Why this independent fan desk exists

This is a fan-built information desk, run from the Philippines, for the Dota 2 world championship taking place in Shanghai from 13 to 23 August 2026. It exists for one simple reason: the dates, the field, the money and the watching options are scattered across too many places, and a single tidy page in plain English saves everyone time. We are readers first, and we built the hub we wished already existed.

We are completely independent. We are not affiliated with Valve, with the official tournament, or with any competing team or organisation. The official tournament site is named in our coverage so you know where the primary facts come from, but we never link it, and we never pretend to speak for it. Everything here is our own write-up of publicly available information, checked against reputable sources and dated where it matters.

What this site covers

The hub is organised around the things people actually search for in the run-up to the event. There is a schedule page for the stage dates, a standings page for the bracket as it forms, a qualifier tracker for the regional routes, a teams page for the field, a prize page for the confirmed money, a watch-and-tickets page for following along, and a predictions page that treats betting as a guide rather than a tip sheet. Each one is meant to stand on its own.

• Stage dates and format across both Shanghai weekends.
• The qualifier routes, with a Filipino eye on the SEA seat.
• The confirmed prize base, set against Dota 2's history.
• Free official streams and arena ticket notes.

How we keep it honest

Our rule is to print what is confirmed and to flag what is not. When a qualifier is still being contested, we say so rather than naming a winner early. When a number has not been published, we leave it blank instead of inventing one. When a roster is listed under different names across trackers, we hedge. That discipline is the whole point of an independent desk; it is what makes the difference between a useful reference and another hype page.

This site does carry affiliate links to a partner sportsbook, which is how it pays for itself. Those links are clearly marked, and they never change what we report. Betting content is strictly for adults, and we put responsible-gaming guidance front and centre. If you have a correction, the standard is simple: we would rather be accurate than first. The service running at ti2026-philippines.com is editorially independent of any operator it mentions.

Who this is for

The audience we write for is the Filipino Dota crowd: people who already love the game, follow the SEA scene, and just want a clean reference without wading through hype or machine translation. We write in plain English, keep the jargon light, and assume you would rather have the useful five lines than a thousand words of padding. If a section can be shorter, we make it shorter.

We also try to respect your time in small ways. There are no pop-ups demanding an email, no auto-playing video, and no walls of cookie prompts beyond what the law requires. The pages load fast, work on a phone, and link to each other sensibly so you can hop from the schedule to the teams to the prize page without losing your place. That is the whole design brief: be useful, be quick, and get out of the way.