Guide to the fantasy league The International 2026 in Dota 2: best players, teams, titles and indicators

On July 31, Dota 2 received a long-awaited update with Compedium ahead of The International 2026. And a fantasy league has reappeared in it, in which you need to create custom lineups of players. The editors have prepared a guide for those who want to try to get to the top.

All information on the fantasy league

The rules and mechanics have remained virtually unchanged: as in previous years, everyone can form their own fantasy lineup, thanks to which points will be awarded depending on the teams’ performance at The International 2026. There are changes, but they are not drastic. Nevertheless, first things first.

Now you need to choose not just an individual player, as was the case in past years, but also duets - points will be awarded for both players. For example, if in the cores you choose PARIVISION (aka Team Vision), then Satanic and Noticed will bring you points - the duo is formed from a carry and an offlaner. The same rule works with supports - there will be a pair of “four” and “five”. With the central corridor, everything is as always - you choose only one player.

Team formation is the basis of the entire fantasy league in Dota. And it is divided into two stages: group (from August 13) and playoffs (from August 20). Each stage has its own composition. Participants, unless they are eliminated, will earn points throughout the stage. If you change your mind and want to change players, then before securing (August 12 for groups, August 19 for playoffs) you can choose another team at any time.

Essentially, the banner is a collection of all your emblems - options, divided by color (red, blue and green). For example, in the case of CHIRA_JUNIOR, these are three cells: with gold per minute, caretakers and stun. What do these colors represent?

• Red - kills, deaths, creeps, gold per minute, collection of crazy ores and destruction of towers;
• Blue - wards, camp stacks, runes, capturing caretakers, using Smoke of Deceit and collecting lotuses;
• Green - team battles, stuns, shedding first blood, killing Harrowers, Roshan and couriers.

The colors of the emblems on the banner depend on the player's role and cannot be changed. You can only roll individual indicators. And with them everything is a little more complicated, since each of them has its own scoring. The numbers and values ​​for certain actions look like this:

This is a percentage bonus to the base fantasy score, which boosts points from kills, deaths, creeps and other things mentioned above, increasing them by several tens or even hundreds of percent. The emblems are divided into categories. There are five of them in total:

• I category = 10%;
• II category = 20%;
• III category = 60%;
• IV category = 100%;
• V rank = 150%.

For example, if, conditionally, Satanic does not die even once in a match, and he has an emblem on death with a quality of the fifth category, then he will bring 2,925 points for one card. However, this is not all, since you can increase the flow of potential points with additional properties.

Properties allow you to increase performance under certain conditions. Not always among them there are useful ones for any situation, which is why you will have to roll them. The list of all possible properties with their descriptions is as follows:

• Fractal - increases the indicator of this emblem by 60% if all emblems on the banner have different ranks;
• Beneficial - increases the performance of neighboring emblems by 20%;
• Vampiric - increases the indicator of this emblem by 50%, but reduces the indicators of neighboring emblems by 10%;
• Unique - increases the indicator of this emblem by 30% if there are no other unique emblems on the banner;
• Friendly - increases the value of this emblem by 50% if there are at least three friendly emblems on the banner.

They are also prefixes and suffixes. Their main difference is that their bonuses apply to all selected team members. To replace them, you don’t need to roll anything.

And specifically in prefixes you need to rely on the pool of those players you choose, as well as on the meta. For suffixes, everything is a little simpler, since there is an ultimate “Victory Creator” (+16% in the last possible game of the match), the conditions of which are much simpler than others (there is no such wild randomness).

As for prefixes, if you rely on the results from Esports World Cup 2026, you can take PARIVISION as cows along with Team Yandex supports to add the “Otherworldly” prefix to them:

• Satanic played Lifestealer and Shadow Fiend, but also has Terrorblade, Necrophos, Muerta and Clinkz in his pool;
• Noticed has shown himself on Underlord and Necrophos, while also playing on Doom and Death Prophet;
• No[o]ne can play Storm Spirit , Ember Spirit , Void Spirit , Earth Spirit , Death Prophet and Queen of Pain ;
• Saksa has Shadow Demon, Lion and Muerta in the pool;
• Malady is also not inferior in this regard - it can show off its Undying, Bane and Lich.

You just need to choose better emblems...

In any case, there are many options. Plus, Games of the Future 2026 and 1win Essence II are currently underway, where participants of The International 2026 like Team Falcons, BetBoom Team, Xtreme Gaming and others are also performing. Accordingly, when choosing a prefix, it also makes sense to pay attention to the meta of these events.

Another important point is that when all the games in the specified period come to their logical end, Valve will begin to compare the results - yours and all other participants in the fantasy league. And the higher your position, the more additional Compendium points you can get:

The team composition is fixed at the beginning of each stage of the tournament. A player's score is calculated separately for each of his games, takes into account only the current indicators on the banner and is multiplied if the conditions from the selected prefixes/suffixes of the coaching title are met. The result of the game is the average score of both players for the roles. The result of the match is the sum of points for the two games with the highest fantasy score. If several matches have passed during a stage, then the one in which the role brought the most fantasy points is selected.

The best emblems and players for them

They bring more points with emblems: death, creeps, gold per minute and the selection of insane resources. The best pairs for some of the important indicators are presented below.

• Satanic (2.76) + Noticed (3.06) = 5.82;
• watson (2.94) + DM (3.39) = 6.33;
• Kiritych (3.25) + MieRo (3.19) = 6.44;
• Nightfall (2.94) + Ws (4.90) = 7.84;
• skiter (2.76) + ATF (5.10) = 7.86.

• Pure (556) + 33 (411) = 967;
• Ame (549) + Xxs (394) = 943;
• Natsumi- (516)+ Raven (384) = 900;
• watson (526) + DM (368) = 894.
• Yatoro (539) + Collapse (343) = 882.

• Satanic (813) + Noticed (584) = 1,397;
• Pure (737) + 33 (631) = 1,368;
• watson (756) + DM (607) = 1,363;
• Kiritych (743) + MieRo (605) = 1,348;
• Yatoro (752) + Collapse (587) = 1,339.

For them, the key indicators are: team battles, runes, creeps and gold per minute. Potential candidates for this role include:

• Lorenof (663);
• bzm(643);
• Nisha (635);
• gpk(634);
• Mikoto (620);
• No[o]ne (618);
• Malr1ne (619).

• Lorenof (442);
• bzm(434);
• Nisha (414);
• gpk(413);
• Malr1ne (405);
• Mikoto (405);
• Larl (397).

The priorities here are: collecting lotuses, installing Observer Ward, using Smoke of Deceit and stacking neutral creep camps. We took the best performance of teams from the Esports World Cup 2026 as a basis:

• LGD Gaming (20.9);
• Team Liquid (18.7);
• 1win Team (18.2);
• Nigma Galaxy (17.7);
• Xtreme Gaming (16.2);
• Aurora Gaming (15.4);
• Team Falcons (14.8).

• Xtreme Gaming (23.4);
• GamerLegion(23.3);
• Team Liquid (21.3);
• 1win Team (21.3);
• Team Spirit (20.9);
• Team Falcons (20.7);
• LGD Gaming (20.6).

It also makes sense to focus on the average duration of team matches when selecting individual players. The longer the match goes on, the greater the influx of points from some emblems. This is important for almost all indicators: creeps, lotuses, wards, smokes, killing Roshan, Harrower, etc. The top teams for this indicator are as follows:

• Xtreme Gaming (48 minutes);
• LGD Gaming (46 minutes);
• OG (45 minutes);
• Team Falcons (45 minutes);
• BetBoom Team (44 minutes);
• Aurora Gaming (44 minutes);
• Vici Gaming (44 minutes);
• 1win Team (43 minutes);
• Team Spirit (43 minutes);
• Team Liquid (42 minutes);
• Team Yandex (42 minutes);
• Nigma Galaxy (41 minutes);
• Team Resilience (41 minutes);
• PARIVISION (39 minutes);
• GamerLegion (39 minutes);
• L1GA TEAM (39 minutes).

Statistics taken from datdota and ru.spectral.gg.

Have you already assembled your team with the goal of breaking through to the top of the best? Tell us who you decided to include and what emblems you chose!