Tournament bracket generator

A knockout bracket needs a power of two — 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 — to halve cleanly every round. With any other number, the gap to the next power of two is made up with byes: a team with a bye goes straight into round 2. The byes go to the top seeds, as their reward for being seeded highest. With 11 teams the next size is 16, so 5 byes go to seeds 1–5, and the other 6 teams play 3 first-round matches. Two byes never meet each other.

In single elimination every match knocks one team out and every team but the champion is knocked out once, so N teams play N − 1 matches: 15 for 16 teams, 63 for 64. In double elimination everyone but the champion loses twice: 2N − 2 matches, or 2N − 1 if the grand final has to be played again (14 or 15 for 8 teams). A round robin has every pair meet once: N(N − 1)/2 matches, 28 for 8 teams.

Seed 1 plays the lowest seed, seed 2 the second lowest, and so on, and the bracket is arranged so that the top seeds are kept apart as long as possible: seeds 1 and 2 can only meet in the final, and seeds 1 to 4 only in the semifinals. For 16 the first-round matches run 1 v 16, 8 v 9, 4 v 13, 5 v 12, 2 v 15, 7 v 10, 3 v 14, 6 v 11. Paste your names in seed order — best first — and the generator places them. Choose Random draw instead for a draw out of a hat.

Since 2011 the NCAA men’s tournament has had 68 teams (the women’s since 2022). The First Four — four games between the last eight teams, two of them usually for 16 seeds and two for 11 seeds — cut the field to 64, which play in four regions of 16 seeded 1 to 16: 63 more games, 67 in all. This generator seeds a single field 1 to 64; for an NCAA-style office pool make a 16-team bracket for each region with the teams pasted in seed order, which gives the same 1 v 16, 8 v 9, 5 v 12, 4 v 13 pairings, and a 4-team bracket for the Final Four.

Everyone starts in the winners bracket. A first loss sends a team to the losers bracket, a second loss knocks it out. The losers of each winners round drop into the losers bracket against teams already there, placed so that they do not meet again straight away the team that has just beaten them or that they have just beaten. The winners bracket champion and the losers bracket champion meet in the grand final; if the losers bracket team wins, both have lost once and a second, deciding final is played (the “reset”). Turn the reset off for a single grand final.

With an even number of teams, N − 1 rounds in which everyone plays once each round: 7 rounds for 8 teams. With an odd number, each team sits out one round (a bye), so there are N rounds: 7 for 7. The schedule is made by the circle method — one team stays put and the others move round one place each round — so every pair meets exactly once. The results grid has a row for each team, with W, L and points columns to total at the end. A round robin here takes up to 32 teams (496 matches).

Fit on one sheet shrinks the bracket to the paper as long as the names stay at least 5 pt; 64 teams in single elimination fit on A3 or Tabloid that way. Larger brackets use Several sheets that join: the bracket is printed at a comfortable size across as many sheets as it needs, each with cut marks and a dashed line where the next sheet goes, like a poster. Trim the marked edge, lay it on the dashed line and tape the sheets together from behind.

No. The bracket is drawn in your browser and the names go only into the PDF you download. They are not sent anywhere, not stored, and not in the link from “Continue on another device”, which carries only the format and the settings.