Dota 2 Fantasy picks for TI 2026: best players, Emblems, and more

Dota 2 Fantasy returns for The International 2026 (TI 2026), giving everyone another way to follow the action and earn rewards throughout the tournament. Available directly inside the Compendium, Fantasy lets you build a roster from competing players and score points based on their in-game performances.

Here’s how to play Dota 2 Fantasy, including the best picks, scoring system, Emblems, Traits, Titles, and rewards for TI 2026.

Editor’s Note: We will update this page with our recommended Main Event Dota 2 Fantasy picks once the Group Stage has concluded.

First things first, the whole point of the Fantasy League is to draft a combination of Dota 2 players. This year, you’ll pick a pair of Core players from the same team, one Mid player, and a team’s Support duo.

However, there isn’t necessarily a “perfect roster” for everybody.

Your best picks can change depending on the stats and multipliers you roll on your War Banners. I’ve provided some strong all-round options below based on r/Maroomm’s Fantasy data from over 1,600 matches across 13 Tier 1 tournaments.

Now that we know which Dota 2 players to choose, let’s actually learn how the Fantasy League works. Here’s how to access it:

Creating your Fantasy roster is a piece of cake. Once you’re in the Fantasy menu, things are pretty straightforward.

As we touched on earlier, you’ll select players from a team for three categories: Core, Mid, and Support. The Core and Support choices will each give you two players from the same team, while Mid supplies one player. 

You’ll also see a timer at the top, indicating when the rosters will be locked. You can freely swap your selected players before the deadline without spending Roll Tokens or changing the Emblems on your War Banners.

TI 2026 Fantasy is split between the Group Stage and The International (Main Event).

This means you’ll lock in a roster for the Group Stage before the event starts. Once that stage is over, the eight surviving teams will advance to the Main Event, giving you another opportunity to adjust your picks before the next roster lock.

Your War Banners also expand between the two stages. Initially, you’ll have three Emblems on each banner during the Group Stage, which will carry over before two more Emblems are added for the Main Event. The banner layouts are as follows:

Note: Red Emblems focus mainly on kills and farming, Blue Emblems contain support-oriented stats, while Green Emblems contain stats useful across several roles.

Unfortunately, you can’t just draft your players and call it a day. The Dota 2 Fantasy scoring system also takes War Banners, Emblems, Titles, and their respective bonuses into account.

You will get three War Banners, with one each for your Core, Mid, and Support picks.

Each Emblem will track one in-game stat, such as GPM, Creep Score, Runes Grabbed, or Wards Placed, and apply a multiplier to the Fantasy points you earn from that stat.

Importantly, your players will only receive points for the stats currently present on their War Banner. This means that a great player paired with terrible Emblems can easily be worse than a slightly weaker player whose playstyle perfectly matches your rolls.

There are also different Qualities and Traits for each Emblem, which further amplify the benefits you receive from different stats.

To perform well in the TI 2026 Dota 2 Fantasy League, you’ll need good War Banners, Emblems, and Traits. The only way to improve them is through Roll Tokens. 

You receive 40 Roll Tokens for the Group Stage, followed by a separate 30 Roll Tokens for the Main Event. Each reroll targets a particular part of the selected banner, allowing you to reroll stats, Qualities, or Traits depending on the option presented.

You don’t need to save your Roll Tokens, so make sure you use them before the roster locks. Just be careful because rerolling doesn’t guarantee you’ll get better stats on the next roll.

Finally, you can also add a Title consisting of a prefix and a suffix to your Fantasy roster. Unlike Emblems, one Title applies across your entire roster, and you can freely change it without spending any Roll Tokens.

Titles provide a conditional percentage bonus to your Fantasy score based on things like the different Dota 2 heroes your selected players pick or specific events that occur during a series.

You will earn Fantasy points in every game your selected players participate in, but the system doesn’t simply add together every game they play.

For every role in Dota 2 Fantasy, the scores of its players are averaged to create a score for each game. The two highest-scoring games within a series are then used to calculate that role’s final score. If the role participates in multiple series during the same period, only its highest-scoring series counts.

So, we’re not looking at total games played – only the two highest-scoring games from each role’s best series. That’s generally why teams that like to go late-game are often more valuable Dota 2 Fantasy picks

Now that we’ve gone over what Emblems, Traits, and Titles are, let’s take a look at the best ones to select. 

The important thing to remember here is that you can’t freely place any stat into any slot because your banner’s Red, Blue, and Green colors are fixed. Your goal should therefore be to roll the strongest available stat for each color.

To keep things simple, Emblems have Qualities ranging from Tier I to Tier V. These amplify the stat bonus by +10%, +30%, +60%, +100%, and +150%, respectively – naturally, the higher the tier, the better.

There are also five possible Traits: Fractal, Benevolent, Vampiric, Unique, and Friendly, which give further bonuses. The value of each Trait depends on where it appears and what else you’ve rolled.

Friendly generally offers better upside when you can activate several together, while Vampiric works particularly well on the outside of a banner. Benevolent is generally more useful in the middle.

When you build your War Banner, the order of importance is as follows: (i) get a good Emblem stat, (ii) improve its Quality, and (iii) worry about getting the perfect Trait last. A Tier V Emblem tracking a terrible stat still isn’t going to save your lineup.

The last thing to worry about is your Fantasy Title, which acts as a conditional bonus.

There isn’t one universally “best prefix” because its value depends heavily on the players you choose and the heroes they actually play. For example, the available data shows very different preferred prefixes between Satanic, Noticed, Malr1ne, Thiolicor, and KJ, so make sure your selection actually suits your roster.

For suffixes, go for the Clutch and the Underdog – these are the steadiest options if you don’t want to think much about it.

So, what are we doing all this brainstorming and studying for? Well, there are some pretty tempting rewards up for grabs through The International 2026 Compendium.

To be clear, your Fantasy percentile does not directly determine the headline rewards below. Fantasy performance awards points that contribute toward your Compendium ranking, while Predictions also contribute to that overall result.

For Fantasy itself, your roster will be compared with everyone else. For example, finishing in the 95th percentile earns 10,000 performance points, while the 90th percentile earns 8,400, and the 80th percentile earns 5,800.

Those points then help determine your overall Compendium ranking and the rewards you can earn. The top prizes include Dota Plus subscriptions, a Terrain Token, and discounts on the physical Aegis. There’s also the returning Tyrian Regalia treasure, which contains five purple-themed, refashioned Immortal items.

And that’s a wrap! Before TI 2026 gets underway, make sure your Group Stage Fantasy roster is locked before play begins on Aug. 13. You’ll then get another chance to adjust your picks ahead of the Main Event roster lock on Aug. 20, so keep an eye on which teams advance and how your War Banners are shaping up.

We’ll also update this guide with our recommended Main Event Fantasy picks once the Group Stage is complete.

We extend a special thanks to r/Maroomm and the Dota 2 community on Reddit for compiling and sharing the Fantasy data that helped inform the picks and recommendations in this guide.