Recurring Events

Automate Your Weekly, Biweekly, or Monthly Brackets

Running a regular tournament series is one of the best ways to build a thriving local or online community. Spaghetti Showdown's recurring events feature lets you set up a schedule once and have tournaments created automatically, saving you the repetitive work of manual setup each week.

What Are Recurring Events?

A recurring event is a template that generates individual tournament instances on a defined schedule. For example, you might run a Street Fighter 6 weekly every Thursday at 7 PM. Instead of creating a new tournament manually each week, you define the recurrence pattern and the platform handles the rest.

Setting Up a Recurring Schedule

1. Navigate to your community dashboard and click Create Recurring Event.
2. Fill in the tournament template, including the name pattern (e.g., "Thursday Night Fights #{{number}}"), game, format, and all settings. The {{number}} placeholder is automatically replaced with an incrementing session number.
3. Choose the recurrence pattern:
   • Weekly - Select the day of the week and time.
   • Biweekly - Every other week on a specific day.
   • Monthly - A specific day of the month or a pattern like "first Saturday of the month."
   • Custom interval - Every N days for non-standard schedules.
4. Set the season start and end dates to define when the recurring series is active. Tournaments are only generated within this window.
5. Optionally link the recurring event to a league so each generated tournament automatically contributes to the league standings.
6. Click Save to activate the schedule.

How Tournaments Are Generated

Tournaments are generated automatically based on your lead time setting. By default, the next session is created 3 days before the scheduled date, giving players time to register. You can adjust this lead time from 1 to 14 days. Each generated tournament inherits all settings from the template but can be individually edited if a specific session needs different rules.

Managing Exceptions

Real life does not always follow a schedule. The recurring events system handles exceptions gracefully:

• Skip a session - If you need to cancel a specific week (holiday, venue conflict, etc.), open the generated tournament and click Cancel Session. Registered players are notified automatically, and the next session generates on schedule.
• Reschedule a session - Edit the date and time of an individual generated tournament without affecting the rest of the series.
• Add an extra session - Manually create a tournament and link it to the same league for bonus events that fall outside the regular schedule (such as a special invitational).
• Pause the series - Temporarily stop generating new sessions without deleting the recurring event. Useful for seasonal breaks.

Editing the Template

If you need to change something about all future sessions (for example, switching from best-of-3 to best-of-5), edit the recurring event template. Changes apply only to future generated tournaments. Sessions that have already been created or completed are not affected, preserving historical accuracy.

Best Practices

Use a consistent naming pattern so players always know what to look for on the community page. Include the session number in the name to help with record-keeping. Link your recurring event to a league from the start so you do not have to retroactively attach tournaments later. Finally, set a reasonable registration deadline and check-in window to reduce no-shows and keep the bracket on schedule every week.