Bucharest to Host The International 10 this October

VALVE have announced the new location and dates for The International 10. The event will be held in October in the capital of Romania, Bucharest. The venue is Arena Nationala with over 55,000 seats, which recently hosted matches at the EUFA Euro 2020.

TI10 will be held from October 7th to 17th. The group stage is scheduled for October 7th – 10th, while the main event will take place on October 12th – 17th. The announcement indicates that live attendance will be possible and information on ticket sales will be revealed shortly.

Initially TI10 was supposed to be played in August of 2020 in Stockholm, Sweden, however due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was postponed to the next year. Few weeks ago VALVE revealed that Sweden failed to recognize esports, leading to potential problems with visas. For this reason, they started to look for another place to hold the event.

The International 10 will feature 18 teams competing for a $40M prize pool. Most of them are already known. Twelve teams were directly invited based on their DPC placements, including Evil Geniuses, PSG.LGD, Virtus.pro, Quincy Crew, Invictus Gaming, T1, Vici Gaming, Team Secret, Team Aster, Alliance, beastcoast and Thunder Predator. Four teams have already made it through the regional qualifiers: Undying (North America), SG e-sports (South America), Team Spirit (Eastern Europe), and Fnatic (Southeast Asia). The qualifiers in Western Europe and China are ongoing.