Dota 2 Confirmed for the Esports World Cup in 2025

Dota 2 returns to the Esports World Cup in 2025. Image credit: Esports World Cup Foundation

Valve’s popular PC-based MOBA Dota 2 will make a return to the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2025, according to an announcement from organizers the Esports World Cup Foundation.

The Saudi Arabian government-funded, eight week gaming competition and convention is tentatively scheduled for sometime in the summer of 2025, though specific dates for the event have not been formally announced.

Dota 2 joins other games that have been officially confirmed as competitive titles for the Esports World Cup including Capcom’s Street Fighter 6, SEA LTD’s popular PC and mobile battle royal game Free Fire, Tencent’s MOBA Honor of Kings, and Activision Blizzard’s first-person popular shooters, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty Warzone.

We suspect other games that were included in the 2024 edition of the competition will be included, along with a few new entries. Those titles are MOONTON’s Mobile Legends: Bang Bang; Tencent/Krafton’s PUBG and PUBG Mobile;  Riot Games’ League of Legends,  Teamfight Tactics, and Valorant; Valve’s other popular title Counter-Strike 2; a football title (EA FC or Konami’s eFootball); Epic Games’ Rocket League and Fortnite; Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, and EA’s battle royale game Apex Legends, among others…

The 2024 Esports World Cup Dota 2 competition featured a total prize pool of $5M USD, with first-place team Gaimin Gladiators taking home $1.5M, Team Liquid earning $800K for second place, and Team Falcons taking $600K for its third-place finish.

It is unclear how tournament organizer ESL FACEIT Group will incorporate the official Valve-sanctioned circuit it runs for Dota 2 (ESL One, which in turn is part of the ESL Pro Tour) into the Esports World Cup in 2025, but we suspect that a Masters-level event will be announced at a later date. ESL FACEIT Group recently announced that it will host the first major Dota 2 event in Raleigh, North Carolina in April 2025, aptly called ESL One Raleigh 2025. The final Dota 2 event for the company of the year, ESL One Bangkok 2024, is set to take place Dec. 9 – 15, in Bangkok, Thailand, and features an over prize pool of $1M.

The Esports World Cup Foundation describes itself as a non-profit that is funded by a sports grant from the Saudi Government’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, though the event has close and/or working ties to government-owned entities such as the Saudi Esports Federation, Savvy Games Group, and its subsidiary ESL FACEIT Group (which facilitated many aspects of the eight-week event last year).

ESL FACEIT Group is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Savvy Games Group—which in turn is owned by the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund and its Chairman of the board is Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler HRH Crown Prince MBS. EFG is home to tournament organizer ESL, Esports Engine, competition platform FACEIT, and esports and gaming festival company DreamHack.