The Dota action has been great this year.
Credit: Valve
Parivision has won the DreamLeague season 29 Dota 2 tournament, after beating Aurora in the grand final 3-2. The victory likely sets them up to receive a direct invitation to The International, the biggest Dota 2 tournament of the year.
After a somewhat underwhelming season for the roster, the victory at DreamLeague comes just at the right time, as the two biggest tournaments of the year are just around the corner. Having won DreamLeague, which in turn sees them finish second in the EPT points leaderboard, and also taken victory at a couple of smaller events over the past few weeks, it would seem that Parivision are now a lock for a direct invitation to The International 2026.
Their win at DreamLeague was not easy, but the team did put on an impressive display to take the title. In the group stage they finished second in Group B, behind NAVI despite both teams having a 6-1 record. That result sent them into the upper bracket for the playoffs, and they never dropped into the lower bracket, winning every match to take the title.
First up on their epic playoff run was Team Liquid, who Parivision took down 2-1, before a matchup against defending TI champions Team Falcons. Despite a game one loss to a Huskar, Parivision bounced straight back with a dominant 22 minute victory in game two that gave them the momentum that eventually allowed them to take a 2-1 win and advance. Against Team Spirit it was a similar story, with Parivison losing game one before bouncing back and dominating the next two to reach the final.
Aurora Gaming was their opponent in the final, and they put up quite a fight. The two teams looked very evenly matched, and traded wins until Parivision took the decisive fifth game to become DreamLeague champions.
In a meta where 60 minute games were common, Parivision only had two maps go over 50 minutes in the 14 that they played in the playoffs. Clearly, they had a strategy that no other team had managed to figure out, that allowed them to close out games early and not end up in the late game stalemate that many other teams found themselves in throughout the DreamLeague tournament.
Now the world of Dota 2 will be focused on the invitations to The International, and the qualifiers that will follow them. Some invites, such as those for Tundra Esports and Parivision, seem to be pretty locked in, but after a season that has seen a lot of teams take LAN victories, there are a lot of teams in contention and likely not enough invites for all of them to get one.
