8-team double elimination bracket

About an 8-team bracket

Eight-team double elimination: seven winners’ bracket games, then a losers’ bracket where the four first-round losers play off and meet each team as it drops down. Fourteen games if the winners’ bracket champion wins the grand final, fifteen with the reset.

On paper the losers’ bracket is drawn under the winners’ bracket, with “Loser of M…” on each line where a team drops in, so a printed sheet shows exactly where to write each losing team.

Byes and the first round

8 is a power of two, so there are no byes: all 8 teams play in the first round (1 v 8, 4 v 5, 2 v 7, 3 v 6). Each pairing adds up to 9, so seed 1 meets the lowest seed and seeds 1 and 2 can only meet in the final.

No seeding? Write the names in at random, or put the names into the bracket maker and choose Random draw for a reproducible draw you can print.

Round by round

Every game, in order

The same numbers as on the printed bracket, so a scorer can call out “game 5” and everyone knows where to write.

1. M1 (Winners round 1): Seed 1 v Seed 8
2. M2 (Winners round 1): Seed 4 v Seed 5
3. M3 (Winners round 1): Seed 2 v Seed 7
4. M4 (Winners round 1): Seed 3 v Seed 6
5. M5 (Losers round 1): Loser of M1 v Loser of M2
6. M6 (Losers round 1): Loser of M3 v Loser of M4
7. M7 (Winners semifinals): Winner of M1 v Winner of M2
8. M8 (Winners semifinals): Winner of M3 v Winner of M4
9. M9 (Losers round 2): Winner of M5 v Loser of M8
10. M10 (Losers round 2): Winner of M6 v Loser of M7
11. M11 (Losers round 3): Winner of M9 v Winner of M10
12. M12 (Winners final): Winner of M7 v Winner of M8
13. M13 (Losers final): Winner of M11 v Loser of M12
14. M14 (Grand final): Winner of M12 v Winner of M13
15. M15 (Grand final reset): Winner of M14 v Loser of M14

How long it takes

Time slots needed if each court or field plays one game per slot and a round must finish before the next starts (in double elimination the two brackets can overlap, so a tight schedule can do a little better):

How it differs from single elimination

Losing once drops a team into the losers’ bracket (drawn underneath) instead of ending its tournament. Losers’ rounds alternate between survivors playing each other and survivors meeting teams just knocked down from the winners’ bracket, whose lines are marked “Loser of M…”. The losers’ bracket champion meets the unbeaten winners’ bracket champion in the grand final; if the losers’ side wins, both have one loss and the final is replayed. An 8-team single elimination bracket is only 7 games (print one here).

Final placings

A finished bracket places every team. Teams knocked out in the same losers’ round share a place.

• 1st: 1 team
• 2nd: 1 team
• 3rd: 1 team
• 4th: 1 team
• 5th–6th: 2 teams
• 7th–8th: 2 teams

Printing it

The Print button prints only the bracket, landscape, scaled to one page, with a title and a date line. Smallest text on the page for each paper size (below about 6 pt it is hard to read; handwriting needs the line, not the text):

• Letter (11 × 8.5 in): about 9 pt
• A4 (297 × 210 mm): about 9 pt
• Legal (14 × 8.5 in): about 9 pt
• Tabloid (17 × 11 in): about 9 pt

Letter or A4 is plenty for this size. In the print dialog, choose “Fit to page” or 100% and switch off headers and footers for a clean sheet.

Page last reviewed 30 September 2026.