Team Falcons lift The International 2025 trophy as viewership grows for second year in a row

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The 14th edition of The International wrapped up in Hamburg, Germany, concluding the Dota 2 competitive season. The European-American team, Team Falcons, claimed a major portion of the prize pool and earned their first-ever Aegis of Immortal.

The Grand Final drew over 1.78 million concurrent viewers, surpassing last year’s peak and continuing a two-year streak of growing TI viewership. While the series had its ups and downs in individual matches, TI 2025 also outperformed previous edition in average viewership and set several local milestones, highlighting pockets of strong engagement throughout the tournament.

In what many might have considered an unexpected showdown, the TI14 Grand Final featured two teams that hadn’t dominated the 2025 season. Xtreme Gaming had captured only two tier-2/3 titles, while Team Falcons had won just one event, right before TI. Yet at the International, both squads excelled: Xtreme swept the group stage and faltered only once in the playoffs, whereas Falcons overcame a shaky group stage to reach the Grand Final via the upper bracket.

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The Grand Final started with Xtreme Gaming taking the first map, but Team Falcons quickly evened the score. Xtreme edged out the third map, only for Falcons to respond in the fourth, tying the series 2:2. In the decisive fifth map, Falcons pulled off a thrilling victory, completing a dramatic comeback and claiming the Aegis.

Note: Our data excludes viewership from Chinese livestreaming platforms, as they do not publicly release live viewer numbers and rely on alternative audience metrics. Learn more.

The International 2025 delivered strong numbers during the group stage, boosted by the new format that added extra weight to wins and losses. While the playoffs saw solid viewership, the growth wasn’t as pronounced as in the groups: only three matches surpassed 1 million Peak Viewers. The Grand Final fluctuated between 1.3M and 1.4M for the first four maps, ultimately reaching a new peak of over 1.78 million concurrent viewers during the decisive fifth map. 

The International 2025 thus ranked as the third most popular edition in the series’ history, with only the 2019 and 2021 tournaments attracting higher peak audiences.

  Most popular TI editions   

Additionally, TI 2025 also outperformed last year’s edition in terms of average audience. Average viewership rose enough to enable this year’s tournament to overtake TI 2024 in total watch time despite fewer broadcast hours. A major factor behind this increase was expanded coverage, with the total number of channels broadcasting the event nearly doubling compared to last year.

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Other notable achievements from the tournament include:

• A new Dota 2 viewership record for Brazilian-Portuguese (over 30K live viewers) and Italian-language streams (2.4K).
  

• Team Falcons, like Xtreme Gaming, set a new club record for viewership; their previous high came during the FNCS 2025 Global Championship finals, featuring several members of club’s Fortnite division.
  

• Multiple new channel records, including for the tournament’s most-watched co-streamer, Aleksandr “Nix” Levin.

We will be refining the tournament data over the next 24 hours and updating the coverage as needed. Stay with Esports Charts for the latest.