How to organise a Ramadan football tournament

A Ramadan football tournament is a short competition played in the evenings across the month, almost always in a small-sided format on one venue. In Morocco it is usually run by a neighbourhood association or a local academy, sometimes in partnership with a public body, and it ends with a final and a prize-giving; many are played in age groups rather than between senior sides. A company running one for its staff has the same shape and the same constraint: one venue, a fixed number of evenings.

In Guercif in 2024 a Ramadan small-sided tournament drew 24 teams and over 315 children across three age groups, organised by a local association with the provincial directorate. In Selouane in 2025 it was the second edition, run by a local academy. Editions repeat year on year — which is a practical observation rather than a description: whoever runs one edition runs the next.

Ramadan moves about eleven days earlier each Gregorian year, so last year's dates are not a planning guide and a venue booked "the same week as last time" is the wrong week. Fix your dates against this year's calendar before anything else.

Ramadan is 29 or 30 days, and that is not your number of evenings. Subtract what you will not play first, then look at what is left: it is everything you have, and it will not grow.

• The evenings you have decided not to play. The last ten nights, all or some, depending on what the people you are organising for expect — decide it now, not halfway through.
• One or two evenings before Eid for the final and the prize-giving.
• Evenings when the venue is not yours anyway.
• One spare evening a week. A match will be postponed, and without slack everything after it moves too.

What remains is your budget of evenings. Write it down as a number before you accept the first team, because every decision after this one is measured against it.

Announce the dates before entries open, not after. A team that enters and then finds its matches fall on evenings it cannot make will withdraw, and in a competition one month long a withdrawal damages everybody's schedule, not just its own.

Every format has a fixed match count that can be worked out before anything is booked. The whole rule is one line: matches ÷ matches per evening has to come in under your number of evenings. The examples below are worked at four matches an evening.

16 teams, full round-robin

120 matches. Does not fit a month on one venue: 30 full evenings, which is more than Ramadan itself.

16 teams, four groups then a knockout

24 group matches + 7 from the quarter-finals = 31 matches, or 8 evenings. This is the format that suits most Ramadan tournaments.

12 teams, full round-robin

66 matches, or 17 evenings. Possible, but it fills the whole month and leaves no slack.

24 teams, straight knockout

23 matches, or 6 evenings. Much the shortest, but half the teams play once and go home.

If teams pay an entry fee, do not run a straight knockout: half of them will have paid for one match. Groups into a knockout costs two more evenings and everybody gets a tournament.

A Ramadan evening is not an ordinary day compressed: it is a window that opens after iftar and closes when the venue does. The schedule is built on the window rather than on what you would like, and the window takes three steps to work out.

1. 1Fix the first kick-offFrom after iftar, not from sunset — between the call to prayer and people being ready to play there is a real gap. Exactly when is decided by the people playing and their habit, not by this guide.
2. 2Work out the length of one slotMatch length plus the turnaround between two matches: two teams off, two on, and a small delay that always happens. The slot is longer than the match, and anyone who plans on match length alone loses the last match every night.
3. 3Divide the window by the slotThe answer is your matches per evening — the same number that went into the format calculation above. Take one off and leave that slot empty at the end of the night: it is what absorbs a delay instead of postponing a match.

Ask what time the venue closes before you build the schedule on it, not after you have announced it. Covered halls and synthetic pitches close at a fixed hour, and that hour decides your last match, not you.

Write them before the first kick-off and hand them out with the schedule. In a competition one month long an unwritten rule gets tested in the second week, and changing it then looks like siding with somebody.

Match length

Two short halves. Every minute you add is multiplied by the number of matches that evening and taken off the last one.

Players and substitutions

Small-sided football usually has rolling, unlimited substitutions. Whichever you choose, write it down — the argument is always about what was not written.

Cards and suspensions

Decide how many yellows suspend a player, and whether cards are wiped when the knockout starts. In an eight-evening tournament, a one-match ban can be half of a player's competition.

Deciding a tie

In the groups, the table decides. In the knockout, go straight to penalties with no extra time: extra time eats the match after it, and that match belongs to another team.

No-shows

Write the grace period and the walkover score before you need them. During Ramadan people are late for good reasons, and a written grace period protects the team that turned up and the team that is late.

The announcement is half the organising: it is how teams find out whether they can take part at all. One that leaves out the evenings and the fee attracts entries that withdraw later.

• The name and the edition number — a second edition is worth saying, because it is evidence the first one finished properly.
• Start and finish dates, and the evenings nobody plays.
• The venue, and the time of the first match.
• The format, how many teams are accepted, and the age group if there is one.
• The entry fee and exactly what it covers.
• The entry deadline, and that the player list is handed in with it.

Ask for the player list in writing at entry, not on matchday. The one dispute that does not get settled is "that player isn't one of yours", and a list filed in advance ends it before it starts.

Work out the full cost first, then divide by the number of teams to get the entry fee — rather than picking a round number and hoping it covers it.

The venue

Evenings × price per evening. Usually the largest line, and the only one that rises with every evening the format adds.

Referees

Per match, not per evening.

Balls, nets, bibs

Once, and they are there for the next edition.

Prizes

What is left after the rest is paid — not what is announced before it.

Contingency

One more evening and one more referee. A match will have to be replayed.

Prizes are the last thing to budget and the first thing anybody remembers. Announce only what you can hand over: what was promised and not given gets retold for years.

Finish one or two evenings before Eid, not on the last night. Anyone who waits for the last evening finds an empty venue and busy people.

• Give the final its own evening. One match everybody comes to beats three that nobody follows.
• Publish the final table and the top scorers before the ceremony rather than during it, so people arrive knowing who is being crowned.
• Photograph the prize-giving. The tournament's photographs are the next edition's announcement, and they are what gets looked for once it is over.

Then keep all of it: the teams, the table, the scorers. The next edition starts from this one, and anyone starting from a blank page each year is organising their first edition over and over.

Everything above is true whether or not you use software for it. This is the part Dawrify replaces, and it is the last section on purpose: the guide is worth reading without it.

• You pick the format and the rules — including the tie-breaker order from step 5 — and it generates every fixture.
• Whoever is at the venue opens a match console and taps events as they happen; the standings and the top-scorer table update themselves, so they can be published before the ceremony rather than after it.
• Suspensions from yellow-card accumulation and red cards are tracked without anyone counting — which is the part that gets hard by hand when four matches are played a night.
• Every tournament, team and player gets a public web page, so there is a link to send instead of a photograph of a table.
• Last season stays public and next season can be created from it — which is what "second edition" means in practice.

Your first tournament is free, up to 8 teams of 7 players, with no card to start; bigger tournaments use paid plans priced by teams and players. Following a competition is free for everyone. Organising happens in the dashboard, which is a separate application; the app is where people follow along.