Competition formats
Round robin, knockout, groups and Swiss system: which to pick, how many fixtures each produces and when you can still switch.
Format is the decision that shapes your tournament the most: it sets how many fixtures you’ll have, how long the competition runs and how fair the final result is.
Round robin
Everyone plays everyone. In a single round, each team plays N-1 fixtures; home and away, 2(N-1).
Use it when you have calendar room and want the fairest possible outcome — nobody goes out because of one bad day.
Watch the volume. Twelve teams home and away is 132 fixtures. Add up your available pitch or court time before committing.
Tiebreakers follow the classic order: points, wins, goal difference, goals scored and head-to-head. Standings recalculate on every confirmed result.
Knockout
Straight elimination. Lose and you’re out.
Use it when time is short or the event runs over a single weekend. With 16 teams you settle everything in 15 fixtures across four rounds.
When generating fixtures for a knockout stage without groups, Torneyo draws the matchups. If the number of teams isn’t a power of two, some get a bye in the first round.
The weakness is well known: a strong team can go out in its opener on one mistake. If that’s unacceptable, put groups in front.
Groups followed by knockout
The World Cup format, and the most used in practice. A round-robin group stage, with the best advancing to the knockout.
Use it when you want to guarantee everyone a minimum number of fixtures without stretching the calendar. Every team plays at least two or three times, yet the competition stays short.
Two decisions to make:
- How many groups — Torneyo distributes the teams evenly.
- How many advance per group — usually the top two.
Swiss system
Nobody is eliminated, but nobody plays everyone. Each round pairs teams on similar scores, and no matchup repeats.
Use it when you have many entrants and little time. With 32 teams, five Swiss rounds already produce a reliable ranking — round robin would need 31.
It’s the standard in chess and esports, and works well for single-day tournaments with large fields.
Divisions: Gold, Silver and Bronze
Divisions aren’t separate stages — they’re tiers within the same stage. After a qualifying phase, teams are split by performance: the best contest Gold, the next Silver, and so on.
Use it when the skill gap is wide. Instead of eliminating half the field in round one, everyone keeps playing against opponents at their own level.
Quick comparison
| Format | Fixtures with 16 teams | Duration | Fairness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round robin (single) | 120 | Long | High |
| Knockout | 15 | Very short | Low |
| Groups + knockout | 32 | Medium | Medium-high |
| Swiss (5 rounds) | 40 | Short | Medium-high |
Switching format later
You can change a stage’s model as long as no fixture in it has a result entered. The moment the first score is confirmed, the model locks.
That lock is deliberate: changing format mid-results would invalidate standings already calculated and the trust of everyone following along. If you truly need to switch, clear the stage’s results first — or create a new stage.
Note The lock is on results, not on generated fixtures. You can generate the draw, look at it, dislike it and regenerate as often as you want, as long as no score has been entered.