Today, October 18, 2026, the Dota 2 online tournament EPL Masters III begins. Sixteen teams will compete for a total prize pool of $100,000 USD. The competition will run until November 5, 2026. The English-language broadcast of all matches will be officially hosted on the EPL channel on the Kick platform.
The tournament consists of two main stages. The group stage will run from October 18 to October 25 and will feature two groups of six teams each, where all matches will be played as best-of-three series. Only the top two teams from each group will advance. The playoff stage will take place from November 2 to November 5 in a double-elimination bracket format, where four invited teams are seeded directly. The winner of EPL Masters III will receive the main prize of $50,000, second place is valued at $25,000, third place will bring the team $13,000, and fourth place — $7,000.
Special attention is drawn to the squads with Ukrainian players who successfully passed the Play-In qualification. Team Lynx, which took 1st-2nd place in the qualifying stage, will compete with the following roster: Ukrainians mellojul, htiviy_vladik, QBFY, kreker, and representative of Kazakhstan v1olent`. They will play their opening match of the tournament in a Bo3 format against the Power Rangers on October 20, 2026, at 15:00 Kyiv time.
Another team featuring domestic esports players is IC x Insanity, which qualified from 5th-6th place in the Play-In stage. The team's roster also consists of four Ukrainians (yowaai, Norma, Fernans, Hyuga) and one player from Kazakhstan (Ethereal). Their first match at the tournament will take place on October 21, 2026, at 12:00, where their opponent in the Bo3 series will also be the Power Rangers squad.
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