2026 ACF Fall
Last updated: September 4, 2026
ACF Fall is the premier easy tournament in college quizbowl. Designed as an introduction to college quizbowl for novices and players with limited high school quizbowl experience, it is the most widely-played set in the college calendar.
Table of Contents ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Fall ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Fall will be held on October 17, 2026.
Editors ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Fall is head edited by Noah Chin. The subject breakdown by editor is:
| Category | Editor |
|---|---|
| American Literature | Nick Smemoe |
| British Literature | Lucia Gellert |
| European Literature | Nick Smemoe |
| World Literature | Lucia Gellert |
| American History | Ilyas Choukri |
| European History | Joey Sun |
| World History | Noah Chin |
| Other History | Abhinav Rachakonda |
| Biology | Ilyas Choukri |
| Chemistry | Shiva Tegulla |
| Physics | Jeremy Cummings |
| Other Science | Tai Belke (Math, Computer Science) Shiva Tegulla (Earth Science, Astronomy) |
| Painting & Sculpture | Shiva Tegulla |
| Classical Music | Jeremy Cummings Tai Belke (Opera) |
| Other Fine Arts | Tai Belke |
| Religion | Abhinav Rachakonda |
| Mythology | Yihong Chen |
| Social Science | Rohan Jain |
| Philosophy | Rohan Jain |
| Geography | Tai Belke |
| Current Events | Abhinav Rachakonda |
| Other Academic | Abhinav Rachakonda |
| Popular Culture | Abhinav Rachakonda |
Hosting ¶ ↑
Important
If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Fall, fill out the hosting bid form before August 16, 2026 at 11:59 Pacific Time.
Once host bids are evaluated, the Site Coordinator will post a registration form and a list of confirmed sites in a reply to the HSQB announcement. For further information about the requirements and procedures for hosting ACF tournaments, please see ACF’s Hosting Guidelines.
If you have any questions about hosting ACF Winter or the host bid process, please email hosting@acf-quizbowl.com.
Registration ¶ ↑
Important
To register a team for ACF Fall, please fill out the central registration form once available. If possible, teams should register for the site that is geographically closest to them and/or is in the region where they would normally play. Registration will close on Sunday, October 11 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.
Distribution ¶ ↑
See the ACF distribution table.
Fees ¶ ↑
| Type | Team Amount | |
|---|---|---|
| Fee | Base | $120 |
|
Discounts |
New to quizbowl | −$80 |
| Shorthanded (1–2 players) |
−$60 per team | |
| Travel | −$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way | |
| Buzzer(s) | −$10 per buzzer | |
| Staffer(s) | −$25 per staffer with a functional laptop | |
| Packet submission | -$60 to -$5 |
*The new to quizbowl discount is intended for schools that have not sent a team to any mainstream collegiate academic quizbowl tournament** since September 1, 2025, and that have no players who competed in such tournaments during that same period.
**“Mainstream collegiate academic quizbowl tournaments” include all ACF tournaments, NAQT SCT and ICT, and any housewritten collegiate academic invitational or open tournaments. Novice collegiate tournaments with strict eligibility requirements, pop culture or “hybrid” tournaments, and HCASC do not count towards this definition.
Hosts will bill teams as soon as possible once teams register. Teams should pay their respective hosts by whichever method is most convenient for the hosts, who will in turn pay ACF. If your team requires a modification to this workflow and must pay ACF directly, please email treasurer@acf-quizbowl.com.
Packet Submission ¶ ↑
Note
ACF is soliciting optional, high-quality packet submissions from teams to complete the ACF Fall question set. Interested teams may submit a half-packet or a quarter-packet (7/7) to earn a discount on their entry fees according to the schedule below. All listed deadlines are at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.
Submission Schedule ¶ ↑
| Submission Deadline | Half Packet Discount / Fee | Quarter-packet Discount / Fee |
|---|---|---|
| July 05, 2026 | −$60 | −$30 |
| July 19, 2026 | −$40 | −$20 |
| August 09, 2026 | −$30 | −$15 |
| August 30, 2026 | −$20 | −$10 |
| September 13, 2026 | −$10 | −$5 |
In addition to the above discounts, teams may earn a −$20 quality discount (−$10 for a quarter-packet) if the questions in their submission are particularly polished and usable. Each team may submit a maximum of one half-packet, which may earn up to a –$80 maximum discount.
Packet Distribution & Authorship ¶ ↑
Contact fall@acf-quizbowl.com to request a packet distribution. Before writing, review ACF’s packet submission guidelines, distribution overview, and category guide.
If you would like to submit a half-packet or quarter-packet for ACF Fall, please fill out the interest form once available to request a distribution. ACF will respond with a template specifying which questions you have been assigned to write. Please keep in mind the following information:
- Before writing, review ACF’s packet submission guidelines, distribution overview, and category guide.
- Please see these questions from 2023 ACF Fall for examples of target difficulty and style. All answers should generally emphasize playability over creativity; aim for creative and interesting clues with straightforward answerlines. For bonuses, aim for easy parts to have 90% conversion, medium parts to have 50% conversion, and hard parts to have 10% conversion.
- All questions should be written in 10-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. Tossups should not exceed 6-7 lines, and each individual bonus part should not exceed 2 lines. Please do not add extraneous spacing or paragraph breaks between question text and answerlines. For answerlines, please bold and underline minimum required answers and include the most likely answer first. Include diacritics in foreign words where applicable.
- Submissions that significantly flout the aforementioned difficulty, length, or formatting guidelines, or that include unoriginal material (e.g., plagiarized text or recycled questions from a previous set or packet submission), will be disregarded and returned to teams, with the opportunity to revise and resubmit them for a future deadline. Further penalties will be applied according to the Packet Submission Guidelines.
- Submission templates may ask for questions from specific subcategories. For example, you may be asked to write a question on a “20th-century American Poetry” instead of American Literature, or on “Economics” instead of “Social Science.” This is intended to minimize redundancy between submissions and maximize the number of usable questions from each submission. The submission form includes space to indicate your writing interests in each category, which ACF will do its best to accommodate.
Once your submission is complete, please email it to fall@acf-quizbowl.com. The subject line of your email should list your team name and letter and the word “half-packet.” The Head Editor will post a list of received packet submissions, sorted by deadline, as a reply to this announcement.
Teams may outsource any part of their submission to peers from their club who will not play ACF Fall, or to alumni, as long as those individuals are not already editing, writing, or freelancing for the ACF Fall question set. However, they must first request approval from ACF by emailing both fall@acf-quizbowl.com and hosting@acf-quizbowl.com. Experienced players and writers are welcome and encouraged to help their peers write questions, but ACF must know the contributors of each submission for both credit and logistical reasons.
If multiple teams from the same school are submitting packets, they should NOT be aware of each other’s questions. Any roster changes that entail an author for one team’s packet switching to a different team (e.g., if an author for Team B’s packet is moving to Team A) should be communicated via email to both fall@acf-quizbowl.com and hosting@acf-quizbowl.com as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about packet submission, please email fall@acf-quizbowl.com.
Rules ¶ ↑
ACF Fall uses the official ACF Gameplay Rules.
Eligibility ¶ ↑
ACF Fall uses the official ACF Eligibility Rules.
In general, teams whose players are all attending the same college/university and taking at least one class for credit during the current academic year are eligible to play ACF Fall. However, ACF also enforces further eligibility guidelines for ACF Fall to make it more accessible to new teams and players. Players are not eligible to play ACF Fall if, at any point, they:
- Scored more than 60 PPG in the prelims of ACF Fall, OR
- Were the top scorer (highest overall PPG) on a team that finished in the top 15% of the field, rounded up, at ACF Fall, OR
- Scored more than 60 PP20TUH in the prelims of HSNCT, OR
- Scored more than 60 PPG in the prelims of PACE NSC, OR
- Were the top scorer (highest overall PPG) on a team that finished in the top 30 at HSNCT or top 10 at PACE NSC, OR
- Finished in the top 12 in IPNCT, OR
- Scored more than 20 PPG in the prelims of ACF Nationals
Players are responsible for determining their own eligibility. If you believe that you should be eligible to play ACF Fall but are excluded by the current guidelines, or if you have any other questions about eligibility for ACF Fall, please email eligibility@acf-quizbowl.com to request an exemption. Otherwise, failure to abide by these eligibility guidelines may result in disqualification from ACF Fall and/or future ACF tournaments.
ACF is willing to provide the ACF Fall question set for designated high-school-only mirrors. High school teams are exempt from the above eligibility guidelines and may not play collegiate sites of ACF Fall.
Mirrors ¶ ↑
Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites.
| Region | Site |
|---|---|
| Northeast | MIT |
| Upstate NY | N/A |
| Upper Mid-Atlantic | Rutgers |
| Lower Mid-Atlantic | Maryland |
| Southeast | Auburn |
| Florida | Florida Tech |
| Great Lakes | Ohio State |
| Midwest (East) | Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| Midwest (West) | Missouri – Columbia |
| North | Minnesota |
| South Central | Murray State College |
| Northwest | Washington (online) |
| Mountain West | N/A |
| Northern California | UC Berkeley |
| Southern California | Claremont |
| Eastern Canada (East) | Ottawa |
| Eastern Canada (West) | Waterloo |
| United Kingdom (North) | Edinburgh |
| United Kingdom (South) | Imperial |
| Overflow | |
| High-School (Illinois) | Rockford Auburn HS |
| High-School (Georgia) | Georgia Tech |
Past Tournaments ¶ ↑
Sample questions from previous iterations of ACF Fall are on the Collegiate Quizbowl Packet Archive.