Welcome to the DPC season 2021

On the last day of 2020, Valve decided to unveil a summary of the rules for the next competitive season. It will start on January 18 and will bring a lot of new things to the schedule.

We are waiting for the division of the season into several stages. Each stage will end with a Major tournament, and teams will be able to make substitutions in the offseason. The first stage will run from January 18 to February 28, with a Major from March 25 to April 4. The second stage will start on April 13 and will run until May 23. The Major of the second stage will take place from 2 to 13 June.

The format of the DPC table has also changed. They are being replaced by the already routine and long-promised league format. In each region the teams will be divided into 2 divisions: upper and lower, respectively. Moreover, 4 teams will directly get into the upper division, which will be invited by Valve themselves. The remaining 12 teams will be allocated to the upper and lower seeds through qualifications and qualifiers. As before, according to the results of the group stage, the two best teams in the lower division will take the places of the worst two in the upper division.

The best from the top division will make it to the first Major of the year. The distribution will look like this:

• EU: Top 4
• China: Top 4
• SEA: Top 3
• CIS: Top 3
• NA: Top 2
• SA: Top 2

The changes also affected the schedule of matches. Tables with start times for matches in each region can be found here.

Finally, all information about the DPC season will be added to the Dota 2 client. This should happen before the start of the first stage.