Free Round-Robin and Knockout Generator

Generate your fixtures

Add one team per line, pick a format, and the schedule updates as you type. Shuffle the order to randomize the draw, switch on home-and-away for a double round-robin, and copy the finished fixture list straight into a message to your coaches.

How the round-robin schedule is built

The generator uses the circle method, the standard algorithm for round-robin scheduling. Imagine the teams standing in a circle: one team stays fixed while everyone else rotates one place after each round, and the teams facing each other across the circle play that round. For n teams this produces n − 1 rounds with every pairing occurring exactly once, and no team playing twice in the same round.

With an odd number of teams, a phantom seat — the bye — joins the circle. Whoever draws the bye sits that round out, and the rotation guarantees every team rests exactly once. Home and away is alternated from round to round, and the double round-robin option adds a second leg with every fixture reversed.

How the knockout bracket is seeded

The order of your team list is the seeding: the first team is the top seed, the last is the bottom seed. The bracket uses standard tournament placement — seed 1 plays the lowest seed, seed 2 anchors the opposite half, and so on — so the two strongest teams can only meet in the final and the early rounds are not decided by an unlucky draw. Prefer a blind draw? Shuffle the order first.

When the number of teams is not a power of two, the bracket is filled with byes, and those free passes go to the top seeds — exactly how professional tournaments handle it. A team with a bye skips the first round and appears directly in the next one.

From fixture list to real schedule

A fixture list answers who plays whom — but a real tournament also needs to answer when and where. The moment you assign kick-off times, pitches and referees, new failure modes appear: two matches on the same pitch at once, a team double-booked across pitches, no rest between games, a club refereeing its own match.

That is the part FairGame automates. Import your teams, set your pitches and hours, and it solves the whole schedule in seconds — round-robin groups, seeded knockout brackets, live standings and public results included. The generator above gives you the fixtures; FairGame runs the tournament.

Frequently asked questions

How many matches does a round-robin tournament have?

n × (n − 1) ÷ 2 for a single round-robin, where n is the number of teams: 6 teams play 15 matches, 8 teams play 28, 12 teams play 66. A double round-robin (home and away) doubles that. The generator shows the total for your team count as you type.

How do byes work with an odd number of teams?

A phantom opponent — the bye — is added to make the numbers even. Whoever is drawn against the bye rests that round. Over the whole round-robin every team gets exactly one bye, so nobody plays more matches than anyone else.

How is the knockout bracket seeded?

By your list order: the first team is seed 1. Pairings follow standard bracket placement, so seed 1 meets the lowest seed first and the top two seeds cannot meet before the final. If the field is not a power of two, the byes go to the highest seeds. Use the shuffle button for a random draw instead.

Can I generate home-and-away fixtures?

Yes — switch on the double round-robin option. The second half of the schedule repeats every fixture with home and away reversed, which is the standard league format.

Is this tournament generator really free?

Yes. It runs entirely in your browser with no signup and no limits that matter in practice (up to 64 teams). When you need kick-off times, pitches, referees, live scores and published results on top of the fixtures, that is what FairGame itself does — free for small tournaments.