NAVI Junior and Virtus.pro decline TI 2025 Eastern Europe qualifiers invite

Regional slot allocation inconsistency throughout the year and poor communication led to controversies ahead of the qualifier rounds for the most important tournaments of the year.

NAVI Junior and Virtus.pro, two teams that historically played in the Eastern European region, declined the invitation to compete in the said region for a slot at The International 2025. Neither the organisations nor PGL, the tournament organiser, gave any details on the situation. More so, neither team made an official announcement regarding their decision. NAVI Junior even posted on their socials and on their website on May 14, when the invites were sent, that they were going to compete for a shot at the one ticket to TI 2025 for EEU. A few days later, we learnt from PGL that they declined the invite after all.

Qualifiers conundrum - NAVI Junior

There are a couple of reasons for which NAVI Junior changed their mind. To begin with, if they were to play in EEU, NAVI Junior would compete against their big sister team, NAVI.

Through the 2024-2025 competitive season, NAVI Junior played in two regions, depending on who the tournament organiser was. At four out of five ESL tournaments, they played in the Western Europe qualifiers. The only time they played in EEU was in the ESL One Bangkok qualifiers in November 2024.

Through the same competitive season, at all PGL events (Walachia Season 2,3,4), NAVI Junior played in the Eastern Europe region qualifiers. The year before this, they also played in EEU at PGL and WEU at ESL, but their invitation to The International 2024 qualifiers placed them in WEU brackets.

It’s a different story this year, with no reasoning behind the decision. For TI 2025, both NAVI and NAVI Junior were invited to the EEU qualifiers, and to make things more complicated, the EEU qualifiers schedule for TI 2025 overlap with the Riyadh Masters 2025 (the Dota 2 competition at Esports World Cup 2025) regional qualifiers schedule for WEU, where NAVI Junior are expected to play, if ESL is consistent with the regional slot allocation used through the whole season.

• TI 2025 EEU qualifiers: June 4-8
• EWC, Riyadh Masters 2025 WEU qualifiers: June 5-7

Although it’s not clear if PGL will allow it, NAVI Junior have already signed up in the Western Europe open qualifiers for The International 2025 and set their location to Germany. According to the TI qualifiers rule book, a team can compete in a certain region if at least three players are based in a country that belongs to that region at the time of the match.

Qualifiers conundrum - Virtus.pro

The situation is even more intriguing for Virtus.pro, who have always competed in the EEU region, regardless of who the tournament organiser was. At all ESL events this year, and if they are to play in EEU qualifiers for Riyadh, they will run into the same schedule clash as NAVI Jr.

However, more recently, VP competed in the Middle East and South Africa (MESWA) regional qualifiers for ESL events. So far, they did it only once, in the DreamLeague Season 26 closed qualifiers, and if they are to keep the MESWA slot for ESL events, they will still run into a schedule conflict at TI 2025 regional qualifiers.

• EWC, Riyadh Masters 2025 WEU qualifiers: June 5-7
• TI 2025 EEU qualifiers: June 4-8
• EWC, Riyadh Masters 2025 MESWA qualifiers: June 8-10

Currently, VP sit in the 8th place in the ESL Pro Tour Leaderboard, which guarantees them a direct invite to Riyadh. However, they are not competing at the currently ongoing DreamLeague Season 26, the last tournament on the EPT before the Esports World Cup, and they might be pushed outside of the top 8 by teams such as Aurora or Shopify Rebellion. Therefore, their withdrawal from the TI 2025 EEU qualifiers seems more of a precautionary measure.

Dota’s most iconic trophy versus the money

It was just a matter of time before some of the teams would choose the financial security, no matter where that comes from, over competing at The International, Dota’s pinnacle tournament. Since 2023, when Valve stopped releasing a Battle Pass, the TI prize pool has drastically diminished. From $18,930,775 in 20222, which was already a great decrease from 40 million at TI 10, in 2021, last year’s TI had only $2,776,566 total prize pool to offer. That’s lower than what Saudi Arabia is offering through Riyadh Masters and its Esports World Cup program.

Esports World Cup Program

Esports World Cup Foundation launched a Club Partner Program in 2023, which is meant to incentivise the organisations to promote the Esports World Cup for a six figure sum that will ensure their financial stability. According to the official EWCF website, each club is entitled to a six-figure base funding to grow their organisations, but the teams can receive extra funding through “different activities, campaigns and bounties, leading up to EWC 2025, based on merit and metrics.” Those many are on top of the $3,000,000 prize pool for Riyadh and the $7 million for the organisation with the most championship titles at the end of the Esports World Cup.