Tlab.pro 5.9.4 — private tournaments, an archive instead of deletion, and TLab Edu

8/15/2026

Tlab.pro 5.9.4 — private tournaments, an archive instead of deletion, and TLab Edu

Update 5.9.4 is live on Tlab.pro. All three of its changes are about what happens to a tournament page: who can see it, what becomes of it once the event is long over, and what it costs a school. Here is what changed.

Private tournaments

Not every tournament needs an audience. An internal company championship, a club's training bracket, a children's competition that has no business sitting in a public catalogue — until now every tournament you created went into the latest-tournaments list and into site search.

The tournament settings now have a Private tournament checkbox. What it changes:

  • the tournament no longer appears in the latest tournaments list or in site search;
  • the direct link works exactly as before — anyone you send it to can open the tournament, signed in or not;
  • in your own tournament list the row is marked with a padlock.

Privacy here is about visibility in the catalogue, not a password on the page: the link can still go into a chat, onto a screen in the hall, or into your own site via an iframe. The checkbox lives in the tournament settings dialog (see the help topic on editing a tournament) and is available with a subscription or on a tournament unlocked with a one-off code.

An archive instead of deletion

On the free plan a tournament stays fully active for three months. Until now it was deleted along with its page once that ran out: the link stopped opening, and nothing was left of the event — no bracket, no table, no results. From this release such tournaments move to the archive instead.

An archive instead of deletion: the link keeps working and the page opens in read-only mode

What that means in practice:

  • the link stays the same — the page opens at its old address;
  • the bracket, the table and the results are kept exactly as they were at the moment of archiving: entrants, scores, places;
  • the tournament becomes read-only — an "Archived" note appears at the top of the page, neither the owner nor the editors can edit it, the matches and statistics tabs are gone, and the tournament logo is not shown;
  • an archived tournament doesn't use up your limit — it no longer occupies one of the ten slots on the free plan.

An archived tournament drops out of search and the public list, but it stays in your own tournament list — after the live ones and with an archive icon next to the title. Nothing needs doing on your side: archiving runs on ours and is not triggered from the interface. Tournaments you deleted yourself, and those left at the registration stage, are not archived — they are still removed without a trace. If you no longer need an archived page, the cross in your tournament list removes it, but note what it deletes: the archive itself, and that cannot be undone.

Free premium for schools and universities

Three months is a short life for a school: by the next September last year's championship can no longer be corrected or added to. So the archive arrives together with TLab Edu — a free status for educational institutions.

An educational tournament stays fully active for a year and is renewed on request, its page carries no ads, and it doesn't use up your tournament limit. Applying takes one message through the feedback form at the bottom of any page: name the institution and include a link to the tournament. You get a code in reply, enter it on the tournament page on the "Premium" tab, and a TLab Edu badge — a graduation cap — appears next to the title, the same marker you then see in your tournament list.

No payment and no card details are involved. Who qualifies, what happens with edge cases and how renewal works are covered in a separate article. How a school tournament works in practice, from counting the matches to the link you send parents, is in the guide on how to run a school tournament.

Try it out

That's 5.9.4: mark a tournament private if it isn't meant for the public catalogue, stop worrying about old pages — they stay in the archive — and if you run competitions at a school or a university, apply for TLab Edu. The previous release was update 5.9.2, with the blog, help search and seeded draws. If something is missing or unclear, tell us — the contact links are in the help section.