Tournament Draw Generator

Make the draw the way federations do it: rank your teams, split them into pots, add the rules that must hold, and let the draw place them. This generator builds seeded group draws and knockout draws for 4 to 128 teams, keeps clubs from the same town apart, balances uneven entry lists, and publishes a draw page you can reveal live on a screen.

Random shuffle vs a proper draw

A shuffling site gives you a reordered list. A tournament draw applies structure on top of the randomness — that is the whole job:

What you need	Random shuffler	Draw generator
Unbiased order	Yes	Yes
Seeded pots so strong teams are split	No	Yes
Keep two clubs from the same town apart	No	Yes
Balance groups when entries are uneven	No	Yes
Turn the result into fixtures and kick-off times	No	Yes
Public page teams can check afterwards	No	Yes

How seeding pots are built

The number of pots equals the number of teams per group. Rank the field, cut it into equal bands, and draw one team from each band into every group.

Teams	Group setup	Pots	Teams per pot	Group-stage matches
8	2 groups of 4	4	2	12
12	3 groups of 4	4	3	18
16	4 groups of 4	4	4	24
20	4 groups of 5	5	4	40
24	6 groups of 4	4	6	36
32	8 groups of 4	4	8	48

Worked example: a 16-team seeded draw

Rank the 16 entries on last year's finish, league level, or the organiser's judgement.
Pot 1 = ranks 1–4, Pot 2 = ranks 5–8, Pot 3 = ranks 9–12, Pot 4 = ranks 13–16.
Draw Pot 1 first: one team into each of groups A, B, C and D.
Repeat for Pots 2, 3 and 4, skipping any placement that breaks a conflict rule.
If the last team has no legal group left, discard and rerun the draw from the start — never hand-place it, because that is the moment the draw stops being random.

The result: four groups where no group holds two Pot 1 sides, and the two strongest teams can only meet in the knockout stage.

Conflict rules worth setting

Same club. Two teams from one club (an A and B side) should not share a group — parents cannot be in two places at once, and the result always looks arranged.
Same town or district. Teams travel to meet new opposition; local derbies belong in the knockout, not on group matchday one.
Last year's repeat. Blocking a pairing that already happened in the previous edition keeps a small regional field feeling fresh.
Travel distance. For multi-venue cups, keep long-distance teams grouped at one site instead of scattering them across the city.

Add rules sparingly. Every extra constraint shrinks the number of legal draws, and with too many the generator will restart repeatedly before finding one that satisfies them all.

Running the draw as an event

A draw is also a fixture-selling moment. Set the pots the day before, put the public draw page on a projector at the club evening, and reveal one pot at a time. Teams see their group appear live, the page is shareable the second it finishes, and the fixture list generates straight from the result — no evening spent retyping groups into a spreadsheet afterwards.

Knockout draws

For a straight knockout the same logic applies to bracket positions: seeds are placed so 1 and 2 sit in opposite halves, byes go to the top seeds when the field is not a power of two, and unseeded teams are drawn into the remaining slots. The maths behind bracket sizes and byes is covered on the tournament bracket generator page.

Related tools

Round robin generator — fixtures for the groups your draw creates.
Bracket maker — the knockout stage after the groups.
Fixture generator — pitches and kick-off times.
Budget template — plan entry fees around the format you drew.

Pricing

The draw generator is part of CupHelp, alongside registration, payments, referees and live results. Pricing is €1 per team up to 8 teams and €3 per team on the Club plan above that — see the pricing page.