The International 2026 is down to four teams, and the Kalshi champion board has already done most of its sorting. TEAM VISION trades at 63 to 67 cents to lift the Aegis on Sunday in Shanghai, Team Spirit sits at 20 to 21, Team Yandex at 14 to 17, and BoomBoys, a 36-cent shot to win its own series today, sits at a 2-to-6-cent spread to win the whole thing because of the gauntlet waiting after it. Twelve other names on the board, including Team Liquid and Nigma Galaxy, are pinned at a penny. That is the shape of a tournament where the favorite has been confirmed, not discovered, and the only real question the price is still asking is who TEAM VISION plays in the Bo5 grand final and how much the answer is worth. This page reads the board as of Saturday morning Eastern, walks through what the two series being played today do to each contract, and lays out the one price, Team Spirit's, where the board is quietly saying something stronger than the number suggests.
The Quick Answer
TEAM VISION is the favorite to win The International 2026 at roughly 65 cents on Kalshi, a 65% implied chance, with Team Spirit (20¢) and Team Yandex (15¢) the only challengers priced in double digits and BoomBoys (about 4¢ mid) the fourth team still alive. The grand final is Sunday, August 23 at 1 p.m. Shanghai time, which is 1 a.m. ET Sunday (10 p.m. PT Saturday night), best-of-five, at the Oriental Sports Center for a $3,283,803 prize pool. The full four-team board, how today's upper bracket final and lower bracket series reprice it, and the one price where the board's math and its opinion split are below.
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The International 2026 Odds Board: Four Live Contenders
Dota 2's world championship runs a classic double-elimination main event this year, all best-of-three until the Bo5 grand final. Saturday's schedule has the upper bracket final, TEAM VISION against Team Yandex (4:45 p.m. Shanghai, 4:45 a.m. ET), and the lower bracket semifinal between BoomBoys and Team Spirit (8:45 p.m. Shanghai, 8:45 a.m. ET). BoomBoys earned that slot overnight by eliminating Nigma Galaxy in the lower bracket, a series whose settlement the exchange posted at 1 a.m. ET Saturday (BetBoom Team yes, Nigma no). The loser of the upper final drops into Sunday's lower bracket final against the Spirit-BoomBoys winner, and that survivor meets the upper bracket champion for the Aegis. Because Shanghai is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, both of Sunday's series land late Saturday night for American viewers: the lower bracket final at 10 a.m. Shanghai (10 p.m. ET Saturday), the grand final at 1 p.m. Shanghai (1 a.m. ET Sunday), per the official bracket schedule. Here is every contract with a real bid on the Kalshi "Dota 2 Tournament Winner" board, captured at 7:10 a.m. ET (11:10 UTC) on Saturday, August 22, 2026:
| Team | Yes bid | Yes ask | Last trade | Contracts traded (total) | Contracts traded (24h) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM VISION | 63¢ | 67¢ | 68¢ | 46,344 | 6,622 |
| Team Spirit | 20¢ | 21¢ | 20¢ | 22,249 | 9,192 |
| Team Yandex | 14¢ | 17¢ | 15¢ | 28,246 | 7,043 |
| BoomBoys | 2¢ | 6¢ | 2¢ | 25,618 | 6,007 |
| Team Liquid | 0¢ | 1¢ | 1¢ | 38,850 | 8,516 |
| Nigma Galaxy | 0¢ | 1¢ | 1¢ | 41,888 | 15,016 |
The row that tells the story is Nigma Galaxy's: about 15,000 contracts changed hands in the last 24 hours on a team whose price is now a penny. That is what an elimination usually looks like on an exchange. The hourly trade history on the exchange shows Nigma trading at 17 cents as late as 1 p.m. UTC Friday, then printing a penny within the 7 p.m. UTC hour. Team Liquid, the 2024 champion, was trading at 14 cents on Wednesday and still at 10 cents at 2 a.m. UTC Saturday, then its bid disappeared as well. That is consistent with post-elimination churn: holders exiting into whatever bid remained once each team's last series ended, and the board repricing both to zero before most American bettors woke up. The 24-hour Liquid and Nigma turnover, roughly 23,500 contracts combined, is bigger than the 24-hour turnover on the favorite. TEAM VISION's own history tells the other half of the story: the same hourly tape has it at 44 cents on Wednesday, 60 cents by Friday afternoon UTC, and a 77-cent print Friday evening before settling back into the mid-60s as the upper bracket final approached.
Notice also how wide BoomBoys is: a 2-cent bid against a 6-cent ask. A four-cent spread on a four-cent contract means the market genuinely does not know whether this team is a 2% shot or a 6% shot, which is the honest answer when a team is one Bo3 loss from going home and their series has not started yet. If you want a mid price, call it 4 cents. That is the number I use for the rest of this page, and I come back to why that spread matters in the section on the lower bracket.
(One naming note before going further: Kalshi lists this roster as "BetBoom Team" on the match-winner markets and "BoomBoys" on the champion board, while the official bracket uses BoomBoys throughout. They are one team; check the ticker, not the label, before trading either market.)
Today's Upper Bracket Final Is Already Repricing The Favorite
Here is the mechanism everything else on this page hangs on. The champion contracts do not wait for the grand final to move. They move the instant the bracket changes, and today's upper bracket final between TEAM VISION and Team Yandex is the biggest single input left.
This is also the most-traded esports market on the exchange right now by a wide margin. In the 24 hours before I pulled it, the match-winner market had traded about 303,000 contracts on the TEAM VISION side and 195,000 on the Team Yandex side, nearly half a million contracts on one Dota 2 best-of-three (the two sides of a Kalshi market can include the same trade counted from each direction, so treat that as the upper bound of activity, not a dollar figure). For context, the champion contract on the favorite has done about 46,000 contracts across the whole tournament. The money is in the series, not the outright.
The key read: the 65-cent champion price is a blend of two branches, not a grand final price. About 62 cents of it is the 88% chance TEAM VISION wins today times roughly 70% in the Bo5; the other 3 to 5 cents is the 12% branch where it loses today and still has to be worth something in the 40s from the lower bracket.
The match contract was in play when captured, mid-series, with TEAM VISION at 87 to 88 cents to win the Bo3 and Team Yandex at 12 to 13. Read those two boards against each other and the arithmetic falls out. If TEAM VISION closes out the series, it goes straight to Sunday's grand final with a day of rest and needs one Bo5 win for the Aegis. A 65-cent champion contract with the upper bracket final still in play at 88 cents implies the market thinks TEAM VISION is somewhere around 70% to win the final itself once it gets there. If Yandex comes back and wins the series, TEAM VISION drops into Sunday's lower bracket final, has to win a Bo3 and then a Bo5 on the same day, and the 65-cent contract would reprice into the 40s immediately, because two series is a very different ask than one.
That is the forward promise of this page: the 65-cent number is a blend of an 88-cent series price and a grand final price, and by the time you read this, one of those two inputs has probably resolved. The table above tells you what the market believed Saturday morning. The match board tells you which way the champion board was about to move.
Team Yandex At 15¢: Priced As The Other Finalist, Not As A Champion
Team Yandex's champion contract is the one I keep coming back to, because its two prices disagree with each other. On the series board, Yandex is 12 to 13 cents to win today's Bo3 against TEAM VISION. On the champion board, Yandex is 14 to 17 cents to win the whole thing. A team that is 13% to win its current match should not be 15% to win the championship unless the market is pricing a very real second path: lose today, drop to Sunday's lower bracket final, beat the Spirit-BoomBoys survivor, and play TEAM VISION again in the Bo5.
That is exactly what the price says. Yandex was a direct invite to Shanghai on year-long results, drew Team Liquid in the upper bracket quarterfinal, and has not lost a series in the main event: two upper bracket wins put it in today's final. The market is treating Yandex as the most likely second finalist regardless of which bracket it arrives from. At 15 cents, the contract is a bet that Yandex plays TEAM VISION on Sunday, from either side, and wins a Bo5 roughly three times in ten. The price is fair on those inputs, and the lower bracket side is what decides whether Yandex even gets the chance, which brings in the series being played right after this one.
Team Spirit At 20¢ Vs. BoomBoys At 4¢: The Lower Bracket Decides The Second Finalist
Team Spirit, twice a TI champion (2021 and 2023), is the second-highest price on the champion board at 20 to 21 cents, and it has the most 24-hour volume of any live team at about 9,200 contracts. Spirit earned that price the hard way: it opened the main event against Iron Wing in the upper bracket quarterfinals, has since dropped to the lower side, and its series today against BoomBoys is the last stop before Sunday's lower bracket final.
The series market for that match has Spirit at 63 to 65 cents and BetBoom Team, the BoomBoys roster, at 35 to 37. The map-winner markets for map one and map two sit in the same neighborhood, Spirit around 55 to 63 on each. So Spirit is about a 64% favorite to survive today, then has to beat the upper bracket final loser in Sunday's lower bracket final, then win a Bo5 against the upper bracket champion. Chain those together with the same 30% Bo5 chance against TEAM VISION that the favorite's price implies for any challenger, and Spirit comes out near 10%: 64% to get through today, about 50% in the lower bracket final, 30% in the grand final. The board says 20. That gap is the most interesting number on the page, and it means one of two things. Either the market rates Spirit well above 30% in a five-map series against TEAM VISION, closer to a coin flip, or it is paying a pedigree premium for the only two-time champion left in the field. I lean toward the first reading, and I come back to it in the worked example below.
Now the callback to that BoomBoys spread. BoomBoys at 36 cents to win today's series but only 2 to 6 cents to win the championship is the market saying, in plain English, that even if BoomBoys beats Spirit, it is a heavy underdog in both remaining series. That sounds harsh for a team that was a direct invite and drew TEAM VISION in the upper bracket quarterfinal before dropping down, but it is consistent with a 36% series price: 36% times a lower bracket final times a Bo5 against the best team in the field lands in the low single digits. The wide spread is the market declining to commit to whether BoomBoys is a 2% or 6% team until it sees the first map.
Every champion price on this board is a product of series prices that trade right next to it, and when a series resolves, the product updates within seconds.
A Worked Example: Pricing Each Path To The Aegis
Here is the multiplication the board is doing, using Saturday morning's series prices as the inputs and one consistent grand final assumption: TEAM VISION wins a Bo5 against any challenger 70% of the time (the number its own 65-cent price implies with the upper bracket final at 88), so each challenger gets 30%, with BoomBoys trimmed to 25%. The point is not the exact decimals; it is that every champion price is a chain of series prices you can check yourself, and the rows where the chain and the board disagree are where the market is telling you something.
| Team | Series still needed | Inputs (approx.) | Product | Board mid |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TEAM VISION (Via Upper) | UB final, grand final | 88% x 70% | 62% | 65¢ |
| Team Spirit (Via Lower) | LB series, LB final, grand final | 64% x 50% x 30% | 10% | 20.5¢ |
| Team Yandex (Both Paths) | UB final + final, or LB final + final | 13% x 30% + 87% x 50% x 30% | 17% | 15.5¢ |
| BoomBoys (Via Lower) | LB series, LB final, grand final | 36% x 35% x 25% | 3% | 4¢ |
Three rows land on the board and one does not. TEAM VISION, Yandex, and BoomBoys all come out within a few cents of their mid, which is the market doing clean multiplication. Spirit comes out at 10% against a 20.5-cent price, and the only way to get Spirit to 20 with these series inputs is to give it roughly 55% to 60% in the lower bracket final and about 55% in a Bo5 against TEAM VISION, in other words to rate Spirit as the favorite's equal in a long series. That is the market's actual opinion of Team Spirit, and it is a much stronger statement than the 20-cent price looks like on its own. Yandex's row is the mirror image: almost all of its 17% comes from the lower bracket route, which is why the champion contract can sit above the series contract without anything being mispriced.
What The Board Says About Sunday's Grand Final
Put the four contracts together and the market's picture of Sunday is clear. TEAM VISION at 65¢, Spirit at 20¢, Yandex at 15¢, and BoomBoys at 4¢ sum to 105 cents at the mid, which is a normal amount of overround for a four-way board with a couple of wide spreads. Strip that out and the implied shares are roughly 62%, 19.5%, 15%, and 4%.
The most likely grand final, by the prices, is TEAM VISION from the upper bracket against whichever of Yandex or Spirit wins Sunday's lower bracket final. The grand final is a best-of-five, and the Bo5 format is the one structural fact that justifies the favorite being this short. In a Bo3, an upset needs two maps. In a Bo5, it needs three, and the better team's draft advantage compounds across five drafts. The format was designed to reward the team that is better over a long series, and the market is pricing TEAM VISION as exactly that team.
My own read, for what it is worth: I do not see a clean edge on the favorite at 65, and Yandex at 15 is priced right on its inputs. The one contract I would argue with is Spirit at 20, which only makes sense if you believe Spirit is close to a coin flip against TEAM VISION over five maps. If you do not, that is the price that is too high on this board, and if you do, it is the one that is still cheap. Either way, wait for today's upper bracket final to settle before touching any of the four; the series board will have done the repricing for you.
What would make the favorite price wrong? Two things, and both are visible on the board today. The first is TEAM VISION losing the upper bracket final, which turns its Sunday from one series into two and cuts the 65-cent contract sharply. The second is the lower bracket producing Spirit rather than Yandex, because Spirit is the team the market respects more in a Bo5, and the champion board would shift a few cents toward Spirit the moment the lower bracket final ended. Anyone landing here after Saturday's series have finished should check the live board before trusting any number on this page. The prices above are a Saturday morning snapshot, and the bracket they describe was still being played when they were captured.
Where This Fits For An OddsShopper Reader
OddsShopper's tools do not carry Dota 2 markets, so none of our betting tools can help you with The International. What we do have is the rest of the esports cluster, which is the right reading before you trade anything here: the Dota 2 odds guide explains how match and map contracts are priced and why the draft moves them, the esports odds hub covers how these boards differ from traditional sportsbooks, how prediction markets work and Kalshi odds are the primers on reading cents as probabilities, the Kalshi fees breakdown explains why a 65-cent contract needs to be a bit better than a 65% shot to break even, and how accurate prediction markets are covers whether a 65% price has historically meant 65%. If you want to see how a Dota match page reads when the series is live, Team Spirit vs. Iron Wing and Team Liquid vs. Vici Gaming are both on the site as examples of how a live Dota series reads on the board.
For the sports our tools do cover, the free expert picks hub is updated daily, and it is the closest thing we have to a starting point for a bettor who came here for TI and wants somewhere to go after Sunday.
The International 2026 Odds FAQ
Who is the favorite to win The International 2026? TEAM VISION, at 63 to 67 cents on Kalshi as of Saturday morning, August 22, roughly a 65% implied chance. The team is playing the upper bracket final against Team Yandex today and reaches Sunday's grand final with a win.
When is the TI 2026 grand final? Sunday, August 23, 2026 at 1 p.m. local time in Shanghai, which is 1 a.m. ET Sunday and 10 p.m. PT on Saturday, August 22, at the Oriental Sports Center. It is a best-of-five. The lower bracket final is played three hours earlier, at 10 a.m. Shanghai time (10 p.m. ET Saturday). Both times are from the official bracket schedule as listed on Liquipedia; the "1 p.m. ET" figure circulating on some preview sites is a time zone error.
What is the prize pool for The International 2026? $3,283,803 as listed on Liquipedia, built from a $1,600,000 base plus 30% of supporter bundle sales, with no Battle Pass this year. That is a fraction of the $40 million pool of 2021 but in line with the last three editions, which all landed around $3 million.
Who is still alive at TI 2026? Four teams: TEAM VISION, Team Yandex, Team Spirit, and BoomBoys. Team Liquid, Nigma Galaxy (eliminated by BoomBoys early Saturday), Team Falcons (the defending champion, which beat Xtreme Gaming 3-2 in last year's final), and the rest of the 16-team field are eliminated, and their champion contracts trade at a penny or less.
Can I bet on The International 2026 on a US sportsbook? Most US sportsbooks do not list Dota 2. Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated exchange, lists a champion market plus match-winner and map-winner contracts for every series, which is where every price on this page comes from.
Why does Team Yandex's champion price look high relative to its match price? Because Yandex has two routes to Sunday's final: win today's upper bracket final outright, or lose it and come back through the lower bracket final. The 15-cent champion contract prices both paths; the 13-cent series contract prices only the first.
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The Bottom Line
The International 2026 champion board is a four-team market with one clear answer and one open question. The answer is TEAM VISION at 65 cents, a price built on an 88-cent series lead in today's upper bracket final and a Bo5 format that favors the better drafting team. The open question is the second finalist, and that is where Team Spirit at 20 cents and Team Yandex at 15 cents are really competing against each other more than against the favorite. The board opened this page by repricing Liquid and Nigma to a penny overnight, and it will do the same kind of sorting to two of the four remaining teams by Saturday night. Read the series prices, not just the outright, and the Sunday grand final will already be priced before the first draft loads.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not trading advice. Prediction market prices move constantly; verify the live board before acting on any number here.
