Free round robin schedule maker
Round robin generator
A round robin generator pairs every team with every other team, round by round. Enter 3 to 16 teams, choose a single or double round robin, and get a fixture list with a bye for odd numbers and home and away balanced within one game. It is free, and no account is needed: it runs in your browser.
Need dates, fields and change notices as well? Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams and leagues with up to 10 clubs. See plans and limits.
- 3 to 16 teams
- Byes
- Double round robin
- Balanced home and away
The generator
Make your round robin
Enter 3 to 16 team names and choose a single or double round robin. Every game has a home and an away team, each team's home and away counts differ by at most one, and an odd number of teams adds a bye each round. Copy, print or download the result as a CSV. No account needed: it runs in your browser, and nothing you type is sent or saved. To put the rounds on dates and fields, use the league schedule maker.
Read the result round by round: every team should appear once in each round, or sit out on a bye. In a double round robin every pair meets twice. Want one already made? Open a ready-made 6-team schedule, or compare with the six-team and five-team tables below.
The format
What is a round robin?
A round robin is a competition in which every team plays every other team. In a single round robin each pair meets once; in a double round robin each pair meets twice, usually once at each team's home. Six teams in a single round robin play five games each, fifteen in total, and nobody is knocked out.
Organizers like the format because standings are fair: every team faces the same opponents, and everyone knows from day one how many games they will play. The fixture list is also easy to check: every team appears once per round, and every pair exactly once.
The trade-off is length. Twelve teams need 66 games in a round robin, while a knockout bracket with the same teams needs only 11. That is why short events often split teams into pools of four or five, play a round robin in each pool, then finish with a knockout. For that part, use our free bracket generator or the tournament maker.
The numbers
Rounds and games for 3 to 16 teams
Three formulas cover every round robin. With n teams, a single round robin has n(n − 1) ÷ 2 games. With an even number of teams there are n − 1 rounds of n ÷ 2 games. With an odd number there are n rounds of (n − 1) ÷ 2 games, and one team sits out each round.
| Teams | Rounds (single) | Games per round | Total games (single) | Total games (double) | Bye each round? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 6 | Yes |
| 4 | 3 | 2 | 6 | 12 | No |
| 5 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 20 | Yes |
| 6 | 5 | 3 | 15 | 30 | No |
| 7 | 7 | 3 | 21 | 42 | Yes |
| 8 | 7 | 4 | 28 | 56 | No |
| 9 | 9 | 4 | 36 | 72 | Yes |
| 10 | 9 | 5 | 45 | 90 | No |
| 11 | 11 | 5 | 55 | 110 | Yes |
| 12 | 11 | 6 | 66 | 132 | No |
| 13 | 13 | 6 | 78 | 156 | Yes |
| 14 | 13 | 7 | 91 | 182 | No |
| 15 | 15 | 7 | 105 | 210 | Yes |
| 16 | 15 | 8 | 120 | 240 | No |
Read the table against the time you have. A ten-team league plays nine rounds: nine weekends at one round a weekend, or eighteen for home and away. The league schedule maker then works out how many game days your fields and time slots give you.
How it works
The circle method, step by step
Round robin pairings are usually built with the circle method, the rotation behind the Berger tables used to plan chess tournaments. It takes a few minutes on paper, and knowing it lets you check any generated schedule.
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Number the teams
List the teams 1 to n. With an odd number, add a placeholder team called BYE so the count is even.
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Fix one team
Team 1 never moves. It is the pivot the other teams rotate around.
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Pair across two rows
Write teams 1 to n ÷ 2 along a top row and the rest right to left along a bottom row, so team 1 sits above team n. Each team plays the team opposite. Those pairs are round 1.
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Rotate one place
Keep team 1 still and move every other team one place clockwise around the two rows. The new pairs are round 2.
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Repeat and check
Rotate until you have n − 1 rounds. Every team should appear once per round, and the total should equal n(n − 1) ÷ 2 games. If a pair repeats, team 1 was moved by mistake.
Sources (checked )
Worked example
A six-team round robin
Here is the circle method applied to six teams, A to F, with home and away already balanced. It is a complete single round robin: five rounds, three games a round, fifteen games, and every pair meets exactly once. The home team is listed first.
| Round | Game 1 | Game 2 | Game 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | A vs F | B vs E | C vs D |
| Round 2 | E vs A | D vs F | B vs C |
| Round 3 | A vs D | C vs E | F vs B |
| Round 4 | C vs A | B vs D | E vs F |
| Round 5 | A vs B | F vs C | D vs E |
Replace the letters with your team names and you have a fixture list. Team A is the fixed team: in a raw circle-method table it is listed first every round, so it would host all five games. Flipping A's game in rounds 2 and 4, plus a few other pairs, gives the balance shown. To print it with your own team names, open the ready-made 6-team schedule.
Odd numbers
Five teams and a bye
With an odd number of teams, add a placeholder called BYE and run the same method. Whoever is paired with BYE has no game that round. Five teams play five rounds of two games, each team sits out once, and every team plays four games: two at home and two away.
| Round | Game 1 | Game 2 | Bye |
|---|---|---|---|
| Round 1 | B vs E | C vs D | A |
| Round 2 | E vs A | B vs C | D |
| Round 3 | A vs D | E vs C | B |
| Round 4 | C vs A | D vs B | E |
| Round 5 | A vs B | D vs E | C |
A bye is not wasted time: it is the natural slot for a makeup game if weather takes a round. What the pairing method cannot decide is which date each bye falls on; that is a calendar decision, covered on the league schedule maker page.
Single or double
Single vs double round robin
A single round robin is the shortest fair season. A double round robin plays every pairing twice, normally once at each team's home, and it is the usual shape of a home-and-away league season.
| Question | Single round robin | Double round robin |
|---|---|---|
| Each pair meets | Once | Twice, with home and away swapped |
| Games per team | 7 | 14 |
| Total games | 28 | 56 |
| Rounds | 7 | 14 |
| Home and away | Within one game of even | Exactly even when the second half mirrors the first |
| Good for | Short seasons, tournament pools, development leagues | Full seasons where home field matters |
The simplest double round robin repeats the first half in the same order with home and away swapped, so each team hosts each opponent once. With more weeks than a single round robin needs but fewer than a double, add a short playoff instead of extra repeat games.
Sources (checked )
Play 2 Earn Sports
From pairings to a full season
A round robin decides only who plays whom. When the pairings have to become a real season, with fields, blackout dates, shared coaches and referees, the league schedule generator in our sports scheduling software builds the same circle-method pairings and handles the rest.
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Scheduling wizard
A league organizer enters season dates, teams, venues, allowed weekdays and earliest and latest start times, then previews the expected number of fixtures before generating.
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Single or double round robin
Fixtures are generated as a round robin for each division, with a bye each round for odd team counts. Turn on home and away and the second cycle swaps home and away.
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Fields, blackouts and availability
Games are placed inside the season dates, on the allowed days and inside each field's availability windows, around blackout dates and teams' weekly availability.
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Conflicts flagged
A double-booked field or a team booked twice is flagged, so the organizer can fix it before families see it.
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Changes reach families
When a game is moved, postponed or cancelled, players, linked parents, coaches and the assigned referee are told in the app, by email, by push where enabled and in team chat.
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Referees and who pays
League staff assign referees with checks on sport, level and availability, and choose who pays the referee: the league, the home team or a split between the two teams.
A published schedule is not regenerated over until the organizer unlocks or unpublishes it. Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams and leagues with up to 10 clubs; see plans and limits. Organizers can read more about league scheduling software and league management software.
FAQ
Round robinquestions
Twenty-eight. Each team plays seven games, in seven rounds of four games with no byes: 8 × 7 ÷ 2 = 28. A double round robin doubles that to 56 games over 14 rounds, with each team meeting every opponent once at home and once away. On one field with four slots a day, a single round robin fits in seven game days.
n − 1 rounds for an even number of teams and n rounds for an odd number, because one team sits out each round. Ten teams need nine rounds of five games; eleven teams need eleven rounds of five games, with a different team on a bye each time. A double round robin needs twice as many rounds.
Add a placeholder team called BYE and schedule as if the count were even. The team paired with BYE has no game that round. Every team gets exactly one bye in a single round robin and two in a double. Byes are useful later: a team's bye week is a ready-made date for a makeup game.
With six teams each team plays five games, so the fairest split is three and two. The generator on this page does this for you: each team's home and away counts differ by at most one. By hand, alternate the fixed team's home and away and flip a few other pairs. In a double round robin, swap every home and away in the second half and the split is exact.
They answer different questions. A round robin ranks every team over many games; a single-elimination bracket finds a winner in n − 1 games but sends half the teams home after one game. Many events combine them. Our free bracket generator builds single-elimination brackets for 4, 8, 16 or 32 teams.
Yes. The generator on this page is free for 3 to 16 teams, and no account is needed: it runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent or saved. Copy, print or download the result as a CSV. For dated games use the league schedule maker; for fields, conflict checks and change notices, see our sports scheduling software.
Yes. The scheduling wizard in Play 2 Earn Sports generates a single or double round robin for each division, with byes for odd team counts, and places the games on your fields inside the season dates, allowed days and availability windows. It flags any double-booked field or team for you to fix. The sports scheduling software page shows the rest.
Schedule the whole season
Make the pairings here, add dates on the league schedule maker, or run the full season with conflict checks and change notices in Play 2 Earn Sports. Starter is free for clubs with up to 10 teams and leagues with up to 10 clubs.