This year there will be much more prize money for some very interesting reasons - Vasilisa about TI 2026

Presenter Vasilisa 'Vasilisa' Chernova on the YouTube channel “SHE’S IN THE CYBER GAME” shared her opinion about the tournaments of The International series.

Vasilisa 'Vasilisa' Chernova

I will say this: everyone who prioritizes finances and materiality is, of course, cool, cool, cool, but The International still remains the main tournament from the organizers, this is in the first place. The 100% title is much higher [than EWC] because it directly interacts with the same game client. You stay, roughly speaking, in Dota forever and so on.

EWC has its advantages, but they have more advantages for the organization. That is, we have an organization, it plays in millions of disciplines, we get cool prize money. At this point, roughly speaking, we forget. They also have cool storytelling, they have triangles that they break.

But The International is history. History must be valued, history must be respected. Compared to the prize money, we most often discuss this: “Where is our prize money?” Oh, I don’t like financial topics and material topics, to be honest, but this year the prize money will be, I think, much larger for some very interesting reasons. Because in the past there were some restrictions for organizations to create their own content. Now they can attract any people who, let’s say, belong to the organization. The latest news story is Dora and BetBoom Team.

Therefore, I think that our prize money will clearly increase by an indefinite amount of money. But the prize money is not the main thing. [What's the main thing? ] Atmosphere. Do you know what the advantage of this The International is? The fact is that where does it go? [In Shanghai]. Do you know what is not required for this? No visas required. That is, you, me, we - we can take it, go there and see. Because we don’t require visas, we don’t need to fly to another part of the planet. Getting to China is easy. And in this regard, firstly, the occupancy of the hall will be different compared to when it was held in another place.

Availability comes first. If The International were in Moscow, there would be a scolding. Someday we will live to see this. I hope so at least. And it’s the same here. Due to the fact that it is easy to go and watch it all on LAN, and it doesn’t require much expense to, let’s say, watch it all live, it will be much more valuable.

Earlier, Artyom 'Fng' Barshak discussed the prospects of Chinese teams at The International 2026. Caster noted that teams from China have always performed well against European teams.