The announement many Dota fans have been holding their breaths for has finally been officially announced; The International 3. It will be ran from August 7th – 11th, will be held at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, Washington. Same as last year the qualifiers will be played online, with two separate regions: East and West. The Western qualifiers will be covered by The GD Studio, while the Eastern qualifiers are covered by Beyond the Summit. Dates for the qualifiers are; May 13th – 19th(West) and May 20th – 26th(East). There will be three spots in totally open for the qualifiers; two will go to the teams who win the, West and East qualifiers, while the runner-ups will compete for the final spot.
Valve still has not announced all the teams invited to the tournament, last week we saw the 2012 champions Invictus Gaming recieve their invitation. For now this is all the information Valve has provided, stay tune for more to come!
For those that do not know, this is an one million dollar tournament Valve hosts themselves. Last year it was proclaimed as the best ran esports event, hopefully it can keep that status this year. It was also one of the first esports events to break one million concurrent viewers. There are also many rumors stating that this could be the last International hosted in the US, while the next few would be hosted in China (where Dota is huge).