Valve has officially announced the dates for this years Dota 2 International championships, which will be the 7th occurence of the annual tournament.
The International 7, or TI7, will take place this year from Monday, August 7th to Saturday, August 12th. This timing should come as no surprise, as the tournament has been held in late July/late August every year since its inception at TI1 in 2011. The event will be held at KeyArena in Seattle, where it has resided since TI4 in 2014.
Tickets to attend the event in person will go on sale on Tuesday, April 4th at 10am Pacific Time on Ticketmaster.com. Ticket prices for this year’s International have already been announced, and they show a marked increase from ticket prices for previous iterations of the tournament.
Midweek tickets, which get you into the first four days of the event, will run you $100 apiece, a $25 increase from last year; Finals tickets, which let you watch the finals of the tournament over the last two days in KeyArena, will be available for $200, a full $100 markup from last year. Fans who come to the event but only purchase the Midweek ticket will be able to watch the finals in a free outdoor viewing arena provided by Valve on the KeyArena grounds.
The International is the premiere yearly tournament for the Dota 2 professional scene, and has drawn attention from even mainstream sports outlets in recent years for its massive partially-crowd-funded prize pool. The total cash prize for the event has increased each year, from $10.9 million in 2014 to $18.4 million in 2015 to a whopping $20.7 million at last years event; it is expected to be again even bigger at this year’s event.