2026 ACF Winter
Last updated: September 4, 2026
ACF Winter is a medium-difficulty tournament, halfway between ACF Fall and ACF Regionals, for players with a variety of college quizbowl experience.
Table of Contents ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Winter ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Winter will be held on November 14, 2026.
Editors ¶ ↑
2026 ACF Winter is head edited by Ben Chapman. The subject breakdown by editor is:
| Category | Editor |
|---|---|
| American Literature | Emily Bussa |
| British Literature | Jamie Burchett |
| European Literature | Emily Bussa |
| World Literature | Raymond Chen |
| American History | Nicolas Edwards |
| European History | Sky Li |
| World History | Alan Lee |
| Other History | Nicolas Edwards |
| Biology | Raymond Chen |
| Chemistry | Geoffrey Wu |
| Physics | Geoffrey Wu |
| Other Science | Geoffrey Wu |
| Painting & Sculpture | Aum Mundhe |
| Classical Music | Sky Li |
| Other Fine Arts | Jamie Burchett |
| Religion | Sky Li |
| Mythology | Andy Yu |
| Social Science | Rayton Lin |
| Philosophy | Aum Mundhe |
| Geography | Ben Chapman |
| Current Events | Alan Lee |
| Other Academic | Aum Mundhe |
| Popular Culture | Jamie Burchett |
Hosting ¶ ↑
Important
If you are interested in hosting a mirror of ACF Winter, fill out the hosting bid form before September 13, 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 Winter, 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 a date TBA at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.
Distribution ¶ ↑
See the ACF distribution table.
Fees ¶ ↑
| Type | Team Amount | |
|---|---|---|
|
Fee
|
Base | $150 |
| Opt-out | amount as applicable | |
|
Discounts |
New to quizbowl | −$100 |
| Shorthanded (1–2 players) |
−$75 per team | |
| Travel | −$10 per 200 miles traveled one-way | |
| Buzzer(s) | −$10 per buzzer | |
| Staffer(s) | −$25 per staffer with a functional laptop | |
| Fee / Discount | Packet submission | ± amount as applicable |
*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 ¶ ↑
Important
Any team that includes at least two people who played a mainstream collegiate academic quizbowl tournament (see above definition)—including as a high school student—before September 1, 2025, is required to submit a half-packet or pay an opt-out fee. Discounts and penalties for early or late submissions will be assessed according to the following schedule. All listed deadlines are at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.
Submission Schedule ¶ ↑
| Submission Deadline | Packet Discount / Fee |
|---|---|
| July 26, 2026 | -$50 |
| August 23, 2026 | -$40 |
| September 06, 2026 | -$30 |
| September 13, 2026 | -$20 |
| September 20, 2026 | -$10 |
| September 27, 2026 | $0 |
| October 4, 2026 | +$10 |
| October 11, 2026 | +$20 |
| October 18, 2026 | +$30 |
| Opt-out fee | $50 |
Packet Distribution & Authorship ¶ ↑
Contact winter@acf-quizbowl.com to request a packet distribution.
Please keep in mind the following information:
- Before writing, review ACF’s packet submission guidelines, distribution overview, and category guide.
- Questions should be harder than those at ACF Fall but easier than those at ACF Regionals; please see 2020 ACF Winter for an example of target difficulty and style. All answers should generally emphasize playability over creativity; aim for creative and interesting clues with straightforward answerlines. A majority of your tossups should conceivably be able to be tossed up at ACF Fall. 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 winter@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 Winter, or to alumni, as long as those individuals are not already editing, writing, or freelancing for the ACF Winter question set. However, they must first request approval from ACF by emailing both winter@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 winter@acf-quizbowl.com and hosting@acf-quizbowl.com as soon as possible.
If you have any questions about packet submission, please email winter@acf-quizbowl.com.
Eligibility ¶ ↑
For information on eligibility, see ACF’s official 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 Winter. If you have any questions about eligibility, please email eligibility@acf-quizbowl.com.
ACF is willing to provide the ACF Winter question set for designated high-school-only mirrors, provided that there is sufficient, demonstrated interest from high school teams. High school teams may not play collegiate sites of ACF Winter.
Mirrors ¶ ↑
Mirrors will by default be regional. ACF reserves the right to move teams and staffers between sites.
| Region | Site |
|---|---|
| Northeast | TBA |
| Upstate NY | TBA |
| Upper Mid-Atlantic | TBA |
| Lower Mid-Atlantic | TBA |
| Southeast | TBA |
| Florida | TBA |
| Great Lakes | TBA |
| Midwest | TBA |
| North | TBA |
| South Central | TBA |
| Northwest | TBA |
| Mountain West | TBA |
| Northern California | TBA |
| Southern California | TBA |
| Eastern Canada | TBA |
| United Kingdom | TBA |
| Overflow | TBA |
Past Tournaments ¶ ↑
Sample questions from previous iterations of ACF Winter are on the Collegiate Quizbowl Packet Archive.