Nine years in the making: Cr1t wins TI 2025 with Team Falcons

With an intense grand finals between Xtreme Gaming and Team Falcons, the champion of The International 2025 is crowned.

After 4 days of intense playoff action, The International 2025 reached its grand finals. With Xtreme Gaming making a superb lower bracket run, the Chinese team were ready for a rematch against Team Falcons. After playing them during the Group Stage, Falcons managed to only take a single game off XG previously. But, having found their way into the grand finals through a strong upper bracket showing, Falcons hoped to raise the Aegis for themselves.

A king without a crown claims his throne

Wang “Ame” Chunyu – known throughout the Dota 2 world as “the uncrowned king” has seen his fair share of TI disappointment. With this being his seventh appearance at the prestigious event, Ame entered into yet another grand final, hoping to finally claim his crown. On the other side of things is Andreas “Cr1t-“ Nielsen, attending his ninth TI in a row – also without a title to his name. One of these two players would finally have their Aegis of Champions.

Although he had some amazing performances during the series, namely his Ursa in Game 1 and Sven in Game 3, he was matched by some brilliance from Falcons. When they found their footing, they were unstoppable. Huge plays from Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf and Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak helped secure an extremely tight series. With a score of 2-2, the grand final headed into a decisive Game 5 where a champion would be crowned.

Falcons took another magnificent draft into the final game, with Medusa, Magnus, and Naga Siren all ready to fight it out for the long haul. Even when XG were pushed back into their base, they managed to make small bits of defense that pushed Falcons back. However, just utilising the Song of the Siren and constantly picking off Yap "xNova" Jian Wei played heavily into their favour. There was absolutely nothing XG could do except stand and watch as their TI dreams crumbled at the final hurdle.

TI returns to Shanghai

This has been the first TI where we have not seen a hero announcement. Although this is fairly disappointing, we did get the confirmation of the event’s location for next year.

Heading into its fifteenth year of amazing Dota 2 action in 2026, TI has seen venues across the world, from Seattle to Singapore. However, for TI15, which will be in 2026, we are going back to a venue where we have not been since 2019.

On the final day of The International 2025, Valve confirmed where we would be leaving Europe behind, after Europe saw two consecutive years. Following from Denmark and Germany in 2024 and 2025, respectively, we will be back in Shanghai, China in 2026.

The biggest surprise linked to this would be the earlier timing of the event, with confirmation of an August TI. This is something we have not seen since 2019, the last time the event took place in China, with October and September being the timing we have become used to.

Although no dates have been confirmed as yet, it is likely that TI 2026 will take place late in August next year.

With that, we wrap up another amazing year of Dota 2 from The International. Now, we await the post-TI shuffle and everything that comes with it.

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