Round robin generator

Round Robin Generator: Every Team Plays Every Team

Paste the teams and the whole season is built: every pairing exactly once, or home and away, sorted into matchdays. Enter results as they happen and the league table sorts itself, on a link anyone can follow.

  • Circle-method fixtures — every pair meets exactly once, one game per team per matchday
  • Home and away in one switch; your own points for a win, draw and loss
  • Standings recalculated from results, never a stale running total
  • Up to 24 teams free — a full home-and-away season is 552 games

Your league

Points for a win · draw · loss

Soccer, hockey. Change it any time in the editor.

Free, no account needed. Blank rows are ignored, and you can add teams or rebuild the fixtures in the editor.

The circle method

How a Round Robin Schedule Generator Works

Hold one team still and rotate the rest around it one place per matchday. Every team meets every other team exactly once, and each team plays at most one game per matchday, so a matchday is something you can actually put on a Thursday night. That is the whole method, and it is what this generator does when you press build.

An odd number of teams gets a phantom opponent: whoever is drawn against it rests that matchday, which is why five teams need five matchdays but six teams only need five as well. The sides of each fixture alternate from one matchday to the next, so nobody is listed first, or “home”, all season. Turn on home and away and the whole schedule repeats with the sides swapped.

The tables on the right are the real output for six and five teams, numbered in the order you enter them. Paste your names in the same order and this is the season you get.

6 teams · 15 fixtures

  1. MD11 v 62 v 53 v 4
  2. MD25 v 14 v 63 v 2
  3. MD31 v 45 v 36 v 2
  4. MD43 v 12 v 46 v 5
  5. MD51 v 23 v 64 v 5

5 teams · 10 fixtures

  1. MD12 v 53 v 41 rests
  2. MD25 v 13 v 24 rests
  3. MD31 v 45 v 32 rests
  4. MD43 v 12 v 45 rests
  5. MD51 v 24 v 53 rests

How Many Games Is a Round Robin?

N teams play N × (N − 1) ÷ 2 games when everyone meets once. Home and away doubles it. Fixtures grow with the square of the roster, which is why a league stops being a round robin somewhere in the twenties and becomes groups plus a knockout.

TeamsGames, onceMatchdaysGames, home & awayMatchdays
463126
5one rests each day1052010
61553010
82875614
104599018
12661113222
161201524030
201901938038
242762355246

24 teams is the free plan’s roster, and 552 home-and-away games is the biggest full season that fits under the 600-fixture limit on any plan.

League table maker

How the Standings Are Worked Out

The table is never typed in. It is recalculated from the results every time anyone looks at it, which is the difference between a league table and a spreadsheet that was right last Tuesday.

Four teams, home and away, 3 · 1 · 0. Riverton and Ashgrove are level on points, so goal difference separates them.
#TeamPWDLFAGDPts
1Riverton United6411136+713
2Ashgrove Rovers6411107+313
3Northside FC62228808
4Kingsway Athletic6006313-100

Tie-break order: points, then goal difference, then goals scored, then name. Head-to-head is not applied; the fixture list shows every meeting if your rules need it.

Points that match your sport

Pick a system in the builder or set your own, from −10 to 10 for each result. Negative values are allowed because some ladders really do dock points.

  • 3 · 1 · 0Soccer, hockey, most club leagues

    The default.

  • 2 · 1 · 0Basketball, volleyball, netball

    Also how a chess club's 1 · ½ · 0 is written in whole numbers.

  • 2 · 0 · 0Pool, darts and snooker ladders

    No draws in the sport, so the middle value never fires.

  • 1 · 0 · 0Games nights, office leagues

    Points equal wins, which is what most people mean by 'the standings'.

Round Robin or Bracket?

Choose by how much time you have and how much the result has to mean. A round robin is the fairest shape there is: every team plays the same opponents the same number of times, an upset is one result among many, and the champion is the team that was best across the season. It is also, by a wide margin, the most games.

A knockout bracket decides the same eight teams in seven games, which is why it owns the one-day tournament. The cost is that the draw matters and one bad game ends your day. The usual compromise is both: a round robin group stage over a few weeks, then the top finishers seeded into a bracket for the final day.

When it is a bracket you want, the bracket maker builds single or double elimination for 2 to 64 entrants, the 8-team page is the size a four-group round robin usually feeds, and single vs double elimination explains when the losers bracket is worth the extra games.

8 teams, three ways
FormatGamesGames per teamWhat decides it
Round robin287 eachThe table, over the whole season
Single elimination71 to 3One loss and you are out
Double elimination142 to 5Two losses; a losers bracket keeps you in

Home and away doubles the round robin to 56. Double elimination is one more if the grand final is reset.

Frequently Asked Questions

Every entrant plays every other entrant, usually once, and there is no elimination: the standings decide the winner. Each result earns points (3 for a win and 1 for a draw by default), and the table ranks everyone by points, then goal difference, then goals scored. Because nobody is knocked out, every team plays the same number of games and a single bad day cannot end a season.

N teams play N × (N − 1) ÷ 2 games when everyone meets once: 4 teams play 6, 6 teams play 15, 8 teams play 28, 10 teams play 45 and 16 teams play 120. Playing home and away doubles it. The generator shows the count as you add names, so you can see what a season costs in games before you build it.

Five is an odd number, so one team rests each matchday. The generator adds a phantom sixth slot, schedules five matchdays of two games each, and the team drawn against the phantom has the bye. Everyone rests exactly once and plays exactly four games, ten in total. Paste five names above and the five matchdays are built for you.

People say “round robin bracket”, but there is no bracket: nobody advances and nobody is eliminated, so what you actually get is a fixture list and a table. If you want a bracket after the group games, run the round robin here, then seed a knockout bracket from the final standings with the bracket maker.

From the results, every time the table loads. Each team's row counts games played, won, drawn and lost, scores for and against, the difference, and points at whatever values you set: 3/1/0 by default, 2/1/0 for basketball-style leagues, 2/0 for a ladder with no draws, or 1 a win for a games night. Nothing is stored as a running total, so correcting a typo in a result corrects the table with it.

Points first, then goal difference, then goals scored, then alphabetical order as a last resort. That is the chain most leagues use, and it is applied automatically. Head-to-head records are not used as a tie-break, so if your competition needs one, settle it from the fixture list, which shows every result between the two sides.

Yes. Tick 'Play home and away' before building and every pairing is scheduled twice, with the sides swapped for the return leg. Eight teams go from 28 fixtures over 7 matchdays to 56 over 14. Even in a single round the generator alternates which side each team is listed on, so nobody is 'home' all season.

Yes, with one honest caveat: the schedule is organised into matchdays, not calendar dates or venues. You decide that matchday 3 is the second Thursday of the month. What it does do is guarantee every pairing appears exactly once (or twice, home and away), grouped so that each team plays at most one game per matchday.

Up to 24 teams on the free plan, which is the largest even roster that fits a full home-and-away season inside the 600-fixture limit (24 teams twice is 552 games). Pro raises it to 32 and Premium to 35, the most that can play a single round under the same limit. Past that, fixtures grow so fast that a round robin is the wrong shape for the event and it wants groups feeding a knockout.

Yes. Building the fixtures, entering results and sharing the live link are free, with no account or credit card needed, for up to 24 teams. Pro ($24/mo) and Premium ($52/mo) raise the roster, add your own colours and logo, and remove the MakeTheBoard branding. If it is one league that needs to look official rather than a whole plan, a one-time $15 unlock does that for a single board and lifts its roster to 32.

Yes. Every league has a public link that shows the table and the full fixture list, and it updates the moment a result is entered. Nobody following it needs an account. Put the same link on a screen at the venue for a live standings board, or embed it on a club website.

Start From a Ready-Made Season

Soccer, group stage, pool ladder, esports, youth sports and games night, each with its scoring set and the fixtures generated the moment you open it.