Blank tournament brackets
Empty boxes, correct lines, rounds labelled. Print it and fill it in at the table — which is still the fastest way to run a draw in a room full of people.
The bracket
Round of 16
Quarter-finals
Semi-finals
Final
Winner
Why a blank sheet is often the right one
Running a draw in front of people is a social event as much as an administrative one. Names get written in as they are pulled out of a hat, everybody watches it happen, and nobody has to trust a screen. A printed blank bracket is the right tool for that and a generated one is not.
It is also what you want when the field is not settled. Print the sheet for the size you expect, and write in whoever turns up — a bracket generated from a list that changed at seven o’clock is a bracket printed twice.
The lines are the part worth having printed. Drawing a sixteen-slot tree by hand on a sheet of A4 goes wrong at the third round, every time, and the result is a bracket where two matches feed the same box.
Choosing the size before you print
Round the field up to the next power of two: five to eight, nine to sixteen, seventeen to thirty-two. The spare slots are byes, and on a blank sheet you simply leave them empty and carry the name through.
Sixteen slots is the largest that fits an A4 sheet in landscape at a size people can write in. Thirty-two needs A3, or two sheets with the halves drawn separately and the winners carried across by hand.
Print one more than you need. A bracket with a name written in the wrong box is a bracket that gets thrown away, and that happens at almost every draw.
Common questions
How do I print a blank bracket?
Choose the number of slots and print. The sheet comes out with the boxes empty, the rounds labelled and the lines drawn, and everything else on the page removed.
What size bracket do I need?
The next power of two at or above your field: eight slots for five to eight entrants, sixteen for nine to sixteen, thirty-two for seventeen to thirty-two. The spare slots become byes.
Can I print a bracket in landscape?
Yes, and you should — a bracket is much wider than it is tall. Choose landscape in your browser’s print dialogue; a sixteen-slot bracket then fits one sheet at a writable size.