How byes work
If you have 11 teams, the bracket rounds up to 16. The top 5 seeds get a bye and skip round one; seeds 6–11 play in round one. The bracket places byes so they spread evenly across both halves.
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Tournament bracket with byes
Have a non-power-of-2 team count? Paste them and the bracket adds byes for the top seeds automatically.
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.
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When to use this
Real tournaments rarely have exactly 8, 16 or 32 teams. The bye system rounds up to the next power of two by giving top seeds a free first round — the standard convention.
Step by step
- 1
Paste any number of teams
- 2
Generate
Byes appear automatically.
- 3
Print
What counts as the top seed?
Whichever order you paste names in. First name = seed 1. The tool doesn't try to guess.
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
Can I move byes manually?
Reorder the input. Top entries get byes; later entries play in round one.
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
6-team bracket template
Six teams seed cleanly into an 8-team bracket with two byes — paste your six and we'll handle the byes.
Open12-team bracket template
Twelve teams fit a 16-team bracket with four byes — paste them in seed order and we'll generate the sheet.
OpenPrintable single elimination bracket
The most-used bracket format on the planet. Lose once, you're out. Build it free in your browser, print it, run your event.
OpenPrintable tournament bracket maker
Run an event without spreadsheets or paid software. Build a printable bracket in your browser, share by PDF.
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