Image: Valve Software
The International will make its return to Germany after 14 years.
Dota 2 developer Valve Software announced on Wednesday (January 22) that this year's iteration of the game's annual world championship tournament, The International 2025 (TI 2025), will be hosted in Hamburg, Germany.
In a post on the official Dota 2 blog, Valve revealed that the Barclays Arena will play host to TI 2025's Finals Weekend from September 11 to 14. The developer also confirmed that 16 teams will be competing in this year's Dota 2 world championship tournament, with teams earning their spots in the event through direct invites and a series of regional qualifiers.
TI 2025 will see the return of Dota 2's world championship tournament to Germany a full 14 years after the country hosted the inaugural event of the series. All the way back in 2011, the first-ever TI was hosted in the Koelnmesse in Cologne as part of Gamescom 2011 and served as Dota 2's first official reveal, with 
Natus Vincere becoming the first team to claim the Aegis of Champions.
“The stars have aligned and the stage is once again being set for cosmic battle. And this time, that battle has returned to where it all began: Germany, the site of The International's humble debut on the world stage, where it was watched in person by many tens of people. Now, fourteen years later, The International returns to Germany, to Hamburg's Barclays Arena September 11 - 14 — in front of, we trust, a slightly bigger crowd this time around,” Valve said in its blog post.
Based on Valve's statement and the accompanying teaser image, we can also expect TI 2025 to have a theme centered on stars and constellations. And with how they pulled off the ‘circus’ and ‘cathedral’ themes for TI 2024 and TI 2023, respectively, we can expect TI 2025's venue to also serve as a beautiful backdrop for another display of the best Dota 2 esports has to offer.
Aside from the dates and venue for TI 2025's Finals Weekend, Valve didn't reveal much else about this year's Dota 2 world championship tournament. But if TI 2024 – which saw Team Liquid become the third team in the history of Dota 2 to raise the Aegis of Champions for the second time – is anything to go by, we can expect this year's TI to feature three distinct stages (the Group Stage, Seeding Decider, and Main Event) hosted across roughly two weeks of competition.
With TI 2025 still being many months away, Dota 2 fans can tide themselves over with the first set of tournaments for the year scheduled to take place over the next few weeks. The first LAN tournament of the year, FISSURE PLAYGROUND #1 in Belgrade, Serbia will kick off this Friday (January 24), followed by BLAST Slam II and DreamLeague Season 25 in February.
Aside from being our first glimpse at how the hierarchy in the competitive scene will look like this year, the aforementioned tournaments will also serve as the first big opportunities for teams to put on impressive performances to earn themselves direct invites to TI 2025.
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