How Evergreen Cup runs

Evergreen Cup is a Pacific Northwest tournament. When we say PNW, we mean these five regions: Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and BC, Canada.

• Washington
• Oregon
• Idaho
• British Columbia
• Alaska

A few of you asked about signing up after moving away, so here is how it works. You can play if any one of these is true:

• 1.You live in the PNW right now.
• 2.You used to live in the PNW for at least a year.
• 3.You have played a region-locked tournament for one of the PNW regions, like Oregon Tourney or USC repping Team Washington.

On the registration form, current residents just click their region on the map. If you moved away, pick “Outside the PNW” and check whichever of the last two applies. Going the region-lock route? Drop a link to your proof in the “Anything else” box so we can confirm it.

The 2026 edition is osu! standard, open to ranks #1 through #30,000. Grand Finals are played in person at a LAN, with a $1,000 prize pool on the line.

Everyone signs up on their own, and teams form later at the draft (see 04). Every player also has to join the Discord, since that is where scheduling and match coordination happen. Registration includes a screening step that every signup goes through before the bracket locks. Staff cannot also play, with two exceptions: streamers and commentators are allowed to compete.

If you are outside the rank range when you register, that is fine, but you have to be inside #1 to #30,000 by the time registration closes on August 23. Anyone still out of range at that point has their registration pulled.

Signups are individual. There are no team signups, and teams do not exist until draft weekend (see 04).

Register here with your osu! account. When registration closes we snapshot your global rank to confirm you are inside the #1 to #30,000 range. Where your rank sits before or after that does not matter.

Want to staff instead of playing? Register as staff here.

Everyone plays qualifiers, captains included. Player seeds come from z-sum, which standardizes your scores across the pool so steady results rank higher than one lucky map. You can read the full method on the osu! seeding wiki.

The qualifier pool sits at 6.7★. That is deliberately permissive: it gives less-experienced players room to show what they can do, and it makes a bad seed easy to spot.

Qualifiers close on September 5 at midnight PST.

The host hand-picks the captains, one per team. Everyone else goes into the draft pool, ordered by qualifier seed.

Team size scales with turnout, but it is always sixteen captains drafting in reverse-snake order. With 64 or more signups the tournament runs 4v4 — each captain drafts three teammates, one per round:

1. Round 1Seed 16 → 15 → … → 2 → 1Lowest seed opens
2. Round 2Seed 1 → 2 → … → 15 → 16Order reverses
3. Round 3Seed 16 → 15 → … → 2 → 1Rosters full

The reverse start is the whole point. A low seed's weak opening pick is balanced by the best pick of the return round, so once every round is done each captain ends up with roughly equal draft value.

Lower turnout scales the roster down: 56 to 63 signups runs 3v3 (two draft rounds), and 32 to 55 runs a 2v2 duos format (a single round). Pick rounds always equal team size minus one.

The format depends on how many players sign up:

Match procedure

The higher seed picks first and takes either pick order or ban order. Whichever they leave goes to their opponent. Bans run ABBA, two per team every round.

Pool and match settings by round

Pools climb toward Grand Finals. Every round below lists its star rating, match length, and ban count.

Pools publish round by round on the pools page.

Grand Finals is a LAN: a two-day weekend in Seattle, Washington.

The Grand Finals dates are locked, and there will be no delays this season. The living timeline, round by round, is on the schedule page.

Play fair. Standard osu! tournament conduct applies, and the referee's call stands during a match. To report a player or a match issue, use the official osu! report form.

Most of the detailed conduct rules, penalties, and day-of questions are handled in the Discord, so that is the place to raise anything that needs staff during the season.