcons and tournament favourites VISION. Falcons decisively won the series opener in 44 minutes before VISION tied up the series with a 51-minute win in game two.
VISION looked like they would secure an easy victory in game three, but Falcons put up a stubborn defense and pushed the game well past the hour mark. In what would be the longest game of TI 2026 so far, VISION ground down Falcons after a whopping 94 minutes of action to secure the 2-1 series victory and advance into round three with a 2-0 record.
What's next in the TI 2026 Group Stage?
Day two of the TI 2026 Group Stage will open with the remaining matches in round two. The 1-0 matches will feature Spirit taking on Aurora and Yandex facing off against Liquid. Meanwhile, the 0-1 matches will see Xtreme matched up with GamerLegion and Vici Gaming in a showdown with HULIGANI.
After that, the Group Stage will proceed to round three, which will include two matches featuring teams with 2-0 records, four matches for the 1-1 teams, and two matches for the lowly 0-2 teams. Here are the confirmed matchups for round three so far:
2-0 matches:
- TEAM VISION vs BoomBoys
1-1 matches:
- Team Falcons vs Iron Wing
- LGD Gaming vs Nigma Galaxy
0-2 matches:
- OG vs Team Resilience
TI 2026 Group Stage Day 1 results
Round 1
- Team Falcons 2-1 LGD Gaming
- Iron Wing 2-0 Nigma Galaxy
- BoomBoys 2-0 OG
- TEAM VISION 2-1 Team Resilience
- Team Spirit 2-0 Xtreme Gaming
- Team Liquid 2-0 Vici Gaming
- Aurora Gaming 2-0 GamerLegion
- Team Yandex 2-0 HULIGANI
Round 2
1-0 matches:
- TEAM VISION 2-1 Team Falcons
- BoomBoys 2-1 Iron Wing
0-1 matches:
- LGD Gaming 2-1 Team Resilience
- Nigma Galaxy 2-0 OG
What is The International 2026?
TI 2026 will be this year's iteration of Dota 2's annual world championship tournament, taking place in August in Shanghai, China. As with previous iterations of the tournament, TI 2026 will feature a total of 16 teams that earn their spots in the tournament by receiving direct invites or earning slots through regional qualifiers.
The list of directly-invited teams to TI 2026 include Aurora Gaming, BoomBoys (aka BetBoom Team), Team Falcons, 
Team Liquid, Iron Wing (aka 1w Team), Xtreme Gaming, and Team Yandex. Meanwhile, the teams that earned their spots through the regional qualifiers include European qualifier winners Team Spirit, TEAM VISION (aka PARIVISION), HULIGANI, and Nigma Galaxy, North American qualifier winner GamerLegion, Southeast Asian qualifier winner OG, South American qualifier winner 
LGD Gaming, as well as Chinese qualifier winners Vici Gaming and Team Resilience.
TI 2026's main event will be hosted in the Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai. Valve first announced that Shanghai will host TI 2026 during last year's world championship tournament, where Team Falcons claimed the Aegis of Champions after defeating China's Xtreme Gaming in the five-game grand finals.
This will mark the second time that Shanghai will host TI after TI 2019, where Western Europe's OG became the first-ever two-time TI champions after defeating Team Liquid in four games to claim the grand prize of US$15.6 million, out of the US$34.3 million prize pool.
TI 2026 will be split into two phases: the ‘Road to The International’ and ‘The International’ main event. The Road to The International will be a Swiss-style Group Stage from 13 to 16 August, where the 16 teams will be cut down to the final eight that will play in the game's biggest stage from 20 to 23 August in Shanghai's Oriental Sports Center.
TI 2026's prize pool follows that of previous editions, with a US$1.6 million base prize pool that will then be boosted through sales of the TI 2026 Compendium.
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