The Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has updated its Tournament Policy to version 2.5, enacting several changes to End of Match Procedures, the number of Swiss and Single-Elimination rounds, time limits of rounds, and more! Here’s a summary of the changes, effective as of September 5th, 2025, in both NA and EU territories.
Time Limits:
Swiss Rounds are now 50 minutes, up from 45 minutes, for Tier 1, 2, and 3 events. (Locals, Regional Qualifiers, OTS Championships, YCSs, Nationals, and WCQs).
Top Cuts are no longer timed.
The Final Match of a Single-Elimination tournament is no longer timed.
Number of Rounds:
The number of rounds (Swiss and Top Cut) have been modified and split into two different charts, one for Tier 1-2 events, and the other for Tier 3-4 events.
Tier 1-2:
| Number of Participants | Number of Swiss Rounds | Playoff Top Cut |
|---|---|---|
| 4 – 8 | 3 Rounds of Swiss | None |
| 9 – 16 | 4 Rounds of Swiss | Top 4 |
| 17 – 32 | 5 Rounds of Swiss | Top 4 |
| 33 – 64 | 6 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 65 – 128 | 7 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 129 – 256 | 8 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 257 – 512 | 9 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 513 – 1024 | 10 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 1025 – 2048 | 11 Rounds of Swiss | Top 8 |
| 2049+ | 12 Rounds of Swiss | None |
Tier 3-4:
| Number of Participants | Number of Swiss Rounds | Swiss Rounds Day 1 | Swiss Rounds Day 2 | Playoff Top Cut |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 129 – 256 | 11 Rounds | 7 Rounds | 4 Rounds | Top 8 |
| 257- 512 | 12 Rounds | 8 Rounds | 4 Rounds | Top 8 |
| 513 – 1024 | 13 Rounds | 8 Rounds | 5 Rounds | Top 8 |
| 1025 – 2048 | 14 Rounds | 9 Rounds | 5 Rounds | Top 8 |
| 2049+ | 15 Rounds | 9 Rounds | 6 Rounds | Top 8 |
- 3 additional rounds of Swiss have been added to Day 2 for all tournament sizes
- Top Cuts are limited to only a maximum of 8 players, changed from scaling up to 64.
Important to note that this does not affect prizing for being outside of the Top 8, such as the Top 32 Card Trooper or Top 16 Effect Veiler – this is now based off of your standings after the final round of Swiss, rather than having to play in the corresponding Top X Single Elimination rounds.
End of Match Procedures
The biggest changes of them all, End of Match Procedures have been entirely reworked. This also resulted in additional changes to Draws and reporting your Match Result.
If the Match does not finish within 50 minutes, the result will be a double loss.
- When time ends in the Round, the Match is over. Neither Duelist may begin or continue any action that may take place in the Game.
- If time expires and the Match has not finished it will be a double loss.
- A Match is considered finished when one of the Duelists has either won two Duels or lost 2 Duels.
- If the Duelists have completed 3 Duels without the Match finishing and there is time remaining in the Round, the Duelists will go into a 4th Duel.
A Double Loss means that there is no winner for the entire Match, not that each Duelist receives a game loss within that Match. This means that Draws are not a possible Match result anymore and there is no more playing until the end of the current phase and comparing Life Points. If the Match you are in has not concluded in either Duelist having two Game Wins or Game Losses, neither Duelist is considered the winner of that Match.
The new End of Match Procedures apply for both Swiss and Single-Elimination.
Match Draws
Matches can no longer end in a Draw, intentional or otherwise, so the section covering Intentional Draws has been removed.
Reporting Match Results
Due to the changes to End of Match Procedures, additional clarification was added for Match Results submitted after the 5 minute mark has passed after the Round has ended. Keeping in mind that the Duelist responsible for reporting the Match Result is subject to a PE – Major infraction and a Game Loss to be applied to the next Round if they have not reported their match result within the 5 minutes:
- If the Round ended due to hitting the time limit, both Duelists are equally responsible for reporting their Match Result as a double loss, rather than the winner of the Match being solely responsible for reporting the result in normal circumstances.
- The PE-Major penalty for not reporting your Match Result within the 5 minute mark is addition to the double loss for the Match Result.
Sources:
KDE-US: https://yugiohblog.konami.com/2025/news-updates/tournament-policy_v2-5/
KDE-EU: https://www.yugioh-card.com/eu/tournament-policy-ver-2-5-updates-and-changes/
13 Comments
If you don’t have a band of friends to pressure your opponents to scoop near time, why compete?
One detail that was left out on this: The top cuts for Tier 1-2 events is optional. So no, your locals won’t be getting forced to play 2 additional rounds just because a 9th player showed up.
I didn’t include this detail because this didn’t change, but if you think it’d help to mention it, I’ll add it in. Top Cuts have always been optional if there is no prizing structure that’d require to run them.
How does the game with the notoriously worst time rules of any TCG somehow manage to make them worse?
And in todays episode of ‘Konami trying to avoid draws at the cost of game integrity’, we have lessons in game theory…
Reduction of top cut size is really ugly…
Honestly everyone upset about these changes should just intentionally aim for draws in order to troll Konami. I suspect that they did this to save time, so just waste it anyways.
Get rid of best 2/3 format and adopt the anime style of dueling with single rounds.
DB sweats in shambles, “Top 32” in the bio means nothing now rip
Depending on region, top 32 already meant nothing.
do note, if the timer ends and you “think” you can peer pressure your opponent into surrendering, that is something that you CANNOT DO, you had to do that BEFORE the timer ended, doing it now that time is called HAS TO result in a double MATCH loss, otherwise you get a PE warning of trying to alter the game’s result and might get kicked out / banned from events.
In which world is ok to pressure you opponent anyway ?
in marvel snap, theres even missions in game about this