Valve Posts an Update On The 2021 DPC Season

Valve has finally posted an update on the upcoming Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) season, detailing out league formats, qualifiers, and more ahead of its return on January 18th. The structure for 2021 will see the DPC divided into two seasons leading up to the International 10 that is scheduled to take place in August 2021.

DPC Schedule for 2021

• Season 1 will take place from January 18 to February 28 (March 14th for China with a break in the middle), with the first major of the year scheduled for March 25 to April 4.
  
  
• Season 2 will launch on April 13 and will take place until May 22 with the second major of the year taking place from June 2-13.

Matches for these leagues will take place every day at the following times.

Who will be competing in the DPC leagues?

• Valve has decided that it will not be using the previous season’s DPC points as a way to seed teams into the leagues. Instead, it will select the Top 4 teams “in best form” from each region and directly invite them for the upper division.
  
  Valve has not yet announced the top 4 teams from each region, that’ll be directly invited to the DPC leagues.
  
  
• For the remaining twelve slots (4 in the upper division and 8 in the lower division), a series of qualifiers, both closed and open, will be used to determine the teams competing in the regional leagues. 

Who will qualify for the majors? 

The Top 4 teams from each region’s upper division will move on as an automatic qualifier for the majors. 

For the first major of the new DPC league, Europe and China will receive four slots each, SEA and CIS will receive three slots, while North America and South America will receive two slots each.

How does the promotion, relegation system work?

After the end of the season, the bottom two teams in the Upper Division will get bumped down to the Lower Division. While the Top 2 Lower Division teams, will be promoted to the Upper Division. 

The bottom two teams from the Lower Division will be eliminated from the league. Two teams from qualifiers will be able to make their way into the DPC system.

Other information revealed by Valve

Valve also made a couple of interesting announcements along with this blog post that has largely gone unnoticed. 

• Valve stated that they will be pushing out an update by the end of January, that would add seasonal Fan Support bundles which would help fans follow and support their team in the DPC. This can be compared to the Team Pendants that were a part of Dota around 2013.
  
  
• Valve also announced the tournament organizers who would be hosting the regional leagues this season.
  • China- Perfect World
  • Europe- DreamHack
  • Southeast Asia- PGL
  • CIS- ESL
  • North America- Beyond the Summit
  • South America- Dota PIT

The omission of WePlay! who by all accounts was one of the best Dota 2 tournament organizers in 2020, is quite surprising.