Game developer and publisher Valve Corporation announced on Wednesday that The International 2025, Dota 2’s biggest annual event will take place in Hamburg, Germany, at Barclays Arena with 16,000 seats from Sept. 11-14.
Ultimately, 16 qualifying teams will compete in The International 2025 when it happen in September. It’s not the first time that Barclays Arena has hosted a Dota 2 competition: ESL FACEIT Group hosted ESL One Hamburg 2017, 2018, and 2019 at the venue.
It’s also not clear whether Valve will restart the Battle Pass system for The International this year. Battle Pass is a crowd-funding method to generate prize money from the community for the competition. In the past, 25% of Battle Pass sales would be added to the total prize pool of The International; in 2021 the prize pool for TI reached $40M USD, and became the highest esports prize money single tournament in history. However, in 2024 Valve decided to drop the Battle Pass at The International, and only offered a $2.7M total prize pool money—a substantial decrease from previous years.
It’s also not clear if Valve will continue to shut down the in-game advertisements for teams at The International. Valve applied this policy at The International Copenhagen 2024, which led to controversies and concerns in the community, as the policy decreases commercial value for teams and brand interest in sponsoring Dota 2 teams at The International going forward.
This is the second time that Dota 2’s The International has been hosted in Europe, following the 2024 edition in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is also the second time that The International has taken place in Germany after 14 years, since the first The International was held at 2011 Gamescom in Cologne.
“Now, fourteen years later, The International returns to Germany, to Hamburg’s Barclays Arena September 11th-14th- in front of, we trust, a slightly bigger crowd this time around,” Valve state in the announcement.
More details about this year’ TI can be found at dota2.com.