There are still two majors between now and The International 2019, but Valve has officially laid the foundation for next year’s Dota 2 season.
On the official Dota 2 blog, Valve put out a notice to tournament organizers that the company is now accepting applications to arrange the official major and minor tournaments of the 2019-2020 Dota Pro Circuit season. Though the information provided is limited, the notice includes a number of important details on what next year will look like for the game.
The 2019-2020 DPC season will be largely similar to this year’s. While the first run of the DPC left the door open for any number of organizers to put together sanctioned tournaments, the 2018-2019 season saw the schedule pruned down to just 10 events including five majors, each of which are preceded by a minor.
The 2019-2020 season will follow that same formula with events spaced out from November 2019 through June 2020. The date ranges for each tournament which list majors as running for eight days and minors running for four suggest similar event formats to those of this season.
While things are largely set to stay the same, not everything may be identical. Valve notes that it “will determine the format for both majors and minors, as well as qualifiers,” starting in Fall 2019. This could mean many things, ranging from Valve homogenizing events to introducing a new format entirely. No specifics are given on any such changes.
The move to flesh out the tournament schedule this early is good news for Dota 2 fans. Details on the first tournaments of the 2018-2019 season did not break until shortly before qualifiers. Having everything penned in before The International would be preferable to a repeat of last year.
There are still plenty of unknowns when it comes to next season. Though things have gone fairly smoothly in 2018-2019, there have been a number of hiccups that could be addressed. Avoiding visa issues, implementing more rigid roster regulations, and increasing regional stability would all be worthwhile endeavors.
Still, there is a lot of Dota 2 between now and the start of the 2019-2020 DPC season. The MDL Disneyland Paris Major begins on May 4, and the Epicenter Major is set to take place in June.
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