Summer Never Ends
2026 Fall Tournament
Rules & Guidance
Welcome to the 2026 Fall Tournament, Summer Never Ends. Runners will participate in group races to determine seeding for a single-elimination bracket. Get in, get running, and may the best runner win!
Make sure to read the General Rules and Guidance for Tournaments and Leagues before registering for this event.
About the Tournament
This year’s Tournament has two parts: The Qualifier stage, and the Brackets stage.
- For Qualifiers, six matches will be scheduled across two weeks. Each week will feature two live races and one async race. Runners may compete in as many as they choose, but their top four (4) runs will count for their final score. Scoring for the qualifiers will use the FFR Bin System. A scoring sheet will be attached to these rules before the launch of qualifiers..
- Note, once the players are registered, days for the live qualifier races will be determined from player availability listed when they registered.
- For Brackets, the scores from the Qualifier stage will be used to determine the seeding of all entered players into a single-elimination bracket. Players will compete in Best of 3 (Bo3), single elimination matches until a final winner is determined.
All live races will be conducted on the Fall Tournament 2026 leaderboard on racetime.gg, and all asynchronous (async) races will be run through the FFR discord bot. Players will need to have a Racetime.gg account, and a Twitch account, if they wish to participate in the tournament.
Important Dates:
- Sign-Ups: July 26, 2026 - August 22, 2026
- Qualifier Schedule Announced: August 15, 2026
- Qualifiers:
- Async #1: Sunday August 23, 2026, @ 10:00 AM - Saturday, August 29, 2026 @ 10:00 PM
- Live #1: Sunday, August 23, 2026, @ 6:00 PM
- Live #2: Wednesday, August 26, 2026, @ 9:00 PM
- Live #3: Saturday, August 29, 2026, @ 8:30 PM
- Async #2: Sunday, August 30, 2026, @ 10:00 AM - Saturday, September 5, 2026 @ 10:00 PM
- Live #4: Sunday, August 30, 2026, @ 6:00 PM
- Live #5: Wednesday, September 2, 2026, @ 9:00 PM
- Live #6: Saturday, September 5, 2026, @ 8:30 PM
- Bracket Seeding Reveal Stream: September 6, 2026 at 9:00 PM EST (tentative)
- Start of Brackets: September 7, 2026
Tournament Structure:
Qualifiers
To be seeded into the later Bracket stage of the tournament, runners will have to participate in at least four Qualifier races, the first of which will start the week of August 22, 2026. Each live qualifier will be a race on racetime.gg, and each asynchronous qualifier will be a race through the FFR Discord server bot, both where all participants run the same seed. Scores for the qualifier races will use the FFR bin system. A scoring sheet will be attached to these rules before the launch of qualifiers.
- Note, to encourage players to try and complete runs (and to dissuade players from joining a group race and then quitting the second the race starts), all players must make a good faith effort to complete the seed. To get a DNF (worth 2 points in the bin system), a player must at least reach ToFR before they quit. Any runs that don't make it that far will get a DNR (worth 0 points).
After all qualifiers are run, player scores will officially tabulated. The best four scores from each player will be counted, and, depending on the size of the tournament field, the final bracket will be locked in:
- For more than 16 but less than 24 players, bracket will cut to 16 players.
- For more than 24 but less than 32 players, bracket will cut to 24 players. 8 players will get byes.
- For more than 32 but less than 64 players, bracket will cut to 32 players.
- For more than 64 players, bracket will include the top 64.
Async Races
As noted, async races will be run via the FFR Discord bot. A new thread for each async will be made during the week, and players will have a set amount of time to run the seed before the thread automatically closes. Any players that don't get their runs in before the end of the async will not be able to submit for it after the automatic cut-off.
Your time and video for an asynchronous race can be submitted via the bot. No forms or other requirements are needed.
Like with a live race, the only prior knowledge of a seed a racer may obtain before beginning their attempt is that which they can obtain from the printed blursings tool on the Randomizer website. Any time proven to have been obtained via other prior knowledge will be voided, and the runner disqualified from the tournament.
Async races must be completed in a single attempt - time begins on the button press where the party selection is confirmed and the screen tranistions to player control on the overworld, and ends when the “Terminated” textbox appears in the fight against Chaos, with no allowance for pausing of the timer in between.
As with live races, the attempt of an asynchronous race must be streamed live to Twitch, with the runner’s stream chat set to Emote Only. Unlike live races, a stream delay of 600 seconds is not required, and amount of delay will not be enforced.
Brackets
After the end of the final qualifier and the assignment of seeds, players will be populated into a Single-Elimination Bracket. Each match within that bracket will be determined by a Best-of-Three (Bo3) series between racers, where the first racer to win two races moves on to the next round and the other racer is eliminated from the bracket.
To keep within the time frame allotted for the tournament, players will have one week to take care of each Bo3 series. These races must be done live, unless there are extenuating circumstances that prevent the players from meeting at organized times for the 1v1s. Async races for brackets are only a last resort and must be approved by the Fall Tournament Planning Committee ahead of time.
Racers are encouraged to reach out to their opponents to schedule their races as soon as they are aware of their next opponent. There is no penalty to getting your races done faster than the three-per-week schedule.
In the case where three races cannot be scheduled, Tournament Staff will evaluate the situation and decide whether a match should be run as a best-of-one game, as a forced loss to one runner, or a forced loss to both runners.
Please note that bracket is not officially populated until after qualifiers are over.
The Flags
This year Fall Tournament will use one flagset for all stages of the event. This means players only need to practice one set of flags and can be well versed in all aspects of play before getting into the event:
Drafting and Other Allowances:
Players may also choose to modify the flags with the below set of approved changes (and only these approved changes). Players must agree to the changes before the seed is rolled.
- Warmech:
- Change Patrolling to Required.
- Guardian of the Masamune.
- Stats:
- Change Stats scaling up to 120%
- Change HP scaling up to 150%
- Astos:
- Buffed may be turned on.
- Pirates:
- Buffed may be turned on.
- Fiends:
- Shuffle Fiends may be turned on.
- Alternate Fiends may be turned on, with any pool and any number of pools of Alt Fiends enabled. (Please note this can lead to some pretty difficult ToFRs.)
- Bahamut:
- Buffed Bahamut may be be turned on.
- Random:
- Randomized Box Locations may be turned on.
Sign-Ups:
Please sign up using the Fall Tournament Participant Form. All entrants must be a member of the FFR discord server.
By signing up, you agree to be held to the Final Fantasy Randomizer Discord’s Code of Conduct while engaged as a participant of this event. Violations of the Code of Conduct may result in consequences ranging from a warning to bans from the discord, the tournament, all further events; these consequences may extend to other communities as well.
Scheduling Matches:
Use the below form to schedule your matches. As a reminder, players should avoid scheduling matches on days that are already busy on the schedule to avoid over burdening the broadcasting crew.
The Use of Trackers:
- The Autotracking of items is explicitly allowed for the duration of the tournament, in all rounds.
- The Autotracking of a map is explicitly allowed for the duration of the tournament, in all rounds.
User beware: Emotracker does not have updates for all the map edits. The map may feed you erroneous information throughout a given seed. Use at your own peril.
We expect that your Autotracker is Bizhawk w/ Emotracker. If you require the use of (or have access to) a different autotracker, we ask that you provide everyone the link here so that it can be vetted, and so that it may be accessible to anyone who may choose to use that.
Tournament Staff:
If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them at the Fall Tournament Planning Committee.
¶ Past Annual Tournaments
- 2025 Winter Tournament: The Great Chaos Caper
- 2024 Winter Tournament: Winter Robot Wars Chaos Wing X
- 2023 Winter Tournament: Chaos's Winter Carnival
- 2022 Spring Tournament: Kraken Games
- 2021 Spring Tournament: Chaos's Comedy Tour
- 2020 Spring Tournament: Monte Chaos's Casino
- 2019 Spring Tournament: Sail the High Seas
- 2018 Spring Tournament
- 2017 Spring New Player Tournament