Start here: League Schedule Generator, a fair season from a list of team names

For league organisers and club volunteers: what the free schedule maker gives you, your first season in ten minutes, and what it leaves to you.

Start here · 5 min read · Source
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Written by an AI agent working in this repository. Part of the "Start here" series for people new to these tools.

Who this is for

You are the person who ended up running the league. Maybe it is a Tuesday night pickleball ladder at the rec centre, an under-10 soccer division, a pub darts league, a chess club, a cornhole night or the office softball team. You have a list of team names, a couple of courts or fields, a start date, and a group chat full of people asking when they play.

League Schedule Generator turns that list into a full season with real dates, and keeps it right when the weather or the teams change.

The problem, as you would put it

"I built the schedule in a spreadsheet. Then someone pointed out one team had five home games in a row, the odd team out sat out twice in a row, and the late slot always went to the same three teams. Then it rained, and I had to redo the whole sheet."

Fairness in a round robin is easy to get wrong by hand, and a single cancelled night can ripple through every week after it.

What you get

  • A fair round robin in about a minute. Everyone plays everyone, once or twice, with home and away balanced to the fewest possible back-to-back home or away games. For an even number of teams that is the proven minimum.
  • Byes handled for odd numbers. A bye is added automatically, and the tool names any team that would sit out first, last or twice in a row.
  • Courts and time slots shared out evenly, so nobody is stuck with the late game all season.
  • Real dates on your league nights, skipping holidays you list and working around dates when a team cannot play.
  • Rainouts that move only what has to move. Cancel a night, or one team's match, and the match goes to the earliest later night both teams are free and a court is open. Nothing else changes. You can name an agreed make-up date instead, and "Download rainout change notices (.txt)" writes a post for the league chat plus a short note per affected team.
  • Standings and play-offs from the results you type, with an optional bracket seeded from the table.
  • Exports people actually use: a CSV, calendar files (.ics) for the whole league or one team, a Google Calendar or Outlook CSV, plain text for the group chat, printable score sheets, and a single self-contained league web page you can put on any static host or email.
  • A share link that carries the whole setup inside the link itself, so a co-organiser opens the same league in one click.
  • Other formats for one-night events: pool play, single and double elimination brackets, Swiss pairings, a challenge ladder, and Americano and Mexicano rotations for doubles nights.

Every finished schedule is checked again by a separate validator: every pair meets the right number of times, no team plays twice in a round, no court is double-booked, and every date respects your weekdays, skip dates and blackouts.

Your first ten minutes

  1. Open the tool at its live page. "Load an example" fills it in if you want to look first.
  2. Section 1, Teams. Type your team names, one per line.
  3. Section 2, When. Enter the first date (YYYY-MM-DD) and tick the weekday or weekdays you play. Add skip dates for holidays, team blackout dates if you have them, and tick "Double round robin" if everyone should play everyone twice. If the season is too short for a full round robin, set "Rounds to play".
  4. Section 3, Where. List your courts or fields and the time slots each night.
  5. Press "Build the schedule." Read "Your schedule", then use "By team" ("Show one team") to check what a single team's season looks like.
  6. Send it out. "Copy as plain text" for the group chat, "Download calendar (.ics), whole league" or the per-team version for phones, and "Copy share link" for your co-organiser. "Print or save as PDF" works for the noticeboard.
  7. During the season, paste results into the Results box to get the standings, and use section 5 for rainouts. At the end, "Start next season from this league" keeps the teams, courts and nights and clears the old dates and results.

Running several divisions on the same fields? The multi-division page schedules them together, keeps teams that share a coach out of the same time slot, and can weigh travel time between venues.

What it costs and where your data goes

Free and MIT licensed, with no signup. The page runs in your browser and team names and dates are never uploaded. Your last setup is remembered in this browser's local storage only, and "Clear" forgets it. The share link keeps the setup in the part of the address after the #, which browsers do not send to the server. Anonymous feature counts stay in local storage and can be switched off.

If you want players to have one link for fixtures, standings and a "Report a score" form, you can run the small league server yourself (server.mjs, with Docker, Fly or Render in your own account). Score reports wait until you approve them. It needs two secret keys you choose and should sit behind HTTPS. The README explains the setup.

What it does not do

  • It is not league administration. No registration, payments, team messaging or live scores. If you need those, use a platform such as TeamSnap, LeagueApps or SportsEngine and paste this schedule into it.
  • Court and time assignment is a seeded search, so it is repeatable for a given seed but not proven optimal. Only the home and away break count is a proven minimum, and only for even leagues.
  • Tie-breaks are yours. It ranks on points, goal difference and goals for, with head-to-head as an option. Anything past that is your league's rule.
  • Check before you send. It was tested against hand-worked 4- and 5-team leagues and random checks across many league sizes, not against your venue bookings. Look over every date, court and pairing before the schedule goes to the league.

Where to go next

No warranty. An organising aid, not legal or financial advice; league rules, venue bookings and tie-breaks are yours to apply.

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