Free tournaments for schools and universities — TLab Edu

8/1/2026

School and university tournaments have been running on Tlab.pro from the very start — and there has always been the same awkwardness about them. A school tournament is not a business, it is an event for children, parents and teachers: charging for it is wrong, and so is putting ads next to the bracket. So we set up TLab Edu: tournaments run by educational institutions get the full status for free, for a year, renewable. Applying takes one message — no payment and no card details.

What the status gives you

The tournament is never archived. On the free plan a tournament moves to the archive after three months: the page stays at the same link, but it can no longer be edited — for a school that means last year's championship can neither be corrected nor added to by the time the next September comes round. With TLab Edu the tournament stays fully active for a year and is renewed on request: results, bracket and statistics stay where they are, and the school gradually builds up its own history of competitions that can still be linked to years later.

There are no ads on the tournament page. The link to the bracket gets sent to the parents' chat, put on the school website, shown on a screen in the gym. There should be no ad blocks next to children's names — and with the status there won't be.

These tournaments don't count towards the limit. The free plan allows ten active tournaments. Educational ones are not part of that count: you can run a volleyball championship, a chess tournament and an inter-class sports day without having to decide which of them to delete to make room.

Who qualifies

Schools, colleges, sixth forms, universities — tournaments run by the institution itself, or by its teachers and student bodies. That covers PE lessons, school sports days, inter-faculty leagues, and chess or esports competitions alike.

Edge cases happen — a sports school, a children's club at a community centre, a section based at a school but registered as a separate entity. We have deliberately not written a formal list: write to us, explain the situation, and we'll sort it out. We are not going to refuse on a technicality when the tournament is plainly a non-commercial one for kids.

How to get it

1. Create the tournament the usual way, like any other. Nothing special needs to be marked in advance. 2. Send a request through the feedback form — the "Feedback" link is at the bottom of every page. 3. Name the institution and include a link to the tournament. The tournament itself should make its origin clear: the title, the line-up, the description — something an outsider can recognise it by. 4. Get a code in our reply and enter it on the tournament page, on the "Premium" tab. The status takes effect immediately.

Tournaments you have already created can be moved over too — if a competition finished a month ago and you need its page to stay, apply for that one. Closer to the end of the year we will remind you about renewal on the tournament page itself; to renew, just write to us again.

Tell your colleagues

If you run tournaments at a school or a university, tell the people around you. PE teachers, activity coordinators, club coaches, student unions: almost every one of them has a competition that has long been run on a sheet of paper in the staff room, and almost none of them know that the bracket can be put together in ten minutes and kept for a year.

How it works in practice is covered in a separate guide: how to run a school tournament. General questions about the service are answered in the help section.