What a round robin is, and your options
In a round robin, every team plays every other team, and the winner is whoever holds the best record at the end, with no knockout, so one bad game doesn't send anyone home. A "round" is a set of games played at the same time, and if you have an odd number of teams one of them sits out each round; that rest is called a bye. What you end up with is a schedule: who plays whom, in what order, with a standings sheet to track records.
The other common format is a knockout bracket, which is faster and more dramatic but eliminates half the field in the first round, wrong for a league or a class where everyone came to play. You can build a round robin by hand with the circle method (fine up to about six teams, error-prone past that), or in a spreadsheet if you're willing to work out the rotation and the byes yourself. Our Round Robin Generator does the rotation for you and prints the master schedule, a sheet per team, blank scoresheets, and a standings tracker. It schedules a round robin and nothing else — it won't run a knockout bracket or a playoff round.
Using the free Round Robin Generator
Put your teams in the box labeled "Teams (one per line)," one per line. Leave the "Double round-robin" checkbox unchecked for everyone-plays-everyone once, or check it for twice, home and away. Fill in "Courts / fields" (how many games run at the same time) and "Minutes per game," and optionally a "Start time" like 9:00 AM so each game prints a clock time. Click "Generate Schedule (PDF)" for the whole packet.
Making it fit the time you have
The mistake people make is setting a round robin up and only then finding it needs all day. The number of games climbs fast as teams are added, so size it before you commit.
- Count your teams and look up the games and rounds.
Use the table below. Games grow much faster than teams do, so a friendly-looking eight teams is already 28 games. - Turn the rounds into a time estimate.
Multiply the number of rounds by the minutes per game, then divide by how many courts or fields you have. Add a few minutes per round for changeovers. - Choose single or double with that number in front of you.
Double round-robin is twice the games and so twice the time; pick it only if the calendar has room. - If your team count is odd, expect a bye each round.
One team rests per round. The generator spreads the byes so nobody rests twice before everyone has rested once. - Generate, post the master, and hand out the rest.
Put the master schedule where everyone can see it, give each team its own sheet, and keep the standings page somewhere you'll actually update it.
How many games for N teams
A single round robin is N × (N − 1) ÷ 2 games: each team plays N − 1 others, halved so A-vs-B isn't counted twice.
- 4 teams: 6 games, 3 rounds
- 5 teams: 10 games, 5 rounds (one bye per round)
- 6 teams: 15 games, 5 rounds
- 7 teams: 21 games, 7 rounds (one bye per round)
- 8 teams: 28 games, 7 rounds
- 10 teams: 45 games, 9 rounds
- 12 teams: 66 games, 11 rounds
Single vs double, and which to pick
Single suits a one-day event. Double is the league format, home and away; it cancels out a single bad game or one team's home advantage, at the cost of twice the games. Eight teams jumps from 28 games to 56, so double needs the calendar to match.
How the pairings are made
It's the circle method: line the teams up, keep one fixed, rotate the rest one seat each round, and whoever ends up across from whom plays. Doing it by hand is fine up to about six teams and tedious after that, which is the whole reason the generator exists.