How do I organize a Ramadan night tournament or league?

Ramadan 1448 is expected to begin on or around Monday 8 February 2027, and Eid al-Fitr is expected on Tuesday 9 or Wednesday 10 March 2027. Final dates depend on the official moon sighting in each country, so treat every date here as expected, not announced.

The sources disagree about Eid, so we print both dates. The Umm al-Qura calendar, as reported by Wego, gives a 29-day month and Eid on 9 March. The International Astronomical Center's projection, reported by Awras, gives 30 days and Eid on 10 March. Gulf News and The National both say "9 or 10 March", and the UAE Astronomy Centre and the Emirates Astronomical Society also expect Ramadan to begin on 8 February. Saudi Arabia and the UAE announce from their own sightings and can differ by a day. The Umm al-Qura figures here come from Wego, a secondary source.

Fasting is about 12 hours 37 minutes in Makkah on the first day and about 13 hours 8 minutes on day 29, per Wego.

What to do with this. Write "expected" on your poster and give both Eid dates. Do not print a final start date until the official announcement in your country, and re-check a few days before. If you can, finish before the last ten nights (see the examples section).

Start between 8 and 9 pm and finish by midnight or 1 am. That is where the 2026 events landed: 9 pm in Al-Khobar and Doha, 8 pm in Riyadh and at Aspire Zone in Doha, with finishes at midnight or 1 am. Grassroots neighbourhood football in Makkah runs from after taraweeh until suhoor.

The iftar range is our own sunset calculation, accurate to about two minutes. It covers Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Khobar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha on 8 February and 8 March 2027, from about 5:20 pm in Doha in February to 6:30 pm in Jeddah in March. It is not an official prayer time, so use your city's published timetable on the day.

Three habits keep a night on time:

• Put the start and the hard stop in the invitation. Players are fasting and many have work in the morning, so a known finish time helps everyone.
• Leave room for the prayers. Taraweeh ends at different times from mosque to mosque. Start the first match after it finishes in your area, not before.
• Keep the first round short. Players arrive in a stream. A short first round absorbs late arrivals.

Many clubs extend their hours towards suhoor in Ramadan, but we found no venue publishing dated Ramadan hours, so check yours when you book. Flobit does not book courts.

The Saudi Ministry of Health says to wait at least three hours after iftar before vigorous exercise. Its Ramadan guidance of 23 February 2026 puts team games in that group, because they need full physical readiness. This is general guidance for healthy adults, not medical advice. Anyone with a health condition should ask a doctor first, as the Ministry's 2019 guidance says.

What the two main sources say:

• Saudi Ministry of Health (2026). Before iftar, keep to light work such as gentle walking and stretching; the hour before the maghrib call is the Ministry's ideal time for it. Avoid hard exercise while fasting. After iftar, wait at least three hours for resistance training, running and team games. Drink enough water between iftar and suhoor, eat moderately, and warm up and cool down.
• Aspetar, Qatar's sports medicine hospital (2021 guideline, with updated advice reported in March 2026). High-intensity sessions should be after iftar rather than before it. Training about three hours after iftar is its best option for hydration and nutrition, but it advises against very hard or long sessions at that hour because they disturb sleep. Sessions of 60 to 75 minutes. Drink steadily between iftar and suhoor, for example about 200 ml every 30 minutes, add salt or electrolytes, and avoid coffee and tea. In 2026 Aspetar repeated the advice to drink a little at a time rather than large volumes at once. Protect sleep with short naps of about 30 to 40 minutes. Night play can cut sleep short.

What an organizer can do with it:

1. Do not start hard matches until about three hours after the local iftar.
2. Plan for about 60 to 75 minutes of play per person per night. In padel, with about 30-minute matches, that is two matches. This is our reading of Aspetar's session length, not a rule.
3. Keep water and electrolyte drinks courtside, and give breaks between rounds.
4. Let anyone sit out a round, no questions asked. Mexicano sit-outs rotate anyway.
5. Set an end time that leaves people time to sleep before suhoor.

A pre-iftar game is possible, but both sources say to keep it light.

Choose a format that every entrant finishes inside your nights, and where no one plays more than a couple of matches an evening. A Mexicano suits individuals, a round robin suits up to eight pairs, and groups plus a knockout suits larger pair events. A single-elimination bracket is fastest, but half the field goes home after one match.

The run-time table below uses two planning assumptions. A padel match takes a 30-minute court slot, the figure we use in the padel tournament guide. No pair plays more than two matches in a night. Swap in your own slot length for football or another sport: slots times minutes gives the clock time.

The Mexicano row runs one Mexicano per night: 5 rounds is 75 to 100 minutes, a little over the 60 to 75 minutes above, so use 15-minute rounds or 4 rounds if players are fasting. Run it as a separate tournament each night, and the results feed your community's tournament leaderboard. The Mexicano guide explains the format and why to plan 5 to 8 rounds. Flobit's club-night preset is 12 rounds, which at 15 to 20 minutes a round is three to four hours, too long for a fasting night.

Pick the number of nights from your calendar. The examples below ran from one night to about three weeks. Longer events suit a league that plays two or three nights a week. For the maths of byes and groups, see tournament formats and the round robin schedule guide.

Here is a 16-pair padel event on four courts that finishes in three nights. It is four groups of four, with the top two in each group going into a knockout. That is 24 group matches and 7 knockout matches, 31 in all, and no pair plays more than two matches in an evening. Each match takes a 30-minute slot.

Count: 16 matches on night 1, 12 on night 2 and 3 on night 3. The groups alternate so that a pair never plays two matches back to back on night 1.

Adapt it:

• Fewer courts. With two courts the same event needs 16 slots, which is 8 hours on the clock, and about 4 nights.
• Women's and men's divisions. Run them side by side on separate nights, or share the courts by alternating slots.
• Late entries. Fill empty places from the waitlist before the draw, not after the first night.
• Football. Use the same logic with your match length. A league or groups plus a knockout works in Flobit for football, but a Mexicano does not.

Share the draw and the times with every player in your WhatsApp group before night 1.

They ranged from a single night to about three weeks, started at 8 or 9 pm and finished between midnight and 1 am, where times were given. These are named, dated examples from the press and the organizers, not recommendations.

Saudi Arabia

United Arab Emirates

Qatar

What we notice (our reading of the examples, not a rule):

• Single-venue events were short: one night at KFSHRC, 5 nights at Qadsiah, about 10 at The Pearl and 12 at Aspire. Multi-sport festivals ran longer: about 18 days at Nad Al Sheba and 20 for the Dubai Police games (and 19 for the Riyadh football cup in 2025).
• Divisions are common: pro, amateur and women, or levels A, B and C.
• Workplaces run staff leagues: KFSHRC, Ashghal and Dubai Police.
• Most events ran in the first half of Ramadan, but not all: the KFSHRC staff event on 13 March 2026 fell in the last ten nights. No source says events stop then. Our advice, not a sourced rule, is to finish before the last ten nights if you can, when evenings fill up with worship for many people. In 2027 they begin about the evening of 27 February.

We could not open every organizer's page: the KFSHRC and Nad Al Sheba details come from search snippets and press releases, so check them if you plan to cite them.

In Saudi Arabia, a private padel tournament needs the Saudi Padel Federation's licence first. In a notice dated 17 June 2026, the federation says the licence is a basic condition for holding any private padel tournament in the Kingdom. You apply at least 20 days before the event, the date must not clash with the federation's official calendar, and you need its approval before you announce the tournament or open registration. Holding one without the licence is a violation, the federation says. If you are unsure whether your night counts as a tournament, ask the federation first. Its tournaments page also has a request form for friendly tournaments. The same rule is described in our guide to padel tournaments in Saudi Arabia.

For a Ramadan event that opens on the expected first day, 8 February 2027, 20 days ahead is 19 January 2027. Apply earlier if you can, because the date of the moon sighting can move the start by a day.

That notice covers padel. For football and other sports, ask your club, municipality or the sport's federation. We have not checked their rules. We have also not checked permission rules in the UAE or Qatar, so ask your venue, employer or sports council.

Whatever the country, three things are your job and not Flobit's:

1. Courts or pitches. Book them with the venue.
2. Fees and prizes. Flobit shows an entry fee for information but takes no payments for courts, entry fees or prizes. Collect any fee yourself, and say so in the invitation.
3. The rules sheet. Scoring, the late rule, the finish time and what happens if the moon sighting moves your dates.

Create it in a community, choose a format, approve entries and run the nights from your phone. Flobit does not book courts, take payments for courts, entry fees or prizes, or match players automatically.

1. Make or open a community. Tournaments live inside a community, which works like a WhatsApp group with a schedule and results. A community can have up to 5 active tournaments at a time.
2. Create the tournament. Choose the sport, then a format: single elimination, double elimination, a league (round robin, once or twice), groups plus a knockout or, for padel, tennis, table tennis, basketball (2v2), badminton and pickleball, a Mexicano. Football has no Mexicano. Set a cap from 2 to 512 entries. See tournaments.
3. Say who can join. Pick a category (Men, Women, Mixed or Open), an age range and suggested levels. Suggested levels guide players and do not block anyone. You approve each entry, extras go on a waitlist, doubles players invite a partner, and a team enters through its captain.
4. Add dates, places and a way to reach you. Registration can open when you publish or on a set date. Add the city and venues, and contact options such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Viber, phone or SMS.
5. Share it in WhatsApp. Flobit writes the invitation for you: a message for WhatsApp or Telegram with the date, the place, the open spots numbered while registration is open, and a link to the tournament that players open to see it and ask to enter. Edit it, paste it into your group, and post it again as places fill. You can also turn results and leaders into share cards, and players can add the event to their calendar.
6. Run the nights. Fixtures show times and venues, and you can change a match time. Invite up to 20 referees. Scores update point by point and anyone can follow a match on its live page. See live scoring. The organizer can correct a result for 24 hours.
7. Finish early if needed. A Mexicano can end early when the evening runs short: unplayed matches are voided and the tournament ends on the current standings, with trophies. Flobit awards the three trophies you set up (first, second and third) automatically when the tournament finishes.

Flobit is free to use, with no ads. Flobit Plus is an optional subscription for advanced stats and a Plus badge, and it gives no advantage in tournaments. Flobit works on iPhone, Android and the web. The app is in English, Russian, Turkish, Azerbaijani and Spanish, not Arabic. You can download Flobit.

When does Ramadan 2027 start, and when is Eid al-Fitr?

What time should Ramadan matches start?

How long after iftar can I play sport?

What is the best format for a Ramadan tournament?

Do I need a licence for a Ramadan padel tournament in Saudi Arabia?

Can Flobit run a Ramadan football tournament?

Can Flobit book courts or collect entry fees for Ramadan events?

Is Flobit available in Arabic?