NEWS | Team Spirit defeated TEAM VISION 3-2 in the grand final of The International 2026 in Shanghai on Sunday, August 23, claiming their third Aegis of Champions. No organization in Dota 2 history had ever won the tournament three times before. The series went the full five games, with Spirit closing it out in a 64 minute decider after the two teams traded wins throughout the day.
Carry Illya Yatoro Mulyarchuk and offlaner Magomed Collapse Khalilov became the first players in Dota 2 history to win three Aegis titles each, adding to championships they already won together in 2021 and 2023. Spirit reached the grand final the hard way, getting sent to the lower bracket after an earlier loss to TEAM VISION, then fighting back through Team Liquid, BoomBoys, and Team Yandex to force the rematch. The grand final drew more than 500,000 live viewers across Twitch and YouTube.
BMN sees this as a real shift in Dota 2 history. OG held the record for years as the only team with two championships. Spirit just broke that record outright, and did it the hard way, by losing early and fighting all the way back through the lower bracket instead of steamrolling the whole tournament.
That comeback path matters because it shows something harder to teach than raw skill, the ability to lose early and still find a way back when the whole championship is on the line.
The International has been running for 15 years and Spirit just broke a record that stood the entire time. Is this the start of a Spirit dynasty nobody can touch, or the peak they will never quite hit again?
Your picture beside a comment comes from Gravatar, matched to the email you signed in with. Set one there and it appears here; without one you get your initials. How we handle this