Bye placement
Top four seeds get byes. They meet round-one winners in the round of 8. Total: 11 matches, 4 rounds.
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12-team bracket template
Twelve teams fit a 16-team bracket with four byes — paste them in seed order and we'll generate the sheet.
Other formats coming soon.
Want a prettier print-ready pack?
The free version does the job. The optional template pack just makes brackets look beautiful for events, classrooms and clubs.
Free forever for basic use · No signup required
When to use this
Mid-size tournaments — youth leagues, dojo gradings, mid-size esports cups. The four bye slots reward the top seeds and keep the bracket balanced.
Step by step
- 1
Paste 12 teams
- 2
Generate
- 3
Print or PDF
Run-time estimate
At 20-minute matches and one venue, expect ~4 hours including breaks. Two parallel courts halves it.
Bracket sizing and byes
Single-elimination brackets only exist in power-of-two sizes: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64. When your team count falls between two of those, the bracket maker rounds up and inserts byes for the highest seeds. So 11 teams becomes a 16-slot bracket with five byes, all assigned to the top five seeds. That preserves the 'top seeds shouldn't meet until late' principle and gives lower seeds a real path through the play-in round. If you'd rather have everyone play round one, pad the field with practice slots or switch to a round-robin format on a separate page.
Printing for the wall
The bracket renders as plain SVG, which is why it stays sharp on any paper size — A4, A3, US Letter, US Tabloid. For a wall-sized print, export as PDF and send it to a copy shop with 'fit to page' on A2 or A1; the lines and labels remain crisp because there's no rasterisation in the pipeline. For digital sharing, PNG export rasterises at 2× the on-screen resolution which is plenty for Slack, Discord, or email. Match colours to your event by tweaking team names with emojis (🟦 🟥 🟩) — they print fine and scan well from across a room.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Why not 12 teams in 4 pools of 3?
Because we deliberately keep this tool single-elimination only. Use the team generator for pool draws and feed the winners back here.
Can I edit team names after generating the bracket?
Yes. Click any team slot in the bracket and the name becomes editable. Edits stick across re-renders within the same session. If you reseed the bracket the edits are preserved as long as the team count doesn't change.
Does the bracket support double-elimination or losers' bracket?
Not yet. The current bracket maker is single-elimination only. For most amateur and one-day tournaments single-elim is the right format because it keeps the schedule predictable. Double-elim is on the roadmap; if it would help you, send a note via the contact page so we know to prioritise it.
How do I score matches?
Click a team in any matchup to mark them as the winner — they advance automatically to the next round. Click again to undo. The bracket doesn't track scores numerically; it just tracks who advanced, which is the only state the bracket itself needs.
Keep exploring
Related tools & guides
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Open16-team bracket template
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OpenPrintable single elimination bracket
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OpenRound robin alternative: try a single-elim bracket
Round-robin guarantees every team plays every other — but it eats time. For one-afternoon events, a bracket is usually the better call.
Open
Ready to run your event?
Free forever for basic use. No signup required. The free version really does do the job.
Want prettier prints? See the optional template pack