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Beat Saber World Cup 2026 Rulebook

Welcome!

The Beat Saber World Cup is a yearly country-based tournament featuring the very best players of each country. It is hosted by Cube Community and broadcasted on Twitch. You can find all the information below.

Prizes

1st - Badge + 50% of total prize pool
2nd - Badge + 30% of total prize pool
3rd - Badge + 20% of total prize pool

All players and team captains will receive a badge if their team places in the top three.

All players on the top three teams will receive an even split of their placement's prize pool. If the players would like to split the money any other way, there will need to be a 100% agreement on how to split it. This will be discussed at the time of payouts.

Registration

Every player must register on the website.

There may only be one team per country. Team Captains will be chosen by their country by whichever way they see fit. Once a Team Captain has been chosen for your country, they will need to register their country in the appropriate Discord channel when it opens.

Team Captains will be responsible for submitting their rosters until the Roster Lock-in Date (refer to the schedule) and prepare the roster reveal video if they wish to submit one. Once a roster is locked in, it cannot be changed. Once rosters are locked in, all registered teams will have their full rosters made public on the website right after the roster reveal videos have been premiered.

You cannot play in this tournament if:
You are on PSVR
You are on Quest without a link cable
You are banned from submitting scores to ScoreSaber and/or Beat Leader

Players are required to maintain their registered usernames throughout the tournament. Any permanent username changes must be reported to the tournament admins immediately. Changing usernames to "joke" usernames can confuse viewers and casters, and is prohibited. Players who change their usernames without notification will not be allowed to play until they reinstate their original username.

Qualifiers

All signed up teams will have approximately 2 weeks to play the qualifiers map pool. The map pool is due to be revealed one week before the beginning of the qualifiers. Each player will have 3 attempts on each map of the pool. Launching the map will deduce one attempt, even if the player doesn't finish the map.

Qualifiers will be held with the Tournament Assistant (v3) plugin. The plugin will be given to all participants in a public Discord channel. You only need one plugin for the entire tournament.

The qualifier standings will be determined by a team average "weighted score" for the top 3 scores on each qualifier map. The weighted score is calculated with the following formula: 

f(x) = ((m - x) / (m - o))
m: the map's max score
o: the number one score in the leaderboard
x: the score

The formula essentially gives a "weighted score" based on the top score on the map. The closer you are to the max or the number one score, the less "weighted score" you are awarded, the better.

After qualifiers have finished, the top 16 teams of the standing will move to the Round of 16 bracket phase.

Special thanks to EUC for establishing this formula.

Scheduling

All matches will take place on the weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday - subject to change in extenuating circumstances), this is to ensure that all matches can be streamed.

Match scheduling will be decided by cooperation between the Team Captains as well as the tournament staff.

While any time is fine during the weekend, the ideal situation is for all matches in a specific weekend to take place as close to each other as possible.

Once both teams agree on a time, they will get in contact with a tournament admin or a head coordinator at least 48 hours prior to their agreed upon match time.

Once a match time has been agreed upon by both teams, the coordinators, the referee and the stream host, any changes must also be submitted 24 hours before the originally scheduled date and time.

Rescheduled matches, again, need to be agreed upon by all parties.

Mods & Scoring

All players will play in No Fail mode. Scores will be taken from the in-game scoring system. The winner will be decided by which team has the highest combined total score.

The following mods/plugins are banned from use in the tournament.
Intro/Outro Skip*
Note Slice Visualizer
Song Chart Visualizer
Old Notes
Any mod/plugin that affects scoring ability
Any mod/plugin that disables score submission
Any mod/plugin that interferes with TournamentAssistant v3

* We will show leniency towards the appearance of the Intro/Outro Skip UI. Although, it is NOT to be used while in a map to prevent any issues that may occur with player stream synchronization with the POVs as well as the live tug of war.

Hiding arcs on V3 maps is tolerated but we are not responsible if a player misses key gameplay elements.

All chat mods are highly recommended to be removed, but not strictly enforced. The use of such mods can induce mid-match game crashes and general instability.

If a map starts and a player is seen to be using a banned mod, the map will be played normally but the offending player's score will be set to zero and will not count. There will be no free replays offered for this occurrence. If either Team decides to replay, the offending player will not be allowed to replay.

If the tournament staff are able to identify a banned mod before the map begins, they will ask the player to remove the mod and continue. This must be done in a relatively quick time frame (specifics are determined by the referee). If the player doesn't remove the mod, the score will be set to zero and not count.

To clarify, it is NOT the tournament staff's responsibility to identify your banned mods. Players and Captains are responsible for identifying, disabling and/or uninstalling the banned mods prior to the match. Free replays or leniency will not be given for tournament staff not identifying a banned mod.

Broadcasting

All games in the bracket stage must be streamed to our RTMP server. Information will be given out to qualified teams and players in due course.

Streams may not have obstructive overlays due to the stream sync technology that we're using. In the same vein, streams must all be in first person view.

We will not be allowing third person or avatar use.

A Camera2 config file as well as OBS settings will be given out to all qualified competitors to homogenize the viewing experience.

The use of the classic OBS (not Streamlabs OBS) is recommended for stability, ease of configuration & troubleshooting.

Match Flow

Matches will be managed with moon's Tournament Assistant plugin along with our own integration. Players must make sure that they can connect and play maps with the mod.

All coordinators, the referee, the team captain and players should connect to the voice channel ahead of their scheduled play time. There will be a 15 minute grace period for players to arrive if their team has less than the required amount of players to play a match (3 players).

Players must also connect to Tournament Assistant and choose the "Beat Saber World Cup" tournament upon connecting. If the team captain is not available, a player or external party may substitute. A special Discord role will be given out by the referee to grant access to the "current-match-text" and both voice channels for the teams & coordinators.

Each Team Captain will send their coordinator the map their team has chosen for their warm up. We will do our best to play them in order of higher seed, then the lower seed (as a reminder, the highest seed in the tournament is 1, and the lowest is 16). Neither team is required to play the warmup songs, and if both teams agree that no warmup will be played, they may proceed to the next step. Warmup maps must not violate the Twitch Terms of Service (Referee Discretion) and should not be more than 5 minutes long. Please note that warmups may be skipped if the schedule is running late, this decision is taken by the match referee. 

After the warmups, Team Captains will be rolling a random number in the "current-match-text" channel. The Team Captain with the highest roll will choose strategically between "Team 1" or "Team 2" to decide the pick & ban order. Team 1 will always ban first and pick second. Team 2 will always ban second and pick first.

The above flow will be followed until a winner is decided.

In order to pick or ban, the Team Captain will communicate their choice orally to the team's coordinator. The coordinator will then do the necessary to communicate & update the website accordingly. The referee will ensure that this process is done smoothly.

After a map is picked, it will be immediately played by both teams. Team Captains will need to decide on the roster for each map played and communicate accordingly with the coordinator in order for them to do the necessary. Each team will have 4 players (3 is the absolute minimum). You may only choose to use 3 players if there are only 3 players present. If there are 4 or more, you must have 4 players play. If 4 players participate in the match, the lowest score will be dropped from each team that used 4 players. If you can only field 3 players, all scores will count.

Maps can only be chosen once, either through ban or pick. If one map remains, it is played as the "tiebreaker". Some rounds (such as Grandfinals) may "force" a tiebreaker, which means that the map cannot be picked or banned. If those forced tiebreakers are not played, the referee can offer a showmatch if both teams agree on a roster.

If you have 3 players, you must begin the match regardless of who those players are (planned starters, subs, etc.). If you cannot field a team of at least 3 players before the 15 minute grace period has ended, it will be considered as a forfeit and an automatic match loss.

During the match, if a player disconnects, loses power, or any other event which causes the team to dip below the minimum required number of players, an additional 10 minute grace period will be granted in order to allow the player to reconnect. If this happens too often, the match can either be called or the player may not be admitted in subsequent maps. This decision is taken by the referee.

In any case, if a player disconnects from the match lobby during a map, the rest of the map will be played as normal by everyone else and the player who disconnected will not have their score added to their team's total.

Both teams will play to the best of their abilities during all matches. This means that any intentional disruption during the matches such as "throwing" or streaming content other than their own Beat Saber gameplay on the current map during the match will be seen as unsportsmanlike. At the tournament staff's discretion, the map can be ended immediately and will result in a map loss. There will be NO OPTION to replay.

In the same spirit, someone may not play for anyone else during the tournament. Players must play on their own account during the tournament.

The map winner is decided by the sum of the top 3 scores of each team. After each map, the referee will confirm the winners of each map and their total scores. A replay can be called at this stage by the losing team. Once the scores are confirmed, the players are freed from the match lobby and follow onto the next step. Players may not leave the lobby until the confirmation of the referee.

In fact, each team will be able to replay any map for any reason ONCE. A replay can only be called by the map's losing team. At the end of each map, the Team Captain of the losing team will decide on whether to call a replay or not. Players may discuss with their captain to decide on the call and on the potential roster as substituting players for a replay is

TSFAlex new video of his new OST 9 !

TSFAlex has officially dropped the highly anticipated showcase video highlighting a fully customized, community-driven OST 9 concept, and it delivers intense energy on every front!

This curation layout packs custom-engineered environmental mapping parameters alongside precision high-density stream configurations. Accompanying the video rollout, premium 4K playlist layouts have been conceptualized to align cleanly with official asset styling metrics.

Watch the full reveal directly below to experience the synchronized lighting blocks, custom visual sabers, and performance metrics. Be sure to check the map paths and leave feedback on the pacing arrays!

ScoreSaber 2 is coming...

ScoreSaber 2 launches on Monday, May 25 at 4:00pm EST.

ScoreSaber has existed since May 8, 2018. When first made, the goal was simple: just a friendly neighbourhood leaderboard with support for custom songs. Then PPv1 / PPv2 happened, the ranking system happened, replay systems 1 & 2 happened.

That growth felt amazing and it was super fun to iterate so fast back then, but the foundation underneath didn't exactly keep up.

For years, new features were bolted onto systems that were never designed for them. Sometimes that worked... Sometimes it very much didn't. Eventually, almost every meaningful change had to fight the old backend, the old database, the old deployment setup or all 3 at once.

So what is ScoreSaber 2?

It's pretty much the update that gets moving again (and a bunch of other cool stuff, promised—just keep reading).

The Re-code

The old database went all the way back to the first version of ScoreSaber. Every player, leaderboard and score was sitting on top of decisions made when mostly just trying to get the thing working.

It held on for dear life for a surprisingly long time, but development slowly turned into archaeology. It was time for that to stop.

The database layer has moved to postgres with a completely redesigned data model. The backend has a new API, much stricter validation, proper background jobs, better monitoring and logging.

The frontend has also been rebuilt with Next.js around the new API, moving away from the very, very beta version of svelte-kit used on the old frontend which has kept us shackled for so long.

For third party devs, the new public API is properly automatically generated and has OpenAPI support.

Also—the old API isn't being switched off; ScoreSaber 2 has a compatibility layer for the existing website API, game API and legacy clients. New things will live on the new API.

Bus Factor

For a long time, because of how ScoreSaber was deployed, deep server access wasn't distributed widely. The setup worked, but it relied on old infrastructure, manual processes, and isolated context.

ScoreSaber 2 fixes a lot of that. Deployment is simpler, more automated and much easier for trusted developers to operate safely. Qwasyx will have full access to the new deployment platform for maintenance and custom jobs like reweights.

Once the dust settles, plans are in place to open up the ScoreSaber development team to more people and open source a much larger chunk of ScoreSaber.

Realms

Realms are one of the reasons the re-code was worth doing. The idea was originally inspired by ReBeat, a scoring system designed by Astrella.

A realm is basically a separate scoring context inside ScoreSaber. It can have its own ranked maps, PP curve, modifier values, player stats, history and leaderboards.

At launch, everyone will use the main realm, which is ScoreSaber as known today. Realms let new ranking systems and PP curves be tested on real scores without disrupting the main realm.

More Data

The old ScoreSaber data model was pretty lossy. In many places, only the latest state of something was stored, not how it arrived there. In ScoreSaber 2, every submitted score is recorded and kept indefinitely.

A lot more state changes are being logged as structured data now. Player aliases, country changes, bans, role changes, leaderboard status changes, PP changes, ranking request activity and replay views all have real structure behind them.

The next mod refresh will also allow the submission of fails and quits to help understand play patterns and map difficulties.

Accounts

Meta account handling has been one of the longest-running annoyances in ScoreSaber. Historically, Steam was the clean path for website login. If playing through the Meta Link app, accounts sat in a strange place.

ScoreSaber 2 allows website sign-in with a Meta account to access standard community features.

Replay Storage

The new system defines clear rules for replay retention boundaries:

  • Every current PB replay upload is stored first.
  • Every current PB replay is guaranteed to remain available for at least 30 days.
  • Ranked leaderboards keep the top 1,000 current PB replays indefinitely.
  • Unranked leaderboards keep the top 15 current PB replays indefinitely.
  • Replaced PB replays are kept for 7 days before cleanup runs.

The New Website

It's faster, cleaner, mobile-friendly and server-rendered.

Maps

The maps page is built around mapsets instead of a flat list of leaderboards. Difficulties are now grouped cleanly under the mapsets they belong to.

Rankings

Navigation allows jumping directly to specific positions, viewing friends, and filtering active/inactive status.

Leaderboards

Difficulties and game modes switch much more fluidly. Scores filter by friends, country, and proximity.

Scores

Scores carry deeper context, integrating explicit tracking for 58 headset labels and 40 controller profiles to map per-hand accuracy, cut quality, and hit streaks.

Social

ScoreSaber now features a follower and following system to track social connections across platforms.

Mods

The new backend maintains full backward compatibility, so current client mods continue functioning normally ahead of the mid-June refresh.

Project Ludus

Ludus allows high-quality, synchronized spectating and tournament broadcasting, rendering multiple viewpoints simultaneously with minimal overhead.

PPv3

Once ScoreSaber 2 stabilizes, PPv3 will enter active testing via isolated realms using real historical player data profiles.

Wrapping Up

This update represents a structural turning point enabling active, ongoing iteration. See you on the 25th.

Beat Saber Teased 3 NEW songs for their 8th anniversary

This teaser marks an exciting celebration milestone, landing on May 28th as part of Beat Games' 8th Anniversary celebrations, where free tracks roll out to the community.

1. Skybreak & Daeya

  • The Vibe: Melodic Dubstep / Color Bass / Cinematic EDM.
  • What to Expect: Bright, lush color bass textures mixed with ethereal vocal compositions. Sweep paths will favor fluid Arcs matching long melody holds.

2. Boom Kitty x MDK

  • The Vibe: Glitch Hop / Electro House / Chiptune Heavy Bass.
  • (--truncated text--)