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Kendo tournament toolkit

bracket-creator

Run a kendo tournament at any level of digitization, from fully printed brackets to on-screen scoreboards. Pick the mode that matches your venue and kit.

Get started Tournament app

GitHub release CI Coverage Go reference

bracket-creator lets any club or organisation run kendo tournaments at whatever level of digitization fits the venue. Give it a CSV of participants and it produces fully formatted, print-ready Excel brackets (pool draws, match schedules, and elimination trees), and it can run pools and scores on the day. Choose how digital you go.

New here? Start with these

Not sure where to begin? Choosing your setup narrows it down in two questions, and Your first tournament walks you from an empty folder to results on a screen.

Three ways to run a tournament

The same toolkit scales from a fully printed event to a fully online one. Pick the mode that matches your venue and equipment.

  • Offline

    No internet required. Generate the brackets and score sheets as an Excel file, print them, and run the whole day on paper.

    Needs: an A4/A3 printer.

    Generate a bracket

  • Partially connected

    Internet is available but there are no display screens. Keep every shiai-jo in sync through a shared Google Sheet or the tournament app, with one device per court. Some printed material is still needed for scoreboards and competitors.

    Needs: one device per shiai-jo.

    Tournament app

  • Fully digital

    On-screen scoreboards and mobile result pages, updated in real time. Organisers still print player tags and numbers.

    Needs: a device and monitor per court, plus network access for competitors.

    Host it online

Tools

Three programs ship in the single binary. The three ways to run a tournament decide how digital your event is; these tools are what you actually run to do it.

  • Tournament app

    Run pools and scores on the day, in real time on any device.

    mobile-app

    Tournament app guide

  • Legacy Web UI

    Browser-based bracket generation, no CSV editing needed.

    serve

    Legacy Web UI guide

  • CLI

    Generate print-ready Excel brackets from the command line.

    create-pools (pools + knockout) ยท create-playoffs (straight knockout)

    Command reference

Quick start

The simplest way to run the tournament app, no Go toolchain needed:

  1. Download the binary for your platform from the releases page.

  2. Start the app:

    bracket-creator mobile-app --folder ./tournament-data

  3. Open http://localhost:8080 and follow the setup in the tournament app guide.

Prefer Go or Docker? See the install options.

What you need on tournament day

  • A3 printer: for team/player name sheets
  • A4 printer: for the bracket trees
  • Scoreboards, whiteboard markers, scissors, tasuki

Keep courts in sync

If you have multiple shiai-jo, upload the Excel file to Google Drive (or similar) so every table works from the same document.

Before the tournament

  1. Collect participants: one name per line in a CSV file (input format)
  2. Generate the bracket: run create-pools or create-playoffs (commands)
  3. Optionally seed top competitors so they land in separate pools/sides of the bracket (seeding)
  4. Print: the Excel file is laid out to print cleanly on A4/A3

On the day

Use the tournament app to manage pools and scores in real time across all devices on your network (no Excel required on the day). See the tournament app guide.