During the qualifiers for ESL One Birmingham, G2.iG and Azure Ray played the longest pro series of Dota 2 in history, with the contest handily clearing the five-hour mark.
China’s Dota 2 scene went from a few strong rosters to a packed room of contenders in the offseason, and now two of the newest lineups are setting records. In a matchup many fans saw coming, the single qualifying spot for ESL One Birmingham came down to a final series between Azure Ray and G2.iG. What most viewers weren’t prepared for was a set of matches to take over five hours—cleanly becoming the longest pro Dota 2 series ever played.
Azure Ray has been the talk of China since The International 2023, seeing unprecedented success with multiple rosters and then making near-immediate changes with a rotating door of top Chinese talent. Its newest lineup featured most of its ESL One Kuala Lumpur-winning players exiting and a new team built around an unretired Faith_bian taking their place—which made it more of a shock when it fell short of making ESL One Birmingham.
AR dropped into the lower bracket almost instantly in a first-round upset to Team Bright, all the while G2.iG dominated the upper bracket, only dropping a single game to LGD Gaming before making the grand finals. After their early loss, AR went on a killing spree, winning four straight series and eliminating Team Aster, Bright, and LGD to reach G2.iG. And then two sides didn’t get to see anyone else for roughly the next 10 hours.
In a grand finals that ran just over five and a half hours of total in-game time, with minimal pausing, G2.iG bested AR 3-2 to claim the Chinese qualifier invite to ESL One Birmingham in April. Both teams traded wins in a war of attrition, with the Dire side coming out on top every single time.
Datdota statistician Ben “noxville” Steenhuisen confirmed this is the longest series ever played in pro Dota 2, eclipsing the legendary 2015 StarLadder StarSeries Season 12 series between Cloud9 and ScaryFaceZ that featured a 200-minute matchup.
The series started with an 83-minute win for G2.iG but the longest game was AR’s game four win, which lasted just under 108 minutes. There were a total of six pauses during that lengthy contest, averaging out to around a minute each, which still leaves it at 19 minutes longer than the opener. This is easily the longest game of pro Dota on patch 7.35 and the seventh longest game recorded on any 7.0 patch, according to datdota.
Even if the marathon series ended with AR quietly conceding game five, this sets a very strong tone for how competitive Dota 2 will be in China through the year as G2.iG now joins Xtreme Gaming as the second representative from the region at ESL One Birmingham.
