Creating Your Event

Applies to: Organizers

Every competition you run on Hajime starts as an event. Filling one in takes you through organizer details, registration access, and venue information, before you move on to specialities, categories, fees, mats, and finally the readiness checklist that clears you to go live.

Step 1: Start a New Event

You can create events if you are an organizer of an organization or a manager of an academy. Without either role, the New Event link does not show.

Click New Event on your Dashboard, or Host an event on your academy's Team Events page. If you already see My Events in the menu, New Event is at the top right of that page.
You'll land on a single scrollable form split into sections: Organizer, Registration access, Location & Venue, and Competition Specialities. You can save as a draft at any point and come back later. Nothing here needs to be finished in one sitting.

[Screenshot placeholder: New event form, Organizer section]

There is currently no "duplicate a past event" shortcut, so each event is created fresh. If you run the same kind of competition repeatedly, the fastest path isn't to clone the whole event. Reuse speciality templates and fee templates at the academy or organization level instead (see Specialities & Templates); those carry forward the parts that actually repeat.

Step 2: Organizer Details

Fill in the event name, dates, and a short description. The description is only a soft (warning-tier) readiness check, but events with a clear description convert better with athletes browsing the public event list.

Times you type (start, end, registration opens and closes) are in the event's timezone, chosen in the Timezone field at the top of the dates section and shown under the dates. Choose the timezone first: if you change it later, the times you typed stay the same on the clock and move to the new zone. After publishing you can still change it, but the form warns you, because athletes who already saw the times will see them move. Once the brackets are finalized the timezone is locked.

Below the description, Search & sharing controls how your event appears in Google and in link previews when someone shares it in a chat or on social media. Write up to 160 characters in Search engine description and the Preview in search results card shows how it will look. Leave it empty and Hajime writes one for you from your description, or from the event's date and city. The preview card shows that text too, so you can decide whether it's good enough.

[Screenshot placeholder: Search & sharing section with the search preview]

Step 3: Registration Access

Decide who can register and how:

Open registration vs. invite/code-gated registration.
Registration open/close dates. These feed directly into the readiness checklist later, so set them even if you plan to adjust them closer to the event. You can also have Hajime open and close registration on those dates for you: see Automatic Event Scheduling.

[Screenshot placeholder: Registration access section]

Step 4: Location & Venue

Set the venue name and address, or mark the event as virtual. A venue (or the virtual flag) is checked by the readiness checklist before you go live. It's a recommended check, not a hard blocker, but worth setting so athletes know where to show up. See Readiness & Go-Live for the full list of checks.

Step 5: Save and Continue

Saving the form creates the event in draft status. Draft events are only visible to you; nothing is public and no athlete can register until you publish. From here, continue to specialities: an event needs at least one speciality configured before it can go live.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I clone a previous event instead of starting from scratch? Not directly today. Reuse speciality and fee templates from your academy or organization instead. See Specialities & Templates.

Do I need to fill in every section before saving? No. Save as a draft any time and come back. The readiness checklist gates starting/going live, not saving or publishing.

Which image appears when someone shares my event link? Your event's cover image, which you set from the event page with Update Cover Image. Without one, link previews show the Hajime image. The best size is 1920×960 with the subject in the center. Use Adjust framing to choose the part of the image that stays visible on phones and wide screens.

Can I add a logo to my event? Yes, from the event page, with the logo upload. After uploading, choose Adjust framing to pick the square that is shown: drag to move, zoom with the mouse wheel, or pinch on a phone, drag the corners of the frame to resize it, and check the round preview. With the keyboard, the arrow keys move the frame by 1% (Shift for 10%) and + and - zoom. Right after an upload the button reads Frame it now. Reset goes back to the default framing; closing the window without saving keeps the framing you had.

What's the difference between draft and published? Draft events are private to you. Publishing makes the event visible to athletes as "Coming Soon"; they can register once registration opens, which happens when you click Open Registration or, if you turned on Open and close registration automatically, on the registration opening date. The readiness checklist (covered later in this guide) doesn't gate publishing; it tells you when you're safely ready to start the event.

Next in this guide: Specialities & Templates

Last updated: October 2026