More teams to compete at Butterfly National Schools Finals

November 4, 2025 | Paul Stimpson

The Butterfly National Schools Team Finals is being extended this season, with eight teams to compete in each category.

The competition, which runs for boys and girls in under-11, under-13, under-16 and under-19 age groups, has featured four schools in each bracket for many years, playing on a round-robin basis to decide the finishing positions.

From this season, eight teams will qualify in each category and will play on a progressive knockout format to decide a final ranking from first to eighth. The top four teams based on combined rankings will be seeded and the remaining teams drawn against them.

The qualifying route will be via the Area Finals – the national semi-final stage has been scrapped and the winner of each of the seven Area Finals will progress straight to the National Finals, alongside the highest-ranked runner-up from the Area Finals based on the February ranking list.

Both the winners and runners-up from each county round can progress to the Area Finals in all counties.

The Area Finals will take place in January and February 2026, with the National Finals on Sunday 26 April, 2026.

The new format is among a number of updated regulations for the 2025/26 season.

Also new for this season, all schools which reach their Area Final will need to sign up to free Schools Membership. This is to enable them to be linked to the TT leagues results platform. All players registered for the school team will also need to have at minimum a free Club Play Membership so their player profile can be linked to TT Leagues.

This follows a successful trial of using TT Leagues at the 2025 Butterfly National Schools Team Finals, with TT Leagues now to be used at the Area Finals for this season.

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