Quick-Start: Your First Tournament

Tournaments in Tournament Suite live inside Projects. A Project is the top-level container — think of it as a program or brand (for example, "Spring Invitational 2026"). You create the Project first, then create one or more Tournaments inside it. This guide walks you through both steps and gets you to a published, shareable tournament.

Where to find it

After logging in, the Projects section is in the left sidebar of your organizer dashboard.

Step by step

1. Create a project

1. In the sidebar, click Projects.
2. Click Create project.
3. Enter a name and, optionally, a description.
4. Choose a project type — Esports, Server Rental, Coaching, Cloud Gaming, or Marketplace. This determines which features and sidebar sections the project shows.
5. Choose a plan — a Free tier and paid tiers are shown side by side, each with its included limits (for example, tournaments per month) and features.
6. Optionally check include demo data to pre-populate the project with sample content.
7. Click Create project (paid plans show Continue to payment instead). Free plans create the project immediately. Paid plans send you to a Stripe checkout page first — the project is created once payment completes.

2. Start a tournament inside the project

1. Inside the project, click Tournaments in the left sidebar.
2. Click Create tournament.
3. Choose how to start:
   • Start from scratch — go straight into the multi-step form described below.
   • Use a template — browse, filter by category, or view recommended templates, then preview a template's format and settings before applying it. Applying a template pre-fills the discipline, format, participant type, and bracket size for you, and you land in the same multi-step form to review and adjust the rest. See Use and manage tournament templates for the full template workflow.

The rest of this guide assumes you're filling in the form (either from scratch or after applying a template). It has five steps: Basic Info, Format & Schedule, Visibility, Advanced, and Review.

3. Basic Info

1. Enter the tournament name.
2. Select the Game / Discipline (for example, CS2, Valorant, or a custom discipline).
3. Select the Platform. The options are limited to what your chosen discipline supports (for example, CS2 only offers PC) and a cross-platform option where the discipline allows it. This field is required — you can't advance to the next step without it.

4. Format & Schedule

4. Select the Participant type — either Teams or Individual players — alongside the Format field below.
5. Select the Format (single elimination, double elimination, round robin, Swiss, or group stage + elimination).
6. Select the bracket size — this is a fixed list (4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, or 512 participants), not a free-text number. It's required before you can continue. Keep in mind this is the bracket's size, not a hard cap on registrations — see Reserve bench below for what happens when more people sign up than the bracket has room for.
7. Set the registration deadline — the date and time after which no new sign-ups are accepted. This is the only registration-timing field in this step; there's no separate "registration opens" field here — registration effectively becomes available once you publish the tournament. If you need a scheduled opening date instead, configure it afterward on the tournament's Settings → Registration page (see Registration Settings).
8. Set the start date for the tournament itself, and confirm the timezone.

5. Visibility, Advanced, and Review

9. On the Visibility step, choose whether the tournament is public and whether spectators are allowed.
10. On the Advanced step, configure any additional rules or options for your format.
11. On the Review step, check the summary of everything you've entered, then submit to create the tournament. It's created in draft status — still private until you publish it.

6. Publish and share

12. Open the tournament and click Publish. If required settings are incomplete, the page lists validation issues and the Publish button stays disabled until you resolve them.
13. Once published, go to the tournament's Share page (a dedicated page, separate from the overview) to copy the public registration link, use social-share buttons, or grab embeddable widget code.
14. Share the link with your participants. They will see the player-facing registration page.

Reserve bench: when registrations exceed bracket size

Because bracket size is fixed (step 6 above), it's possible for more people to register and be approved than the bracket has slots for. When that happens, the surplus approved entrants are placed on a reserve bench rather than rejected outright. From there you can move entrants between the active bracket and the reserve bench, and promote a reserve entrant into the bracket if a spot opens up (for example, after a withdrawal). See Manage registrations for how to review and act on incoming registrations generally.

What happens next

You now have a published tournament with a shareable registration link. The next steps depend on your format, but common follow-on tasks are:

• Create a project — details on project settings and managing multiple tournaments per project
• Create a tournament — full configuration options including brackets, stages, and seeding
• Use and manage tournament templates — start future tournaments faster, or save your own format as a template
• Registration Settings — configure a scheduled registration open date, caps, auto-accept, and fees
• Publish and Go Live — more detail on the draft-to-published workflow and its validation checks
• Manage registrations — approve, reject, and organize incoming registrations