Championships Series Welcome

Spring Championships Finals 2025-26

The BSTF Spring Championships Finals event is being doubled in size to accommodate for entry demand across disciplines and consolidate the two single elimination event brackets.  There are many updates to the event, plus the return of the renowned BSTF Fightcamp, which will replace the previously scheduled Winter Championships.

• We are doubling the size of Spring Championships Finals event – creating space for the largest ever University National Championships event!
• We are replacing Winter Championships event with the Fightcamp 2026 National Universities Training Camp in London – entry to the full training day (4x sessions, 7 hours training in total) is £50 for current members, or just £10 for current student-athlete members (80% discount)
• Very strong entry trends in Autumn 2025-26 coupled with venue size limitations for our old single elimination smaller venue Winter and 1-day Spring event meant that we would have had to cap sparring and patterns entries, particularly in the C-class division – wherever possible we strive to adjust plans so no athletes are left out, and the revised format allows us to include substantially more athletes’ entries
• The Spring Championships Finals event is being expanded from a 1-day 10x court event to a huge 2-day DE+ event over 14-15th March 2026
• Spring Championships brackets are being expanded to Double Elimination Plus (DE+) format competition brackets (for all bracket sizes from 2 to 200) – creating the most expansive bracket configuration ever for a National Universities Championship Series event!
• The total number of brackets being delivered this year remains the same as the original plan, but the two separate single elimination brackets which comprised the old Winter and 1-day Spring plan are now combined into the new double bracket 2-day Spring format – this is advantageous for entry cost (one DE entry is less than two SE entries) and travel cost (teams have one less trip to plan and pay for, which we know is a challenge for many teams based on our survey feedback)
• Full seeding of all brackets, based on the current National University Rankings, which includes all divisions, all classes and all individual disciplines
• This schedule change provides substantial saving on entry fees, and on travel and accommodation costs for teams
• Weigh-in now available 13th March Friday night, 14th March Saturday morning and 15th March Sunday morning – you can choose to weigh-in the day(s) before, or travel and compete on the same day
• Rule updates in place (female friendly uniforms; maintaining 2025 manual-IVR rules for WT rules sparring)
• Enhanced discipline scheduling by class division, with all ITF rules sparring / Chang-Hon patterns disciplines ABC classes taking place on Saturday, all A-class WT rules sparring and Kukkiwon patterns disciplines on Saturday, and all B&C-class WT rules sparring and Kukkiwon patterns disciplines on Sunday
• We can welcome you to a huge venue, this year with amenities upgrades
• Affordable local accommodation options are available
• The event is scaled for the largest ever National University Taekwondo Championships!

Example accommodation options:

• Travelodge Northampton Round Spinney, Talavera Way, Round Spinney, Northampton, NN3 8RN, a twin room per night GBP 41.99 –> £21 pp, 2.8 miles to venue
• Travelodge Northampton Upton Way, A45, Upton Way, Northampton, NN5 4EG, a twin room per night GBP 43.99 –> £22 pp, 4.6 miles to venue
• Travelodge Northampton Central, 15 Gold St, Northampton NN1 1RA, a twin room per night GBP 59.99 (central Northampton) –> £30 pp, 4.0 miles to venue (Northampton City Centre)

Prices listed December 2025, per person per night figure show assuming two sharing a twin room.

Transportation to Northampton:

• Northampton Railway Station –> 4.0 miles to venue (Northampton City Centre)
• National Express serves Northampton from Northgate Bus Station –> 3.9 miles to venue (Northampton City Centre)

Transportation from Northampton City Centre, to and from venue:

• Local bus services from Northampton City Centre to venue, ~30 min, include routes: 4, 4A, 4B, 6, 58 (with options both ways from 6am to 11pm)

New Double Elimination+ Bracket Format

Double Elimination Plus (DE+) format provides huge brackets, with two or more sparring matches for all sparring competitors (able to play back for Bronze after a first loss) and two or more patterns performances for all patterns competitors (all patterns competitors are able to play back to Gold after a first loss)!

Even better, all brackets, including all divisions, classes and disciplines are fully Seeded according to current National University Rankings!

The vast majority of sparring and patterns competition brackets (population of 4+) will be standard double elimination format, where your first loss moves you to the lower bracket with other athletes who have lost a match at the same stage in the competition.

The type of bracket depends played depends on the number of athletes who enter and weigh-in in your division – see the bracket types listed below!

For reference, for the Spring 2024-25 sparring competition, before mergers, 13 of 96 divisions had a population of 2, 11 of 96 divisions had a population of 3; the remaining majority of divisions have 4-16+ athletes before mergers, and sometimes 48+ in the case of patterns divisions (the largest division at each event in the Championships Series is consistently female C-class kukkiwon individual patterns, which often has ~40-50 competitors vying for Gold!)

The bracket types are:

• Double elimination, lower bracket bronze medal match format (for majority of sparring brackets)
• Double elimination,  3 player round robin format (guaranteeing 2 matches for any 3 player sparring brackets)
• Double elimination, 2 player best of 3 matches format (guaranteeing 2 matches for any 2 player sparring brackets)

29 & 30 November 2025