The osu! team runs a program where they may opt to provide community-run tournaments that abide by a certain set of criteria and expectations with extra support, at their discretion.
This article was last updated on January 9, 2022. For any queries and clarifications, please consult the #tournaments
channel on the osu!dev Discord server or send an email to tournaments@ppy.sh.
Officially supported tournaments have access to:
Community-run tournaments which abide by the following hard criteria are eligible for support:
https://pif.ephemeral.ink/tournament-reports
¹: An "experienced" staff member is loosely defined as someone who has contributed significantly to the successful running of at least three badge-receiving tournaments beforehand, or has been a part of an official World Cup volunteer team for any game mode. This may vary at the discretion of the account support team.
To start with, the request for support must be made well before the tournament actually commences play. There are no specific timelines for this, but we recommend at least two to three weeks before play commences to account for delays in the screening process.
If your tournament satisfies the eligibility criteria, you can make a request for support by sending an email to tournaments@ppy.sh with the following information:
Once we receive your request, the account support team will return a list of users who are ineligible to participate in tournaments. Please allow ample time for a response. We will try our best to handle all requests within a week, but we occasionally have large spikes in workload that can make this impossible.
Tournament organisers are expected to monitor their tournament for anything that runs afoul of the expectations outlined below, and are single-handedly responsible for reporting such incidents to the account support team via tournaments@ppy.sh. Failure to adhere to this may result in withdrawal of official support.
Community-run tournaments receiving this support are expected to abide by the following general ideals:
In addition, all promotional material or any services associated with a tournament receiving official support should adhere to the osu! community rules. This includes things like Twitter accounts, Discord servers, and so on.
The tournament must also abide by the following practices throughout:
!mp make
command, so that they do not expire. The results must be recorded and made publicly available on the original tournament forum post in a clear and accessible format.²: Play "commences" once any seedings or brackets have been determined. Therefore, qualifiers may be exempt from this.
Once the tournament has concluded, the tournament organisers will need to submit the following to the account support team:
Tournament organisers are expected to ensure that their tournaments run smoothly and with minimal disruption where possible.
Users under an active tournament ban are expected to disclose their tournament ban status to any officially supported tournament they intend to help with. They may be enlisted as helpers at the host's discretion, but we encourage careful consideration of such choices as said individuals have already infringed upon the rules once (or more). They may not act as staff UNLESS the host requests an exemption for them when sending in their initial request for support. The account support team will then assess these on a case-by-case basis with the user's history in mind.
Participants in officially supported tournaments are expected to adhere to the osu! community rules at all times, regardless of their rank, accomplishments, or other achievements. They are also expected to treat all volunteers involved in hosting a tournament with respect, and to not deliberately attempt to waste their time or otherwise excessively complicate the undertaking of a tournament with their actions.
At the account support team's discretion, offending players may be issued timed or permanent tournament bans depending on the severity of their behaviour. Repeat offenders may risk incurring a permanent tournament ban or a restriction.
A major part of being an officially supported tournament is access to the screening process. Similar to the "security checks" undertaken by all World Cup players, screening helps prevent users with recent serious infringements or tournament bans from disrupting play.
Tournament organisers will be expected to provide a comma-separated list (or spreadsheet) including usernames and user IDs. If the tournament is team-based, this list must reflect the grouping of users in their teams of play, complete with any team name or other identifying marker.
The comma-separated list should look like this:
User1,1234567
User2,1234567
User3,1234567
For team-based tournaments, the expected format is:
User1,Team1,1234567
User2,Team1,1234567
User3,Team2,1234567
User4,Team2,1234567
Once screening concludes, the account support team will provide a list of any users who failed screening and are not considered eligible for tournament play, without providing specific reasoning. Individual users who are unhappy with their screening outcome should be told to consult accounts@ppy.sh via email.
Allowing users that have failed screening to play in your tournament will result in an immediate withdrawal of support and will result in future requests for support to be denied.
Officially supported tournaments that satisfy the expectations above are eligible to request profile badge prizes following completion. Badges will never be approved until after the conclusion of the tournament.
Profile badge images must adhere to the following standards:
Please consult the following examples of approved badge designs:
Badge images that do not meet these standards will be refused with given reasoning, and you may be asked to completely redesign your badge in some cases. This is fairly uncommon, but should be accounted for.
In exceptionally rare cases, a tournament may be granted the privilege of awarding badges to its top three finalists. A tournament that has received this distinction is recognised for attaining the highest level of production quality and organisation possible—this is given exclusively at the discretion of the osu! team. Hosts will be contacted directly if applicable.
Long-running community tournaments may qualify for in-game main-menu banner support. It's at the osu! team's discretion to decide if your tournament can be advertised in-game, as there are many factors to consider. The minimum requirements to request in-game advertising are as follows:
If you satisfy the above criteria, you may make a request for main-menu banner support by sending an email to tournaments@ppy.sh. The banner image must adhere to the following standards:
2x
, meaning that they will be exported at 50% scale by us into a 1x
image. Design your images appropriately to ensure things are legible at half size.Please consult the following examples of acceptable banner designs:
Please do not submit a main menu banner with your original request—you will be asked and pointed to this section if you are authorised to make use of one.
The second iteration of a tournament is often free of a lot of the organisational issues of the first tournament, and has established a solid workflow and staff involved in its production. They are far less likely to peter out or be subject to questionable choices. The tournament is also far more identifiable if it runs more than just once.
For all of these reasons (and more), we ask that profile badge prizes are only awarded to tournaments that have successfully run at least once before, unless a sizeable majority of the team is experienced and accomplished at running tournaments in the past.
If a user has access to information that could conceivably influence the outcome of the tournament/contest, they are considered staff. To clarify, we consider organisers, referees, mappool selectors, mappool playtesters, custom mappers, judges, or any other form of managerial position directly involved in the maintenance and operation of the tournament/contest to be a part of its staff. This list is not exhaustive—if you have any doubts, please contact tournaments@ppy.sh.
Commentators, streamers, and graphic designers are designated as helpers, and may participate in tournaments/contests freely so long as they are not directly involved in any organisational aspect of the tournament/contest.
We have historically had issues where unscrupulous organisers have geared tournaments specifically (i.e. picked maps they're familiar with, adjusted seeds/brackets, etc.) to farm profile badges for themselves and their friends. While we understand that most groups will not do this, we must enforce this restriction to keep things fair for everyone.
No. Players who have been eliminated from the tournament/contest may not be enlisted as staff or assist in any organisational capacity with the sole exception of setting replays for mappool showcases. They can, however, be enlisted as a helper.
A registrant who has passed screening but has not been scheduled for any matches AND has not participated in any gameplay (including qualifiers) is not yet considered a player/participant of the tournament, and may therefore still be enlisted as staff.
In the unlikely event that a player becomes restricted during the course of the tournament, you may need to replay certain matches where they were involved in order to preserve the competitive integrity of the tournament. Tournament organisers should contact the account support team to receive information and guidance on these (hopefully rare) cases.
Flooding the game with profile badges dilutes the prestige of the prize for everybody else. We do not want profile badges to be something that people 'farm' from a few sets of regular, recurring tournaments.
For beatmap contests, yes, just follow the same rules as above. We highly recommend using Featured Artists for such contests and will flagrantly give preferential treatment to those who do.
For other contests, email us and ask personally. We'll try to work something out.