Brace yourself, TI9 is coming.
A now-deleted Weibo post by the Chinese organization Vici Gaming (VG) has accidentally revealed the dates for the Shanghai-bound The International 2019 (TI9), and it will take place from August 16 to August 25.
The group stage will run from August 16 to 18, with the main event taking place from August 20 to 25. While the Weibo post has been deleted, VG’s official Facebook page is claiming that the dates are “rumored”.
While Valve has yet to release any official information, the leak is somewhat consistent with last year’s TI, which ran from August 16 to 26. The leak is also made plausible by the fact that VG is one of the four teams to have already secured a direct invite to the tournament, alongside Virtus.pro, Team Secret, and Evil Geniuses.
Valve announced last year that TI9 will be hosted in China, and will mark the first time that Dota’s premier tournament will be held in China and in Asia. Shanghai is no stranger to Dota tournaments, as the city has already hosted the Shanghai Major in 2016 and the China Dota 2 Supermajor in 2018, among others.
The first International was held in Gamescom 2011 in Cologne, Germany, after which subsequent tournaments were hosted in Seattle — a stone’s throw away from Valve’s headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. TI2 and TI3 were held in the Benaroya Hall, with the event moving onto a bigger venue in the KeyArena for TI4 through TI7, before moving TI8 to the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada.
It should only be a matter of time before Valve releases an official statement on the dates for TI9. This year’s Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season is already nearing its conclusion with only two Majors left, the MDL Disneyland Paris Major in May and the EPICENTER Major in June.
