ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021: DotA returns to LAN after over a year 

For over a year, LAN events have been absent from the DotA 2 esports scene. Ever since the world screeched to a halt in early 2020, most esports were forced to switch to an exclusive online environment.

However, with vaccine roll-outs starting in parts of the world, some bits of normalcy is being restored. With that comes the first DotA 2 LAN event in over a year, The Singapore Major.

The Major will be hosted at Singapore's Fairmont Luxury hotel. Although the teams will play each other in a LAN setting, there will be no crowd to cheer for them.

⚡️It's happening!⚡️🔥Singapore Major is around the corner, and we can't wait for the first DOTA 2 major after a 14-month break.🔥💻That. Offline. Event. Feeling#SingaporeMajor pic.twitter.com/HNcHvAukmb

— PGL (@pglesports) February 25, 2021

The First LAN event in over a year

The event will be co-organized by ONE Esports and PGL Esports and will be the first big LAN event since the Summit 12 tournament which concluded on March 14th last year.

The event will be held in three stages from March 27th to April 2nd. The wildcard stage will take place on 27th and 28th, the Group Stage on 29th and 30th, and the playoffs from March 31st to April 4th.

The tournament will follow a two-month-long regional leagues that just concluded. These leagues, called the Dota Pro Circuit leagues or DPC Leagues, were regional leagues designed to find the best teams in every region.

There's more information about said leagues here- Europe, CIS, North America, South America, China, and South-East Asia.

The wildcard stage will have six teams participating. Two teams each from Europe and China, and one team each from South East Asia and the CIS region. These six teams will face each other in a regular round-robin format, and the top two teams will qualify for the group stages.

The group stage will have eight teams. The two teams that will qualify through the wildcard stage will join one team from every region in the group stage. This stage will also be played in a regular round-robin.

The top two teams will enter the playoffs in the upper bracket, the teams placed third to sixth will join the playoffs in the lower bracket, and the bottom two will get eliminated.

The aforementioned top two teams will be joined in the upper bracket by the best team from each region's DPC league, while the other four teams will enter the lower brackets.

The playoffs will have a double-elimination format, which means upper bracket teams will need to lose twice to be eliminated, while lower bracket teams will be eliminated after just one loss.

Participating Teams

As explained above, teams will enter the tournament in three different stages according to their placements in the DPC leagues.

The teams will be coming in without any LAN experience for over a year except for the Chinese teams, who had some LAN events over the past few months, including their DPC league, which was also on LAN.

They will go head to head for the lion's share of $500,000. The prizemoney is less compared to the previous Valve-sponsored LAN events, but considering this is the first LAN action in over a year, not many people will be complaining.

Teams entering the Wildcard Stage

• Team Nigma - Europe
• Team Liquid - Europe
• Vici Gaming - China
• PSG.LGD Gaming - China
• T1 - South East Asia
• AS Monaco Gambit - CIS

Teams entering the Group Stage

• Alliance - Europe
• Team Aster - China
• Neon Esports - South East Asia
• Natus Vincere - CIS
• Quincy Crew - North America
• Thunder Predator - South America

Teams entering the playoffs

• Team Secret - Europe
• Invictus Gaming - China
• Fnatic - South East Asia
• Virtus.Pro - CIS
• Evil Geniuses - North America
• Beastcoast - South America

🔥The list is complete!📅Singapore Major 🔜 March 27 - April 4⭐️#SingaporeMajor pic.twitter.com/cEKOowK5sS

— PGL (@pglesports) March 14, 2021

This is the most anticipated LAN event of the year for DotA fans since the International 10 got canceled in 2020. The International itself will be rescheduled to August this year as long as the pandemic allows it.

The Singapore Major will be the first checkpoint on the way to The International, which will have a massive prize pool of $40,018,195, the highest in the history of esports.

The tournament begins on March 27th and can be watched live on PGL's official Twitch channel. It will also be the first-ever esports event to be broadcast in 4k ultra HD on PGL's YouTube channel.