Tournament ZU Circuit 2026 Discussion Thread

[Tuthur]

Hi ZU tournament players,

Just like last year, it is yet again time to discuss 2026 ZU Circuit. This is also the right place to discuss if you have feedback on the ongoing 2025 ZU Circuit.

I'm suggesting to keep scheduling about the same, but making ZUWC and ZU Swiss earlier, because their endings got delayed compared to 2024 due to qualifiers and bigger playoffs, respectively.

Now onto things, we want to consider for a change and would love to hear being discussed:

• It's been suggested to replace ZUOL or ZUWC by ZUCL, following the NUCL / RUCL / UUCL format. Do you support this?
• Are you happy with last year's format change to the 3 team tours? As a reminder, we introduced old gens in ZUWC (and moved to 8 starters), moved to 10 starters in ZUOL (by introducting SV), and made ZUPL 10 starters too (with ADV and one more SV).

You can discuss other topics as well, but the above should be the main focus of this discussion.

 

[HAVOCKNIGHT]

Hi, I was very vocal during the past months regarding a lot of stuff to be decided here so I figured I would post. Already said some of this in Discord but sometimes privately / not everything.

Re: What team tours should we have?
At this point, everyone knows I’m not a fan of the World Cup. It’s fundamentally unfair — if you’re stuck with a below-average team or one that simply isn’t motivated, there’s nothing you can do about it. So yeah, obviously I’m in favor of dropping it. Still, I’m genuinely looking forward to reading some pro-World Cup posts, because every argument I’ve heard so far has felt pretty weak.

Problems with the World Cup

Lower-tier World Cups tend to be dominated by the few regions with the highest concentration of competent mainers. That’s expected — more players putting in effort means stronger teams. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but we have to admit it makes the tournament far from competitive if you're not from the 2-3 regions with real chances.
Some people argued that the team imbalance from this year’s edition won’t happen again if we run in back, mainly because of the planned creation of a Midwestern US team (which would pull some players from the Northeast) and, for Europe, well… you know what happened.

USNE:

Northeast’s biggest strength was their sheer concentration of top-tier tournament players from across the site — something no other region can really match — combined with mainers who actually care. Even their bench was stacked with strong builders and support players. As long as they have people capable of passing solid teams to competent pilots, they’ll always have a major edge over every other region.
Now, if a Midwest team gets formed, they’re supposedly losing players like avarice, beats, sleid, chungler, and ho3n. But let’s be honest: only avarice and beats played the entire tour. Sleid didn’t play at all, chungler only started in playoffs, and ho3n cancered or something. That’s hardly a meaningful loss looking at the total.
And even then, they’ve got replacements that are hardly downgrades — BloodAce was benched for part of last year, SBPC didn’t even make the roster but could easily fill a slot, and they could bring in Tack or shuffle Monai and others into BW if need be without Beats. The point is: they’ve got the depth. A Midwest team existing doesn’t really weaken them enough; they still have more than enough high-level players to remain dominant.
Europe:

They lost fish anemometer, yo cho, anan2004, and Lily—though to be fair, they lost Lily during this year’s tour and still won it, so take that as you will. Losing fish and cho does hurt, since they were the ones building most of the SV teams for the pilots and were easily among the most active members. I saw it firsthand when I joined their server for finals (or maybe semis, can’t remember). Let's please not buy the Tuthur fake news that they actually lost 3x fish anemometer because the other two were ghost slots.
The real point with Europe is that even without fish and cho, they still have a stacked foundation: strong pilots and top tier mainers like Drud and OBB. The argument that “they’re not broken because they don’t care enough to build for teammates” is honestly kind of ridiculous. Maybe they don’t care that much—but for the tournament to have a chance at being fair, they need to not care. That’s the only thing holding them back from being as dominant as last year.
It’s like they’re saying, “Yeah, we’re still better than most teams, but don’t worry, we’re not trying that hard.” You just have to hope they actually stick to that, because if they start caring like fish and yo cho did, we’re back to square one: an unbalanced tournament dominated by the same region yet again.

So by the points above I would argue to remove World Cup from the 2026 circuit. I also recognize that it brings some benefits like being easily accessible in a different way to olympiad (unfortunately, not for all regions, which back up it being unfair once again) but that can be seen as positive because some people who are totally unrelated can have a play around and end up liking the metagame and sticking around (tldr: can bring people to the tier "by accident"), it's what happened to me after all, yet perhaps only to me so let's keep the impact numbers low. It just really sucks when you're stuck with a crew that gives zero fuck and you want to win and there is quite literally nothing you can do about it. Obviously for the tone of this post you can conclude that I think the cons outweight the pros by a lot, that's why I lean towards removing it.

Re: ZUCL
If we're getting rid of ZUWC, space opens up for ZUCL, which I personally think would be pretty hype. I managed in the original NUCL which spearheaded the flex format and it was a blast, and something I would love to do in ZU. Yet, there are some important points. Firstly, I think this should only be ran over World Cup, I'm saying this because I've seen people argue for it to be run over Olympiad, and it doesn't work for a couple reasons:

Why ZUCL > ZUOL is a bad idea

My interpretation of Olympiad is to be a beginner friendly tournament and inclusive one towards all the ZU metagames, even the unpopular and least competitive ones. Historically, it has also been used for mainers to learn a generation they have interest in after playing their main gen in PL or wherever else. That is, it's the chill tournament, with no prize, inclusive towards the gens that are still in development and easier to get drafted if you're new to the site or just not stablished in ZU, it's a true entrance door to the tier. And this entrance door proposal has nothing to do with the CL format: CL demands flexibility, and to have high level flexibility you need either veterans or good all rounder clickers, for the veterans, I think most would play anyway but we've seen some skip Olympiad before, maybe a new format can be exciting for them, as for the clickers, you really want the Custom Avatar prize to attract them on my understanding. Not to say that if you're new and getting drafted in CL and starting, you're likely just getting sacked into either a tier the team has no competent answers and the opponents are good, because well they picked it, or into the least competitive tiers. — hard to be less beginner friendly than this. Don't run CL over Olympiad please.

How should ZUCL be ran?

I'm getting tired so this will be quite raw: 6 teams, 8 slots, 2x fixed sv, 3x flex for each team, flex slots are SS-ADV. Yes, no RBY or GSC. These metagames are still in development and shifting while being oldgens in a very unstable fashion. This can potentially be revisited every year obviously but now is very early, mainly when they have like no playerbase.... at all. Why 6 teams? Because manager quality has been attrocious lately and we are lowkey depending on some random tour players to signup to run 8 teams in ZUPL so let's put the feet on the ground please. 10 slots over 8 is less crazy but PL already expanded and i've seen many people saying that 8 slots was better, which I agree with, mainly because 4x SV is too much and the playerbase is small in general, if you give each team one more flex per week in here (cl) the level drop probably won't be crazy but will make drafting tougher and such, I think 8 slots is good enough for a oldgen focused tour that aims on high level pokeman gameplay.

Re: Schedule
Even if we don't go forward with what I'm saying I would propose a change for the team tournament schedule, currently we're running it this way:
Olympiad (January) > ZUWC (April) > ZUPL (June). I would like to put Olympiad between PL and CL/WC so people can have a break if they want to skip it as it's consensually treated as less important. so ZUCL/ZUWC (January or nearby) > Olympiad (April or nearby) > ZUPL (June or nearby).

Thanks for reading,
-- the knight

 

[zause]

In my opinion, ZUWC should be nuked and not replaced by another teamtour. ZUOL should be given its custom. Lower tier world cups are kinda bunions for partially the reasons havoc said and I also plain don't like being forced onto a team. If we keep it add ZU midwest though. If we add ZUCL instead make it during the fall or something because there's a gap there (UMPL doesn't count). Give it GSC but not RBY (im not trying to tierbash but RBY is not fun). I think Olympiad should always be in the winter, it has kind of became the winter zu tour at this point. If you wanna make it during the spring so I can manage though I don't mind. Make ZUPL so the auction is like late June at the latest, it's been getting progressively later and later and it's frankly getting ridiculous at this point.

Because manager quality has been **atrocious lately and we are lowkey depending on some random tour players to signup to run 8 teams in ZUPL

I think this is mostly untrue, we have plenty of influential people willing to signup to run 8 teams in ZUPL and we could probably get 10. 6 team playoffs are atrocious and the tournament is also short if we do that, which I don't like. I think we should run 8 teams in ZUOL and theoretically ZUCL too. 8 teams in ZUOL lets us have extra slots for beginners that would otherwise be lost due to the custom creating more signups.
I also still don't like how Olympiad is the "beginner" tour, but has tiers that are useless to learn like RBY and GSC, because they are not in ZUPL. It's fine but contradictory of the tour's mission.
I still think ZU Swiss should be ZU Majors instead, but the way it's been ran this year has been much better so I don't mind either really.

tldr
give zuol custom, make it 8 teams, manager quality is fine, remove zuwc and don't replace it > zuwc but with US midwest > zucl. dont move olympiad and the theoretical third tour. make ZUPL start in the 6th or 7th month of 2026.

You can discuss other topics as well, but the above should be the main focus of this discussion.

free this "zause" guy

 

[SMHorizon]

I do like the idea of a ZUFL at some point somewhere down the line to promote not only the players that miss out each team tour but also for new managers who arent comfortable or experienced to showcase what they can do

I think not would do wonders for everyone involved

Of course whether it can be facilitated or not would be down to the council and the personel available to host and run teams

 

[skrimps]

Olympiad should use the flex slot format. Players seem split on Olympiad’s identity -- is it the Old Gen tour or the beginner-friendly tour? I lean towards the former since it’s the highest level of ZU team tour play for Gen 1/2 players and Gen 3+ players often fight the same pools as ZUPL, but the addition of flex slots to Olympiad lets us ignore that question by catering to both parties.

• It capitalizes on the ZU playerbase’s affinity for Old Gens by appreciating the value of multi-gen factotums who can defend opposing picks.
• It allows managers to more confidently draft newer players who can slot into a duplicated meta pick that would otherwise have a deep starter pool with higher barriers to entry.

Managers seem to love the extra layers of draft strategy from flex slots too, so everyone wins.

If we really want to have some fun with flex slots, then teams should each be allowed to gamble/weight one flex slot per week to where the impact of that slot’s win or loss is doubled.

Olympiad should have a custom over ZUWC. The best Gen 1/2 players deserve to compete for one. I’d also expect stronger one-off signups since players don't have to field or adhere to regions.

ZUWC should include ORAS. It's competitive, accessible, and Ruffles wants to play it.

pipe dream

ZUWC has the bones of an elite tournament. A dynasty tournament that isn’t restricted by auction credits is a good change of pace from other team tours, but this idea is still limited by regional imbalances and the inability to truly choose one’s team.

I propose that we remove regional restrictions. Players who sign up would form their own teams to submit, and hosts/mods would select top cut if there are too many teams. Rename the tour accordingly, but keep the rest of the format the same.

Players want to play with their friends more than they want to play for national pride, and this concept still allows for regional teams if your countrymen are your preferred teammates anyways. I believe that natural order will prevent superteams since the best team can lose to the volatility of this game on any given day, but I also like the idea of teams assembling to take down a titan.

Let the players control their own destinies. Embrace friendship and the free market.

-- the skrimp

 

[Apagogie]

ZUCL at this stage is worse than ZUWC
I agree with all the points estra said about ZUWC and I could even add more layers to explain why this tournament is truly bizarre, arbitrary and unbalanced. Yet, ZUCL is even less appealing than ZUWC. While the format of ZUWC is broken, it's at least somewhat fun for teams like France or England to mess around together on top of bringing new players to ZU. ZUCL on the other hand has rulesets very similar to ZUPL with only minor twists and lack of clear identity, prestige and hype. It looks... blant on paper and uninspiring. I have seen a lot of posts and discussion trying to trash (rightfully) ZUWC but I would really like to see more points about WHY ZUCL would be a good idea. ZU is already present in four team tours across the website, do we need a fifth one? How would it provide a better or at least different experience compared to ZUPL? Is there anything you want to achieve with this specific format?

I tend to agree with zause that both ZUCL/ZUWC should be both nuked and 2 team tours was fine. 2026 look to be a dry year for Pokemon so let's not overload the tier with heavy commitment team tournament if the hype is not there. Keeping ZUWC/ZUCL is fine that being said and doesnt hurt much. Skrimps suggestion of a ZU Friends tour looks fun on paper so why not.


ZUOL should not have the custom (if it's a newbie friendly tour)
If I'm manager of a team tournament with Custom avatar as reward, I know that some of my players care deeply about the reward (some only sign up for that). Then, I would self-sabotage my own team in drafting unproven players instead of tournament warriors. It would be a shame because I think a beginner friendly teamtour is a must in ZU as it is the only teamtour where active players like SMHorizon, Kriegueur, Praise The Salt, Oof, risin_glory, etc have a chance to get drafted and improve their tournament plays with the support of their team. I read zause's proposition to extand it to 8 teams to balance the fact it would get the custom and while it's the move to do if a custom is finally given to ZUOL, I unfortunately think that it still would lead to community members to not getting drafted which is not the spirit of a beginner friendly tour.

Now, I get skrimps point that Olympiads is also an Old Gen heavy team tour. However, I also think that ZU team tournaments already provide a big enough plateform for old gens and with already a Custom avatar as reward at the end. This year saw the inclusion of adv in ZUPL so the only two tiers without representation are RBY/GSC, which both have in common to have an extremly small playerbase. I do no think that the state of these tiers currently justifies a custom. I'm also skeptical of the fact that these two tiers deserve a place in team tournament in the first place as there will be a clear lack of competent sign ups. I agree with zause that i would prefer seeing both RBY/GSC deleted from this tour.

Ultimately, I also think Olympiads has the opportunity to be a testing ground for new formats or rulesets that would be hard to justify in other tournaments. Removing or adding a tier in ZUPL tend to always lead to diplomatic crisis and without knowing the format of the potential third team tournament, it is unsure if an other teamtour would be able to accomodate these new ideas. Olympiads by its no so serious nature is perfect for that.

Ideally, the Custom avatar should be given to the third team tour (ZUWC/ZUCL/other) if there is one. Otherwise, other projects. I do not think we need a farm league as alluded by SMHorizon but I do think that Olympiads should be a very low-entry level tournament to allow new competitive players to play in teamtours. I'm indifferent with the flex slots suggestion.

Format and schedule of team tours

Both suggestions by estra and zause about the schedule of teamtours are fine. I do not have strong preferences with when Olympiads should be. I would not put anything in autumn as UMPL/UMFL are actively played and allow players to sign up and know other people from different communities. I also think ZUPL should start sooner. Ideally, ZUPL manager sign-up should be up last week of june.

The format of last year was fine too. The format of ZUPL is difficult to change so I think it is good to let it like that. I'm not a fan of 8 teams tournament but there was a hype each week about watching the games of different teams so I think it is oke like that. It also makes everything more chaotic and fun to be fair.


Make a second ladder tournament

Replace ZU Open by a second ladder tournament. Good ladder activity is essential for ZU to become official. With less suspects due to a stable end of gen metagame, ladder activity is getting lower. They need to be incentives to send good players on the ladder and doing it only once a year is clearly not enough. If this is not done, then give the Custom avatar for ladder related activity.

 

[Pokeslice]

ZUCL on the other hand has rulesets very similar to ZUPL with only minor twists and lack of clear identity, prestige and hype. It looks... blant on paper and uninspiring.

I've obviously been a major proponent of the flex style tours for awhile now, not just because helping come up with NUCL is a source of pride for me, but also because that tour ended up being the most fun I've had on Smogon in ages. I think anyone who has participated in either NUCL so far will attest to that as well. It's the most hyped tour on our calendar, and despite me drafting Tuthur this year, this iteration is off to a great start.

The joy of the CL format is that it's a dynamic style of team tour that always has exciting matchups, mind games, drafts, and more because of how the flexing works. Since the tier picks are matchup dependent instead of set, teams are encouraged to get really creative with their drafts and their subsequent lineups, so, at least in NU, we constantly see tier mains flex all over the map to cover weaknesses that might've been exploited by opposing managers. It feels entirely differently from a classic PL in how it plays and it's a fascinating tour to manage and fun to participate in as a player. As a general rule, I hate tours that the only "gimmicks" are in the drafting (*cough* BD *cough*), but the really cool part of the CL format is that the gimmick lasts throughout the tournament. In an old gen heavy smaller community like ZU, it makes perfect sense for us to try it out.

I believe the best team tour options this year are ZUPL / ZUCL / ZUOL. I do think ZUOL has a unique space within the ZU community. The generally more relaxed tour for beginners and people looking to try new tiers is a great thing to have. It's a tour that I feel has a really strong grip on the ZU community and it would be a shame to see that thrown out. ZUCL I will always support as I feel it'll work especially well in a community like ZU with less depth to their old gen heavy pools. As for ZUWC, I think that tour is extremely mid at best, rigged for the French at worst. the ca is better off going to a more balanced and fun tour format.

Make a second ladder tournament

I've been wanting to mess with ladder tours for awhile in NU and I believe it's the one part of mainstream Smogon tours that feels unoptimized. I'd love to see a new and improved version of the tour/2 tours/spaced out tours/any other idea for circuit. Or even in a ladder achievements style of thing. A lot of potential here if it's thought out I think, so +1 from me.

 

[Tuthur]

Not really happy with how ZUOL is framed by some posts. It is for sure not as elitist as ZUPL, but that doesn't make it the beginner-friendly team tournament where people try out new tiers (read skrimps post). If we want such a tournament, we can surely have ZUFL take place next year. I don't really have an opinion on changing to a flex slot format, though this could come with some benefits. First, it would help differentiating ZUOL from ZUPL, so users don't consider ZUOL as just a worse version of ZUPL. Second, it would allow to feature every ZU Old Gens even with less than 10 slots, which was a bit of an issue last year. Unrelated to the above benefits, if we end up switching ZUOL to a flew format, I would argue for a 2 SV + 6 Flex slots format or 8 Flex slots format with 8 teams, which I believe would make the ZUOL experience better and also combat what is CL biggest flaw imo; every week feeling the same and many teams aiming for having 1 of each tier. I also believe that with 6 teams, teams don't get enough opportunities to mix up with tier picks and with 2 additional weeks, they'd have more time to express tier picking skills.

ZUWC should definitely stay. It's the biggest entry point for non-mainers (unlike ZUOL); I believe both editions made for very competitive tournaments and the tournament's introduction has been the greatest change to the ZU tournament schedule since I've been involved in ZU leadership. Just thinking about this year's edition, Fille, PTKmoekyuun, and Terracotta were given opportunities they never had before and might have never been picked in any other ZU team tournaments otherwise. This is now the part where I have to tackle estra's arguments. On the one hand, I've to admit he is right in saying that ZUWC is by nature more unbalanced than auctions based tournaments, on the other hand this problem is overblown. The two examples cherrypicked are USNE and Europe; two teams which made it to semifinals this year. The post explains deeply how they were much better than every other team in the tournament, and how even with nerfs they would still be too powerful. USNE litterally finished last in 2024 with a total 4-14 record despite still having BloodAce, sleid, and zause, and when Europe didn't have fish and yo cho in 2024, they missed playoffs despite having strong names like Drud, OranBerryBlissey10, and TheFranklin. Likewise 2024 champions, USS missed playoffs in 2025 despite having a similar line-up. Equating strong names to success is kinda disrespectful to the teamwork put by the players and diminisses the efforts that they've made to achieve this result. Over ZUWC two editions, only 3 teams have managed to make playoffs twice; Italy, France, and Brazil; three teams that barely feature mainers and that weren't expected to perform exceptionally well. I believe that with the right motivation, any region can win ZUWC, and if you don't like your team, you are free to skip the tournament.

Didn't think I'd need to mention it, but ZU Open and ZU Seasonal are non-negationable circuit tournaments; they are part of the UM circuit. I believe only having one ZULT is fine, but if others agree with Apa, voice yourself.

Likewise, I'm aware many people (including myself) dislike UMPL, but it still remains the biggest UM team tournament and overlapping a ZU tournament with it seems counter productive both for ZU and UM. It would also overlap with SCL, which many top ZU mainers have been taking part to and would rather focus on than a ZU team tournament.

Now is a suggestion of mine on ZUWC format. I preferred 2024 6 SV to 2025 multigen format; our old gens slots felt like isolated islands with little support and I believe smaller teams have a harder time competing with those allowed. I would argue to 6 SV + 1 SS + 1 SM/BW would be preferrable; if not I'd like to replace one of SM or BW by ADV, which has imo proven to be a more popular old gens in recent times. Also ORAS should definitely not be included, it's not threatened anymore of being cut from ZUOL and ZUPL, but it's still has playerbase issues and on a completely different scale than SS, SM, BW, and ADV imo. I also wouldn't be opposed to moving toward 4 US teams if that's what the playerbase wants, but this should be decided quite early so players can make plans.