Specialities & Templates

Applies to: Organizers

A speciality is a competition style within your event: Gi Sparring, No-Gi Sparring, Kata, and so on. Every event needs at least one speciality before it can go live.

Adding a Speciality Manually

From the Competition Specialities section of the event form:

Click Add Speciality.
Give it a name (e.g. "Gi Sparring"), pick a bracket type (single elimination, double elimination, pools, round robin, and so on; see the format articles in this help center for what each one means), and set its categories (covered in depth in Categories & Divisions).

[Screenshot placeholder: Add Speciality form]

You can add as many specialities as your event needs. Manual entry is available while the event is still a draft.

Importing Specialities via CSV

If you're setting up many specialities and categories at once, use CSV Import instead of adding them one at a time:

Click CSV Import in the Competition Specialities section header.
Click Download Template to get a CSV with the exact columns Hajime expects (slug, name, bracket type, categories, round duration, number of rounds).
Fill it in and upload it. Hajime shows a preview, row by row, with the action it will take (create/update) and a status column, before anything is actually saved. That lets you catch mistakes before they hit your event.

[Screenshot placeholder: CSV import preview table]

Import is capped at 100 rows and 1MB per file; split larger sheets into multiple uploads if needed.

Scoring Types

Every speciality needs a Competition Type, which sets how matches in that speciality are scored. The main options are:

Ten Point Must (MMA/Boxing): judges score each round out of 10.
Rating Scale (Kata/Gymnastics): judges award a decimal score.
Point Accumulation (BJJ/Wrestling): points build up over the match.
Submission Only: the match ends by submission or decision.
Performance Score: for judged, non-combat specialities. See Performance Format for the details.
Technique Scoring (Judo/Martial Arts): matches end on an ippon-equivalent condition (two waza-ari, or three shido against the opponent) rather than accumulating a score over rounds. The judge confirms the win before the match actually ends, so reaching the threshold doesn't finish the match by itself.

Pick the Competition Type that matches how your speciality is actually judged. This drives which fields and buttons appear on the judge's live scoring screen, so choosing the wrong one shows the wrong scoring controls on match day.

Auxiliary Timers

Below Competition Type, a Timers section lets you configure secondary clocks that run alongside the match timer, such as a stalling clock or a hold/control clock. Some Competition Types come with a timer already switched on by default (judo's osaekomi hold timer, for instance). The section lists the clocks that Competition Type supports, and for each one you can switch it on or off, give it your own label, adjust its duration or thresholds, and choose whether spectators can see it. The list of clocks itself comes from the Competition Type; you cannot add a new kind of clock or remove one from the list. See Judo Scoring for a worked example of one in use. These timers only ever signal the judge; they never change a score or end a match by themselves.

When the main clock stops (a pause, the end of a round, the end of the match, or time running out), any running auxiliary timer is stopped automatically and its elapsed time is kept. The judge starts it again explicitly if the action restarts.

Reusing Templates

If your academy or federation runs the same kind of event repeatedly (a recurring club tournament, a federation-wide format), don't rebuild specialities from scratch each time. Academy and federation admins can maintain speciality templates and fee templates from their own admin areas, independent of any single event. You'll find academy speciality templates under your academy's admin area, and federation speciality templates under the federation's admin area; see Setting Event Fees for how fee templates plug into an individual event.

Templates keep your competition structure consistent across events without you re-typing categories, bracket types, or fee rules every single time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if I import a CSV row with a slug that already exists? The preview marks it as an update, not a duplicate. Review the diff shown in the preview table before confirming.

Can I edit a speciality after the event is published? Once brackets are generated and published, changing a speciality's structure can invalidate seeding. Prefer draft-stage edits; the readiness checklist will flag anything that's now inconsistent.

Where do I manage reusable templates? At the academy or federation level, not on the individual event. See the "Reusing Templates" section above for the exact admin paths.

Next in this guide: Categories & Divisions

Last updated: 3 September 2026