Dates for Dota 2’s The International 7 confirmed

The dates for the Spring Dota 2 Major and The International 7 have been announced, months before either competition is due to take place.

The Spring Major open qualifiers will be the first Valve event post Boston, and run March 6th through to March 9th 2017. They are then immediately followed by the regional qualifiers that run between March 10th and 13th.

Interestingly Valve is splitting the American and European qualifiers in two. There will now be a North American qualifier and a South American qualifier, as well as a European qualifier and a CIS qualifier. China and SEA will not change. There is currently no word on how many teams will make it through each qualifier.

The main event of the spring major will then run on April 20th to the 23rd. This shorter time for the main event suggests that once again this will be a single elimination event.

Open qualifiers for The International 7 run between June 22nd and 25th, and will again be immediately followed by the regionals, which run between June 26th and June 29th. The main event of TI7 will once again be in early August 2017, but no official dates were revealed.

This news comes as somewhat of a surprise, as Valve has traditionally only communicated dates for the Majors a few months before the event itself. This lead to a lot of backlash for the upcoming Boston Major, when multiple events were forced to reschedule or saw team drop out.