How to make a bracket
- Enter the teams. Type or paste one name per line: teams, players, classes, even snacks for a taste-off. A single line with commas also works. Without names, set the number of teams and the bracket shows Team 1, Team 2 and so on.
- Choose how they meet. Seeded treats your list as a ranking, so the first name is the top seed and plays the lowest seed. Pair in list order puts the first two names together, then the next two. Shuffle names mixes the list for a random draw.
- Pick the winners. Click a team to send it to the next round, and keep going until the champion box fills in. On a phone, switch to Round by round to see one round at a time.
- Print or share it. Download PDF makes a landscape page for US Letter or A4; Download PNG saves an image for a group chat or a slide. Share result copies a link that opens your filled-in bracket.
Byes, seeds and how many games you need
A knockout bracket halves the field every round, so its first round needs 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 64 teams. Any other count gets byes: teams that skip the first round and start in the second. Byes are spread out so that no first-round game is a bye against a bye, and in a seeded bracket they go to the best seeds. With 6 teams, seeds 1 and 2 get byes; with 12 teams, seeds 1 to 4 do.
The number of games is easy to plan for: a single elimination bracket has one game fewer than it has teams (15 games for 16 teams), because every game knocks out exactly one team. A double elimination bracket has twice as many minus two, plus one more if the grand final needs a second game. The line above the bracket shows the count for your settings, so you can work out how many courts, boards or time slots you need.
Seeding follows the usual pattern: 1 plays 16, 8 plays 9, 4 plays 13, 5 plays 12, and so on, with the halves arranged so the two best seeds can only meet in the final. If you have no ranking, a random draw is fairer than the order people signed up in: shuffle the list, then keep Seeded on so the byes still go somewhere sensible.
Single or double elimination
Single elimination is quick: lose once and you are out, so 16 teams finish in 4 rounds. Double elimination gives every team a second chance. After a first loss a team drops to the losers' bracket and keeps playing; the last team standing there meets the winners' bracket champion in the grand final. Because the winners' champion has not lost yet, a losers' side win means a second, deciding final. Each game is numbered (W for the winners' side, L for the losers' side) and empty spots say where the teams come from, such as "Loser of W3", which helps when you run it on paper.
Regions and play-in games
For big fields, tick Split into 4 regions. The list is cut into four groups in order, each seeded on its own (1 to 16 when you have 64 teams), with the regions meeting in the semifinals. Give each region a name or leave it blank to write it in after printing. Above 64 teams the bracket stays at 64 lines and the extra teams play in first: with 68 teams, four play-in games decide the last four spots.
Printing tips
The PDF scales the bracket to fill one landscape page, so an 8-team bracket prints with big boxes and a 64-team bracket with small ones; a pen with a fine tip helps for 64. Tick Blank bracket for a sheet with empty lines that people fill in by hand, which is handy for office pools and classrooms. Names in scripts the PDF font can't draw, such as Chinese or emoji, are listed in a note: the PNG shows them.
Related tools
Need a random order for the draw or for who serves first? Spin the wheel spinner. Running a game-day pool instead of a bracket? Try football squares. For a party with prizes, print bingo cards, and keep each game on schedule with the online timer.
Everything runs in your browser: the names you type stay on your device unless you share a link.