Valve stopped selling The International 2026 supporter bundles on 2 September at 07:00 UTC, ending 33 days of crowdfunding and locking the TI15 prize pool at $3,906,263. All 553 prize-pool items attached to the event carry the same sales cut-off timestamp in Valve's own league data, so the entire storefront closed in a single moment. Hours earlier the client had already been updated: a new Dota 2 build went live at 02:31 UTC on 2 September, with no patch notes attached.
That final number makes TI 2026 the richest edition of The International since 2022. It also settles what Team Spirit are actually taking home from Shanghai — a little over $1.66 million.
What the final pool is made of
Valve seeded the event with a $1,600,000 base pool. The remaining $2,306,263 came from players, which is 59% of the total. There was no Battle Pass and no Compendium this year: the pool was fed entirely by team, talent and community-broadcast supporter bundles, with 30% of each sale going to the prize pool, 50% going directly to the team or talent the bundle represents. Valve has not publicly accounted for the remaining 20%.
That 30% split is newer than it looks. TI 2023 and TI 2024 both ran a Compendium that contributed 25% of sales, adding $1,780,455 and $1,176,566 to those pools respectively. The supporter-bundle model at 30% was introduced for TI 2025, where it contributed $1,281,791. This year it produced $2,306,263 — nearly double the 2025 figure.
Bundles went on sale on 30 July 2026, in the same update that shipped gameplay patch 7.41e, and stayed up for a week and a half after the Grand Final. That tail is why the number quoted during the broadcast was well short of where it finished: the pool was still under $3.4 million on finals day, 23 August.
Liquipedia lists the event at $3,906,277, $14 above Valve's own figure. No explanation for the gap has been published by either side.
How it compares to recent Internationals
TI 2026 is comfortably the largest pool of the post-Battle-Pass era:
- The International 2022 — $18,930,775
- The International 2023 — $3,380,455
- The International 2024 — $2,776,566
- The International 2025 — $2,881,791
- The International 2026 — $3,906,263
The collapse between 2022 and 2023 is the Battle Pass being retired, not a collapse in interest. Judged against the post-Battle-Pass era, 2026 is a clear high: roughly 36% up on 2025 and 41% up on 2024. It is still a fraction of the $40,018,195 peak set in 2021, and Valve has given no indication that model is coming back.
What Team Spirit and the rest actually earned
Valve's published distribution for TI15 splits the pool as follows: 42.5% to first, 13% to second, 9% to third, 6% to fourth, 5% each to fifth and sixth, 4% each to seventh and eighth, 1.8% each for ninth through thirteenth, 1% each for fourteenth and fifteenth, and 0.5% for last.
Applied to the final $3,906,263, that is approximately:
- 1st — Team Spirit: $1,660,162
- 2nd — TEAM VISION: $507,814
- 3rd — Team Yandex: $351,564
- 4th — BoomBoys: $234,376
- 5th–6th: $195,313 each
- 7th–8th: $156,251 each
Team Spirit beat TEAM VISION 3-2 in the Grand Final on 23 August at the SPD Bank Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai. They got there the hard way, losing 1-2 to Vision in the upper bracket semi-final and then running the lower bracket through Team Liquid, BoomBoys and Team Yandex to earn the rematch. The tournament ran 13–23 August with 16 teams on patch 7.41e, organised by Valve with PGL and Perfect World.
The client has already moved on
The 2 September build carried no balance notes and no accompanying announcement — Valve has not posted to the Dota 2 Steam news feed since the "Grand Champions" write-up on 27 August. Russian outlets covering the build, including cybersport.metaratings.ru citing streamer Alexander "JAM" Korotkov, report that it also pulled the International panel off the client's main menu and restored the Dark Carnival event to the front page. Valve has not confirmed that, and there is no English-language source for it.
Dark Carnival itself launched on 25 June 2026 and is still running. Its first act shipped five Automaton personas — Axe, Legion Commander, Oracle, Morphling and Bristleback — and five more were teased in a story image at the release of Chapter 3, widely identified from their silhouettes as Tidehunter, Lich, Sven, Pugna and Lifestealer. Valve has not announced a release date for them, and there is no in-game timer.
The bigger open question is the patch. 7.41e shipped on 30 July 2026 as part of the pre-TI updates, which means the game has now gone through an entire International and a week and a half of post-TI free agency on the same balance build. Nothing has been announced, and anyone quoting you a date for the next gameplay patch has not got it from Valve.
When did The International 2026 supporter bundles stop selling? Sales stopped on 2 September 2026 at 07:00 UTC, per the cut-off timestamps attached to all 553 prize-pool items in Valve's league data for the event. They had been on sale since 30 July.
What was the final TI 2026 prize pool? $3,906,263 according to Valve's league data; Liquipedia lists $3,906,277. Valve seeded $1,600,000 of that, with $2,306,263 crowdfunded.
How much did Team Spirit win at TI 2026? First place takes 42.5% of the pool, which works out to roughly $1,660,162.
Is TI 2026 the biggest prize pool since the Battle Pass? Yes. It is the largest International pool since 2022 and about 36% larger than 2025's $2,881,791.
Did the 2 September Dota 2 update change gameplay? No. The build shipped with no patch notes and no announcement. The current gameplay patch is still 7.41e from 30 July 2026.
Sources: Valve league data for The International 2026 (league ID 19719), the official Dota 2 Steam announcements of 30 July and 27 August 2026, the Dota 2 patch note feed, the Steam depot build history for app 570, Liquipedia's The International 2023–2026 tournament and prize pool pages, and contemporaneous prize-pool tracking coverage of the Grand Final. Retrieved 3 September 2026.
