DreamLeague Season 26 kicks off with some team changes

On May 19th, 2025, DreamLeague Season 26 begins. The tournament features 16 teams fighting for their share of a $1,000,000 prize pool, as well as 29,200 EPT Points. However, before the tournament began, a few teams made some eleventh-hour changes – with some giving up their spot completely.

Two teams withdraw from DreamLeague Season 26

Before the tournament was close to beginning, two teams decided to decline their invites, allowing two new teams to join into the mix. Team Spirit was first to withdraw, which was confirmed by ESL on March 30th. Following that, Team Liquid was given the spot, being the next eligible team.

Later, on May 2nd, Tundra Esports announced that they would be withdrawing from the tournament too. Their reasoning was to give the players a small chance to take a break from the constant events throughout the years. In their place, NAVI Junior was the next eligible team and joined the event.

Stand-ins and player changes

While there were not many roster changes, there were a few important ones. Cedric “Davai Lama” Deckmyn made the switch to Shopify Rebellion on May 12th. With that, DreamLeague Season 26 would be his first tournament with the team, playing in the offlane position.

For Talon Esports, they too had a small roster change. While John Anthony “Natsumi” Vargas departed from the team in April, he was replaced by Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon a few days ago. Although, 23savage is on loan from OG, there is a chance that he remains with the Talon roster moving forward.

On May 19th, shortly before the event got underway, BetBoom Team announced a stand-in. Originally announced via Telegram, the team followed up to confirm that Ilya "Kiritych" Ulyanov would remain a part of their squad in place of Ivan "Pure-" Moskalenko for the duration of DreamLeague Season 26.

Finally, Team Liquid also saw a small change for the event. While the change is only a stand-in, Alik “V-Tune” Vorobey would be replacing Michael “miCKe” Vu.

With that, DreamLeague Season 26 gets underway, as the teams begin their Group Stage 1 battles in a series of best-of-two games. The top four teams in each group will progress to Group Stage 2, where best-of-three games will continue into the best-of-five grand finals.