Tournament 2025 Doubles Circuit

[Yoda2798]

Art by GenOne
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The 2025 Doubles OU Circuit will consist of the following tournaments:

• Doubles Ladder Tournament
• Official Smogon Doubles Tournament V
• Two Doubles Seasonals: Summer and Fall
• Doubles Last Chance Qualifier

This all concludes with the Doubles Invitational, during which the Top 16 players based on tournament performances throughout the year will duke it out in a single elimination bracket for the Current Gen Circuit ribbon in their postbit. Starting this year, there will automatic qualification for the 5 tournament winners to Doubles Invitational. The remaining 11 (or more, if a player wins multiple tours) slots will be awarded to the players with the highest circuit points across the year. Points values for winners are still provided for the purpose of seeding in Invitational and to help encourage continued participation in circuit tournaments. Ties on points for seeding will be broken by deepest run (i.e. most points from a single tournament), then second deepest run, and so on, and a coinflip if this is not sufficient. Ties on points for a place in Doubles Invitational will require Bo3 SV tiebreaker sets to be played, with the exact format depending on the number of players and places available. A breakdown of how many circuit points can be earned via each tournament is below.

Doubles Ladder Tournament:

Official Smogon Doubles Tournament:

Doubles Seasonals:

Doubles Last Chance Qualifier:

FAQ:
1. What is Doubles Ladder Tournament?
In this tournament, people will be signing up to ladder for a full week to rank as high as possible. The highest ranking finishers may earn a spot in the playoffs. This cycle will continue for four weeks and culminate in a single elimination, best-of-three playoff for all qualifiers. There will be four laddering periods, with four participants from each qualifying for a 16-man playoff. As always, these qualifiers will be decided by ELO at the end of the laddering period. There will be no wild card entrants or byes in playoffs.

2. What are Doubles Seasonals?
Seasonals are the most straightforward of our tournaments and serve as the flagship tournaments for the DOU Circuit. They are large, double elimination tournaments that generally take around 14-15 weeks to fully finish. Each round you will be paired up with an opponent and play a Bo3 SV Doubles OU set, during which you will be allowed to switch teams between games. Due to double elimination there are winner and loser brackets in these tours which you will drop from one to the other after your first loss, before being eliminated by a second loss. Players in winner bracket will only be required to play a set every second week, whereas those in loser bracket will be required to play a set every single week. There will be two seasonals in the 2025 circuit, back up from just one in 2024.

3. What is Official Smogon Doubles Tournament?
The Official Smogon Doubles Tournament (OSDT) is one of Smogon's prestigious official tournaments, awarding a trophy to the winner, with participants also being rewarded with points towards the Doubles OU Circuit. OSDT is a large, Swiss-style tournament, with nine qualifying rounds during the Swiss portion where each round players will be matched up with an opponent with a similar record as them. The rounds will be played in best of three matchups of SV DOU. Players are eliminated once they have three losses in the Swiss portion. Participants that do not accumulate three losses during the Swiss rounds will top cut, which will be a single elimination tournament with rounds of best of three SV DOU, seeded based on the results from the Swiss qualifier (including resistance).

4. What is Doubles Last Chance Qualifier?
Doubles Last Chance Qualifier is a single elimination tournament played in rounds of best of three SV DOU held at the end of the year, providing participants with a "last chance" to get needed circuit points to qualify for the 2025 Doubles Invitational. As the tournament is single elimination rather than double elimination, there is only one bracket and one loss puts you out, with there being no bye weeks and the tour overall moving much quicker compared to Seasonals even with a similar number of participants.

5. When are all these tournaments happening?
Check the second post in this thread for the circuit schedule!

*Regarding restricting access to tournament matches

In order for access to be restricted to a tournament set, both players must consent (i.e., the default is public room, modjoin off). Furthermore, viewing access to tournament matches may not be restricted in any way in the following scenarios:

• During or after Top 8 of single elimination tournament brackets, including playoffs of tournaments with a qualifying + playoff component
• During or after Round 10 of Seasonals
• At any point during Doubles Premier League
• At any point during Doubles Invitationals

Restricted viewing access is defined as enabling any setting that prevents someone from accessing the room without an invitation or direct link. This includes but is not limited to: enabling modjoin, hiding the room, or using ionext. In other words, someone needs to be able to click on your name on Pokemon Showdown and see the battle room. If a game is accidentally modjoined via ionext, there will be no penalty if modjoin is turned off before team preview ends.

Any games with restricted access under the specified scenarios will be considered invalid and must be replayed. For example, Player A wins game 1 of a set, then modjoins game 2 and wins game 2. Game 2 will not be counted and must be replayed for the set to be complete.

Anyone found to be abusing the rule (e.g. hiding a room when you know you'll lose so it will be invalid) will be punished severely.

 

[Yoda2798]

Below is the schedule for the 2025 Doubles OU Circuit. Start dates are for Round 1, not signups, which are usually 1 week prior.

2025 Doubles Circuit Tournaments

Doubles Ladder Tournament
January 6th - March 2nd

Official Smogon Doubles Tournament

February 17th - May 18th

Doubles Summer Seasonal
May 5th - August 10th

Doubles Fall Seasonal
August 18th - November 23rd

Doubles Last Chance Qualifier
October 13th - November 30th

Doubles Invitational

December 8th - January 4th

Other Major Doubles OU Tournaments

Doubles Derby III
March 10th - April 27th

Doubles Premier League XI
June 16th - August 24th

Smogon Champions League

September 8th - October 31st

Doubles World Cup VI
October 27th - December 14th

Active tournaments are colored in Blue
Completed tournaments are colored in Grey​

Signups for circuit tournaments will be posted one week before the listed date, while player signups for team tournaments will be posted 1-2 weeks before the listed date. The first date listed for each tournament is the start of Round 1 (or Week 1) of tournament play. The length of each tournament is an estimate, but the actual length may vary based on number of signups. All official circuit tournaments will be hosted in the Smogon Metagames Circuits subforum with the exceptions of Official Smogon Doubles Tournament and Smogon Champions League, which will be hosted in their respective subforum, along with the three doubles team tours, which will be hosted in the Doubles OU subforum.

From last year, we have made several changes based on suggestions from the circuit discussion thread. Notably, the Doubles Swiss has reverted back to a second Seasonal, the timing of Doubles Premier League and Doubles Derby has swapped, and tournament winners will be provided automatic qualification to Doubles Invitational irrespective of points.

 

[zoe]

Re: Custom Avatar Rewards

To those who don't know, it was recently decided that each section would get 3 customs for tours per year (up from the previous 2), after discussing it, we've decided to give it to the circuit champion (aka winner of Doubles Invitational). DPL and DWCOP will keep their current avatar prizes still.