This Week in Dota 2: HULIGANI win 10 of 11 games and a huge comeback

It was a week of big numbers in Dota 2. One team came back from a huge gold deficit, the player count passed a long-awaited mark, and one famous team changed its mid player. Here are the stories that mattered most.

Who was the team of the week at EPL Masters 2026?

HULIGANI were the team of the week. They won 10 of 11 games at EPL Masters 2026 and four series 2–0.

The best moment came on 2026-10-23. HULIGANI played Inner Circle x Insanity, and game 3 lasted 63:42. HULIGANI were 11,193 gold behind and still won. The game ended with 42 kills for HULIGANI and 41 for Inner Circle x Insanity. HULIGANI won the series 2–1. Read the full story in our Match of the Week.

The mid player Mirage` led the way. He has an MVP score of 823, the highest of the week. His best game was Ember Spirit with 10/5/20 against salamit. See why he is our pick in the Player of the Week post.

Did Dota 2 reach one million players again?

Yes. On 2026-10-11, 1,025,362 players were online at the same time. It is the first 1 million peak since 2022.

Steam had not shown this number for almost four years. The average daily peak in October 2026 is 890,275, which is up from 2025. The all-time record is still 1,291,328 from March 2016, so there is room to grow. We looked at the numbers in this post.

Which transfer and which hero were the talk of the week?

Team Liquid signed the mid player Malr1ne on 2026-10-15. He is the biggest name among 5 moves this week. Team Nemesis added Sundabule as analyst on 2026-10-14, and Team Synapse made 3 moves in 2 days. TA2000 left.

Find every move in our Transfers of the Week post.

In pro games, Dark Willow is the favorite hero again. She has 121 picks, a 52% win rate and 95 bans. But Techies has 168 bans, the most of any hero, and Enigma has the best win rate: 68% in 40 games. The details are in the Pro Meta Report.

In ranked games, the picture is different. Pudge is the most played hero with 2.7% of all picks, but Wraith King wins the most: 55.0% on patch 7.41f. We looked at about 3,885,989 ranked games for the Ranked Meta Report.

What else happened at EPL Masters 2026?

Yellow Submarine beat The Bot^$ 2–0 on 2026-10-21. Both games went past the 43-minute mark, but Yellow Submarine had a big gold lead in each one. The biggest was 31,911 in game 1.

Rain had 30 kills in the series, 20 of them in game 2 on Storm Spirit. See the full report.

Newest results also came in on 2026-10-25. At PARI UNIVERSE by FISSURE, PARIVISION beat BETBOOM TEAM 2–0, and Team Spirit beat Astra Invicta 2–0. At EPL Masters 2026, CyberHero beat Zero Tenacity 2–0. We will follow all of this next week.