OEMC 2026 Seating System and Public Draw

The seating table for OEMC 2026 (168 players, 42 teams of 4, 11 rounds) is now published and available for download. This article explains how it works and announces the public draw event.

Properties of the seating

The published seating table satisfies the following properties, all verifiable directly on the table:

• No two players from the same team ever sit at the same table.
• No two players face each other more than once across the 11 rounds. Each player meets exactly 33 different opponents.
• Every player has the same wind profile: three winds three times, one wind twice. The wind order is scrambled across rounds.
• Every player visits 11 different physical tables — one new table each round.
• Team-versus-team exposure is balanced across the tournament.

How randomness enters

The seating table itself is not random — it is built by a fixed formula anyone can verify. All randomness comes from two public draws:

Draw 1: A team name is drawn from a bowl and assigned the next team number (1, then 2, then 3, …, up to 42).

Draw 2: For each team, four numbered balls (1–4) are drawn to assign roles to the team’s members, listed in a fixed pre-published order.

Each player’s seat ID is then computed as: 4 × (team number − 1) + role + 1. The published seating table takes over from there.

Public draw event

Date: 10.30 AM, Sunday, June 28th, 2026

Location: Studiefrämjandet Uppsala, Ljusbärargatan 2, 754 23 Uppsala

The draw is performed by the organizers on behalf of all teams. It will be projected on screen and recorded. After completion, the full results will be published on the tournament website.

UPDATE: The draw was live-streamed, you can find the video here:

Downloads

The seating explanation document contains the full parameters, verification instructions, and the formula used to build the table.

📄 Tournament Seating Explanation (PDF) 📊 Seating Tables (XLSX) 📋 Final Seating (XLSX)