The PGL Wallachia Season 5 marks the last tournament from PGL before the International 2025 (TI14). While there aren’t any leaderboard standings nor qualifications to TI14 at stake, this tournament is still highly-regarded for its competition between sixteen world-class Dota 2 teams.
And of course, there’s a million-dollar prize pool on the line too, live at Bucharest, Romania.
Teams participating at PGL Wallachia S5 (Image credit: PGL)
The live broadcast of PGL Wallachia S5 2025 will be broadcast on PGL’s official Twitch channel.
The teams at PGL Wallachia Season 5 can expect the classic tournament format that has been tried and tested by PGL throughout the PGL Wallachia series. Group stage features a modified swiss-system of the sixteen teams, where only the top-eight advances to playoffs. With each match being best-of-three, the group stage is considered a harsh trial for the teams.
In the Playoffs, it’s a double-elimination bracket, where teams play in more best-of-three matches, except the best-of-five grand final.
Unlike the past PGL Wallachia tournaments, PGL handed out direct invites to teams without any regional qualifiers. This has raised quite the debate among Dota 2 viewers in regards of the invited teams’ qualifications. While powerhouses such as BetBoom Team, Team Liquid, Team Spirit, Tundra Esports, Gaimin Gladiators, Aurora Gaming, Xtreme Gaming, All Gamers Global (formerly Team Tidebound) and even AVULUS, definitely deserved the direct invite.
We can’t say the same for Virtus.pro, HEROIC, MOUZ, OG, Nigma Galaxy, NAVI and Wildcard.
The PGL Wallachia S5 is the last tournament before major championships, such as Dota 2 Esports World Cup 2025 and TI14 itself. As such, we have no shortage of formidable teams at the event. Notably, Team Liquid, the back-to-back PGL Wallachia Champions are present to defend their title once again.
We can also expect the Eastern European powerhouses, Team Spirit and BetBoom Team to challenge Team Liquid, given their frequent matches together. And perhaps, an emerging team among these top dogs is Aurora Gaming with its seasoned line-up of Dota 2 pros.
It’s quite an unfortunate sight at PGL Wallachia Season 5 as there are two absentees. PARIVISION and Team Falcons are staples in every major tournament in 2025 thus far, so it certainly feels lacklustre when they aren’t around.
PARIVISION likely declined their invite to play at PGL Wallachia Season 5 to prepare for the bigger challenge at EWC 2025, which is in early July 2025. Considering they are second only to Team Liquid in most tournament runs, it’s a justifiable excuse to skip PGL Wallachia Season 5.
As for Team Falcons, surely they have a similar reason too, but they are in a much dire situation. Falcons’ performance has been underwhelming recently, further highlighted by their premature elimination at the previous PGL Wallachia. They have bigger concerns to deal with and reflect on their past performances, hence why they are absent.
Perhaps the biggest question regarding the PGL Wallachia invites is why isn’t there any Southeast Asian teams. Surely, since it’s direct invites only, allocation should have gone to at least one SEA team. Instead, we get mostly Western and Eastern European teams, that aren’t even prime candidates as far as performance goes.
Arguably, a better team that PGL should have considered would be Talon Esports, especially after their phenomenal display at DreamLeague S26. The SEA team swept the group stage, defeating several PGL Wallachia S5 direct invites and even Team Liquid themselves.
Despite the conflicts on team direct invites at the event, it is still an exciting tournament to look forward for great Dota 2 action, featuring the latest patch 7.39 update.
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