Yandex, PARIVISION advance to Dota semis at Esports World Cup

Field Level Media|published: Thu 16th July, 13:02 2026

YMCA member Austin Manengu works the keyboard as he plays a game of Fortnite during the unveiling of the new gaming lab at the Maplewood Family YMCA in Rochester Thursday, June 20, 2024. YMCA of Greater Rochester in partnership with Metro Sports & Entertainment Group will open two gaming labs for youth and teens this year.

Team Yandex and PARIVISION became the first two teams to advance to the semifinals of the Esports World Cup Dota 2 tournament thanks to their wins Thursday in Paris.

Yandex opened the playoff stage with a 2-0 victory over Team Spirit, and PARIVISION added a 2-0 win over Rune Eaters in the quarterfinal stage.

Yandex and PARIVISION will go head to head in one semifinal match on Saturday; the winner advances to the grand final on Sunday and the loser competes in the third-place match.

The Dota 2 event at the Esports World Cup is the final championship of the ESL Pro Tour, now in its fourth season. The tournament has a $2 million prize pool, with $750,000 and 1,000 club points going to the first-place team.

The format consists of three phases: a group stage of 24 teams that competed in a round robin, a survival phase (Tuesday-Wednesday) formatted into a single-elimination bracket that saw four teams advance, then a final playoff stage (Thursday-Sunday), which is single elimination.

The four group winners advanced directly to the playoffs. Teams finishing second through fourth in their groups went to the survival stage, a two-round bracket that decided the other four teams to make the playoff field of eight.

All matches in Phase 1 were two games, while the matches in Phases 2 and 3 are best-of-three until the best-of-five grand final.

On Thursday, Yandex prevailed in 44 and 51 minutes over Spirit, playing on red for both maps. Yandex teammates Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov of Kazakhstan and Ilya "CHIRA_JUNIOR" Chirtsov of Russia had kill-death-assist ratios of 8-2-11 and 8-3-11, respectively, on the opening map before putting up identical 11-4-11 lines on the second.

PARIVISION cleaned up against Rune Eaters in 36 minutes on red and 31 minutes on green. Alan "Satanic" Gallyamov of Russia averaged a dominant 20.5-1.5-6.0 K-D-A for PARIVISION.

The Esports World Cup features competition in 25 titles and a $75 million prize pool. Other upcoming events include League of Legends, PUBG, EA Sports FC, Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Rocket League, Counter-Strike 2 and Fortnite.

The tournament continues Friday with two more quarterfinal matches:

--Nigma Galaxy vs. BetBoom Team

--Team Falcons vs. Vici Gaming

Dota 2 Esports World Cup payouts (prize money, club points)

1. $750,000, 1,000 -- TBD

2. $340,000, 750 -- TBD

3. $200,000, 500 -- TBD

4. $120,000, 300 -- TBD

5-8. $70,000, 200 -- Team Spirit, Rune Eaters, two teams TBD

9-12. $40,000, 0 -- LGD Gaming, 1w, Team Liquid, Aurora Gaming

13-16. $20,000, 0 -- MOUZ, Xtreme Gaming, Virtus.pro, PlayTime

17-20. $10,000, 0 -- GamerLegion, Level UP, REKONIX, OG