How many groups should I use?

Enough that the qualifier count reaches a power of two, if you can manage it. Four groups with two qualifying gives eight, and eight groups with two gives sixteen — both fill a bracket exactly with no byes. Six groups with two gives twelve, which does not, and that is where byes or best-third-placed rules come in.

Why do byes go to group winners?

Because that is what a bye is for. Topping a group has to be worth something, and a free pass to the next round is the natural reward. Drawing byes at random would mean a team could finish second in its group and get an easier route than the team that beat them.

Are groups of three acceptable?

They work and they are unsatisfying. Each team plays twice, and a team losing its opening match usually has nothing meaningful left. Where the numbers allow, four is the smallest group worth running — and if they do not, fewer and larger groups is normally better than more and smaller ones.

Can I seed the groups by strength?

Not here — this draws at random, so the two strongest entrants can meet in the group stage. Pot-based seeding, where each group takes one team from each pot, is what the site's group-stage draw generator does, and using its output as the input here is currently a manual step.

Group Stage and Knockout Generator

Groups then knockout is what almost every tournament above about twelve entrants actually runs, and it is where the arithmetic quietly goes wrong. Two qualifiers from six groups is twelve teams, and twelve is not a power of two — so four need byes, or four more have to qualify some other way. This draws both halves and checks they fit before you publish anything.

Entrants

One per line. Shuffled before the split, so the draw is a draw. Names stay in this browser.

16 entrants

Groups

Between 2 and 16.

Qualify per group

Two is usual — it is what makes the second group match matter.

Seed (optional)

Publish it before drawing, not after.

Your groups and bracket will appear here.

What this generator does

Splits your entrants into balanced groups, works out the bracket the qualifiers feed into, and draws the first knockout round. The three things it checks are the three that neither a group draw nor a bracket draw checks alone: whether the qualifier count fills a power-of-two bracket and how many byes are needed if not, whether the byes go to the teams that earned them, and whether the first round throws away the reward for topping a group by pairing two group winners together.

How to use this tool

Paste your entrants, one per line.
Choose how many groups and how many qualify from each.
Press Draw. You get the groups, the bracket size, the byes and the first-round ties.
Read the notes — they cover anything the shape forced that you might not want.

Understanding the controls

Entrants: One per line. They are shuffled before being split, so the draw is a draw rather than the order you typed. Repeated names are kept as entered — two teams really can both be called Rovers.
Number of groups: More groups means smaller groups, fewer group matches and a bigger knockout. Fewer, larger groups means more guaranteed matches for everybody and a longer group stage. That trade is the main decision here.
Qualifiers per group: One makes the group stage decisive and the knockout short. Two is the usual choice and is what makes the second group match matter. More than two starts to make the group stage a formality.
Seed: Reproduces the draw, which is what lets you show entrants that the groups were not arranged. Publish the seed before drawing, not after.

Worked examples

The clean case: 16 entrants, 4 groups of 4, top 2 qualify. Eight qualifiers into a bracket of eight: no byes, 24 group matches, 7 knockout matches, 31 in total.
Where the byes appear: 24 entrants, 6 groups of 4, top 2 qualify. Twelve qualifiers need a bracket of 16, so four group winners go straight through.
Uneven groups: 14 entrants in 4 groups gives 4, 4, 3, 3. The larger groups play one more match each, so the tables are not directly comparable on points.
What it refuses: Asking for three qualifiers from groups of two, which the tool rejects with the arithmetic rather than producing something unplayable.

Common use cases

A one-day tournament too large for a straight round-robin and too important for a pure knockout
Five-a-side, netball and futsal competitions, where groups then knockout is the standard shape
Esports and board-game events with pool play followed by playoffs
School sports days running a competition across several pitches
Any event where everybody should get more than one guaranteed match

How this generator works

Entrants are shuffled and dealt into groups whose sizes differ by at most one, with the remainder spread one per group rather than left in an undersized final group. The qualifier count is then compared with the next power of two at or above it: the difference is the number of byes, and those byes go to group winners because that is what a bye is for. The first round pairs winners against runners-up from *different* groups, which requires interleaving the two lists with an offset — pairing straight across would put the winner of Group A against the runner-up of Group A, which is both an instant rematch and the easiest tie in the draw going to the team that least needs it.

Randomness and fairness

The draw is random and the structure is not. Which entrant lands in which group and which qualifier slots meet in round one are drawn with the browser's cryptographic random number generator; the group sizes, the bracket size, the bye count and the winners-against-runners-up rule are all deterministic consequences of the numbers you entered. A seed switches to a reproducible, non-cryptographic generator so the same draw can be shown twice — publish the seed before drawing, because choosing it afterwards is choosing the groups.

For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.

Assumptions this tool makes

Each group is a single round-robin, with everybody playing everybody once.
Qualification is by group position, and how ties in the table are broken is your competition's rules rather than this tool's.

Limitations and good to know

It does not schedule the matches against time or pitches. Knowing you need 31 matches is not the same as knowing they fit in a day.
There is no seeding by strength. Entrants are drawn at random, so the two strongest can land in the same group — pot-based seeding is what the site's group-stage draw generator does, and combining the two is a manual step.
The knockout is drawn for the first round only. Later rounds depend on results, and a full bracket tree is what the tournament bracket generator produces.
Third-placed qualifiers are not modelled. Competitions that take the best third-placed teams to fill a bracket need that decided by hand.
It cannot judge whether groups of three are a good idea. They are usually not — a team that loses its first match has almost nothing left to play for.

Common mistakes

Not checking whether the qualifiers fill a bracket: Twelve qualifiers need a bracket of sixteen, which means four byes. Discovering that after publishing the fixtures is the single most common way this format goes wrong, and it is why the tool says so up front.
Groups of three: Two matches each, and a team that loses the first has almost nothing to play for. Four is the smallest group that works properly. If the numbers force threes, consider fewer, larger groups.
Pairing group winners against each other in round one: It removes the whole point of topping a group. The tool avoids it wherever runners-up are available, and says so when the shape leaves it no choice.
Comparing uneven group tables on points: A group of four plays six matches and a group of three plays three. Where groups differ in size, points per game is the only comparable measure, and best-third-placed rules have to say so explicitly.

Practical tips

Work out the total match count before you commit to a shape — the tournament match calculator does it without needing an entrant list.
Publish the seed with the draw. It costs nothing and converts "trust us" into something anybody can rerun.
If the byes bother you, change the number of groups rather than the qualifiers. Four or eight groups with two qualifying gives eight or sixteen — both exact.

Troubleshooting

It says too few entrants are in the smallest group: You have asked for more qualifiers than the smallest group contains. Either qualify fewer, or use fewer groups so each is larger.
There are more byes than I expected: The qualifier count has to reach a power of two. Six groups with two qualifying is twelve, and the next bracket up is sixteen — so four byes. Four or eight groups avoids it entirely.
Two teams from the same group meet immediately: With only two groups there is nowhere else to put them, and the tool flags it. With four or more groups it does not happen.

Privacy and your data

Entrant names stay in this browser. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is written into the page address, and the site has no endpoint that could receive them. Analytics records only that the tool was used along with the number of groups — never a name.

Frequently asked questions

How many groups should I use?: Enough that the qualifier count reaches a power of two, if you can manage it. Four groups with two qualifying gives eight, and eight groups with two gives sixteen — both fill a bracket exactly with no byes. Six groups with two gives twelve, which does not, and that is where byes or best-third-placed rules come in.
Why do byes go to group winners?: Because that is what a bye is for. Topping a group has to be worth something, and a free pass to the next round is the natural reward. Drawing byes at random would mean a team could finish second in its group and get an easier route than the team that beat them.
Are groups of three acceptable?: They work and they are unsatisfying. Each team plays twice, and a team losing its opening match usually has nothing meaningful left. Where the numbers allow, four is the smallest group worth running — and if they do not, fewer and larger groups is normally better than more and smaller ones.
Can I seed the groups by strength?: Not here — this draws at random, so the two strongest entrants can meet in the group stage. Pot-based seeding, where each group takes one team from each pot, is what the site's group-stage draw generator does, and using its output as the input here is currently a manual step.