The TI 2026 Teams Confirmed for Shanghai So Far
The TI 2026 teams field is sixteen strong: seven direct invites plus nine qualifier slots. Seven invitations went out in late May, and the qualified names are landing region by region. With several routes still live, the full list is not yet locked, so contested entries are flagged rather than asserted.
Every edition begins with a wave of invitations, and the The International 2026 teams story opened the same way. In late May, seven squads were handed direct seats on the strength of their season: Aurora Gaming, BoomBoys, Team Falcons, Team Liquid, Tundra Esports, Xtreme Gaming and Team Yandex. Six are European-region sides and Xtreme Gaming is the Chinese invite, which already tells you where the established power sits heading into Shanghai. Among these TI teams, the European bloc is clearly the deepest on paper.
The TI 2026 direct invites in full
The seven TI 2026 direct invites form the spine of the field, and they are confirmed. One naming wrinkle is worth flagging: the invited Tundra roster is listed by some trackers under a rebranded name, so if you see a different tag attached to that lineup, treat it as the same group of players unless an official source says otherwise. We name the invited squads exactly as confirmed and avoid restating any contested branding as if it were settled.
- Aurora Gaming
- BoomBoys
- Team Falcons
- Team Liquid
- Tundra Esports (the invited roster)
- Xtreme Gaming
- Team Yandex
These invited sides skip the qualifier grind entirely, which gives them extra preparation time that the qualified squads simply do not get to enjoy. That head start can matter a great deal in a Swiss group stage where early form is everything, and each invited TI 2026 roster has had weeks to scrim and refine its drafts while rivals were still fighting through brackets. For how that group stage seeds the playoff, our standings explainer walks through the mechanics, and the event schedule shows when these teams first take the stage.
Which qualified sides join the TI 2026 teams list
The qualifier slots are filling in unevenly, so the qualified portion of the TI 2026 teams list grows by the day. South America has produced LGD Gaming as its sole qualifier, a confirmed result. China has locked at least one of its two seats through Vici Gaming, with the second slot reported as Team Resilience but not yet unanimously confirmed, so we mark that entry provisional. The European, North American and Southeast Asian routes are still being decided, which means several seats remain open.
Because of those live brackets, the complete The International 2026 teams roster cannot be published yet, and we refuse to fake a finished list. We add each qualified side here only once its region settles and the result is confirmed against the official feed. For Filipino fans, the seat to watch is the single SEA slot, tracked in detail on our qualifiers page; until that bracket resolves, no Southeast Asian team can be listed as through. Counting only the confirmed names, the TI teams locked in so far still leave nine chairs to be claimed.
The post TI shuffle that reshaped these rosters
Many of the names above look different from a year ago, and that is down to the post TI shuffle — the off-season window when players move between organisations and lineups are rebuilt. The churn from the last shuffle is why some invited TI 2026 roster choices surprised fans, with reshaped sides earning their seats on recent results rather than reputation. Roster moves can still happen at the margins before the event, so we treat any late change cautiously and confirm before updating a lineup here.
Understanding the shuffle helps you read the field before a single match is played. A side that looked dominant a few months ago may field a very different five in Shanghai, while a rebuilt lineup can peak at exactly the right moment and surprise everyone. Chemistry between five players takes time to settle, and the squads that gelled fastest during the off-season tend to start strongest. That volatility is part of what makes the bracket so hard to call, a theme our predictions guide leans into. To see the bigger competitive picture, the tournament hub ties the rosters, schedule and qualifiers together.