Edit Specialities After Publishing Your Event

Applies to: Organizers

You published and then spotted a missing weight class, a wrong age range or a forgotten speciality. You do not need to go back to draft. You can edit specialities while the event is published and while registrations are open, and Hajime shows you what each change does to the athletes already registered before anything is saved.

When you can edit

Adding, editing and deleting specialities works while the event is a draft, published, or open for registration. Once registrations close, the set of specialities is fixed.

You can change the details (name, description, timings, rounds, judge scoring mode, scheduling), the categories (age, weight, belt, gender) and the participant limit. You cannot change which template the speciality is based on. A published speciality can be refined, not turned into a different one.

Only the organizer side of the event can do this. Team members and academy managers who can move registrations cannot edit specialities. See Event Team and Delegated Access.

A change that affects registered athletes also needs the Registrations permission on the event. A teammate who can configure the event but not manage registrations can still save details-only edits, but is told to ask the event owner or a teammate with that permission, and sees no athlete names, when the change would affect athletes.

The speciality's URL slug is fixed once the event is published. The field is shown read-only.

If nobody is registered in the speciality, your change saves straight away, like in draft.

The review screen

When a change affects registered athletes, Hajime opens Review the effect on registered athletes and saves nothing yet. It lists every affected athlete under a heading:

Needs your decision: Hajime cannot choose for you.
Category changes: the athlete's current category no longer fits.
Over the new limit: you lowered the limit below the number of registered athletes.
Withdrawn with the speciality: shown when you delete.

Each athlete has an outcome menu. Confirm stays blocked until every athlete in Needs your decision has an outcome. Cancel writes nothing.

An athlete whose category still exists after your change is left alone, even if you changed its limits (for example the weight range). The weigh-in check catches anyone who no longer fits. See Weight Categories and the Scale.

The choices for each athlete

Move to another category: pick the new category for each field listed (Age, Weight, Belt, Gender). Any category of the speciality is allowed; the ones that fit the athlete come first. The athlete's payment, guardian consent and history stay with the registration.
Leave without a category: the athlete stays registered but has no valid category until you fix it (see below).
Move to the waitlist: only for unpaid athletes whose registration is still pending, when you lower the limit.
Keep registered over the limit: the athlete stays, even though the speciality is now above its limit.
Withdraw from this speciality: removes the athlete from this speciality only. Their other specialities and the event registration stay. An athlete who is already checked in cannot be withdrawn: the review screen says Already checked in: undo the check-in from the registrations list before withdrawing. Moving or keeping a checked-in athlete is fine. When you delete a speciality, a checked-in athlete is shown as blocked and the delete cannot be confirmed until you undo the check-in.
Withdraw and mark refund pending: for a paid athlete who ends up with no other active speciality. The refund is recorded as pending for you to settle. It only appears if you are allowed to handle refunds.
Withdraw without refund: the same withdrawal for a paid athlete, with no refund recorded.

If an athlete is also registered in other specialities, a paid athlete cannot get a partial refund for just this one. The review screen says This athlete paid and keeps another speciality: no refund is recorded here. and offers only the withdrawal without a refund.

When you delete a speciality, athletes who paid start without an outcome: the review screen asks This athlete paid: choose whether to mark a refund pending. (only if they have no other speciality). The summary above the confirm button counts the paid athletes who will be withdrawn without a refund recorded.

Ambiguous athletes

When several new categories fit an athlete, Hajime picks none of them. The same goes for an athlete without a birth date: every new age category is offered. The athlete appears under Needs your decision and you choose a category or another outcome.

If a move would put one athlete into the same category twice, the review screen warns you and suggests withdrawing the second entry. Choose a different category or outcome.

Athletes left without a category

Athletes you leave without a category keep their old category label, which no longer exists in the speciality. Fix them from the event's Registrations list: those athletes carry a Needs a category tag, and the readiness checklist links to the list filtered to just them. Open Move / Edit on the athlete and choose a category for every field that has no valid value; the field stays empty until you pick one, so nothing is chosen for you. It lets you set every outdated category at once.

The readiness checklist warns you while any registration has a category that does not exist in its speciality. If you add a new category type (for example belts on a speciality that had none), athletes already registered have no value for it. They are not blocked, and readiness lists them until you assign one. Right after the save, the event page shows a warning with the number of athletes who need a category and a link to the registrations list filtered to them. If you remove a category type, its value is cleared for every registered athlete.

Lowering the participant limit

The review screen only asks about the limit when your change lowers it below the number of athletes registered. Saving a speciality that is already over its limit, without changing the limit, never opens it for this reason.

The confirm button counts only the athletes whose outcome actually changes. If you keep everyone, it reads Keep everyone and save.

By default everyone stays registered: the speciality is simply above its limit and no new athletes can join. To bring it back within the limit, choose Reduce to the new limit. Hajime preselects the most recent registrants, exactly as many as the excess, and shows a counter such as "2 of 3 selected". Athletes already leaving because of a category change count toward it. You can change any athlete's outcome, and Keep everyone resets the choices.

Unpaid athletes with a pending registration go to the waitlist. Paid or confirmed athletes are never waitlisted: Hajime leaves them without a choice, and you pick Keep registered over the limit or a withdrawal for each one. You may free fewer seats than the excess: the screen then shows how many athletes stay over the limit. Selecting more athletes than needed is refused.

If the new limit leaves room, athletes on the waitlist are promoted and notified in order, unless brackets already exist. The save message says how many were promoted. See Event Seats and the Waitlist.

Deleting a speciality

If a bracket is published, running or completed, or matches in another bracket use the speciality, Hajime tells you as soon as you click Delete and nothing else happens. If nobody is registered, Delete asks you to confirm and lists what goes with the speciality: its draft brackets, its fee rules, the fee bundles that include it, the leagues that stop counting it, and that registration history is kept. If athletes are registered, it opens a review screen listing every athlete who will be withdrawn from that speciality. Only that speciality is withdrawn, never the whole event registration. A paid athlete with no other speciality gets the refund options above.

The speciality disappears from the registration form, listings and public pages. Its history (registrations, payments, past results) is kept. Leagues that map the speciality stop counting it, and the review screen tells you how many leagues are affected.

You cannot delete a speciality when:

one of its brackets is published, running or completed.
matches in another bracket were set up using this speciality.

Resolve those first, then try again.

Brackets that need regenerating

The review screen only warns that the brackets of the speciality may need regenerating. After you save, the result tells you how many brackets actually need it. Withdrawing or waitlisting an athlete who sits in a drawn bracket counts like a move. Hajime never regenerates anything by itself, and existing brackets never block your edit, unless a bracket of the speciality is already running. Draft brackets of a deleted speciality are removed with it. See Generate and Publish Brackets.

Who is notified

After you confirm, each affected athlete gets one notification per save: moved, left without a category, waitlisted, withdrawn, or speciality deleted. It includes a link to withdraw (unless they were withdrawn) and a reminder that refunds follow the event's policy. Athletes who are not affected get nothing.

Guardians of minors receive a copy if they opted in to notifications. Each affected athlete's academy owners and managers get one grouped notification. If the event needed publication approval and is published or open for registration, the approving organization's admins get one summary per save, also for a details-only change or a newly added speciality. Nobody is asked to approve again.

Importing specialities from a CSV file

A CSV import can still update specialities after publication. A row that would affect registered athletes is flagged in the preview: Affects registered athletes: review it from the event page. The import will stop at this row. Edit that speciality from the event page first, then import again. Nothing from an import that stops is saved or sent.

Registrations changed while you were reviewing

If an athlete registers, withdraws or changes while your review screen is open, Hajime shows Registrations changed while you were reviewing. Check the updated list before applying. Nothing was saved. Look at the updated list and confirm again.

The review screen also stays open, with your choices intact, when a bracket of the speciality started running meanwhile, when a choice can no longer be applied, or when the speciality was deleted elsewhere. It tells you why. Fix the choice or cancel.

Limitations

Athletes can only choose a category for a speciality that has none, while registration is open. Any other category change, and any ambiguous case, is resolved by you.
An online payment already in progress can still complete after the athlete was moved to the waitlist. You will see the payment on the registration.
Notifications to athletes and academies are written in your language, not theirs.
There are no partial refunds for one speciality of a multi-speciality registration.
You cannot move athletes to a different speciality, and deleting does not offer "move everyone".
A paid athlete over a lowered limit can stay or be withdrawn, but not refunded and requeued.
Approving organizations are notified but do not re-approve edits made after approval.
The waitlist is ordered by registration time. An athlete restored long after registering can land in an unexpected position.
If an athlete's only fix would be a category they already hold in another entry that was withdrawn, Hajime proposes a withdrawal and does not reactivate the old entry.
Athletes missing a value for a newly added category type are only flagged by the readiness checklist.
A waitlisted athlete left without a category cannot be moved from the Registrations list. The category is resolved when they are promoted, or you can withdraw them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I edit specialities after registrations close? No. From that point the specialities are fixed.

What if a refund could not be marked? The changes are saved and Hajime tells you how many athletes are affected. Mark the refund from the payments page.

Why can't I change the slug? The URL slug is fixed once the event is published, so links already shared keep working.

Did my change reach the athletes before I confirmed? No. Nothing is saved or sent until you confirm the review screen.

Can I undo a change? Not in one click. Edit the speciality again, or move athletes from the Registrations list.