Free Judo scoreboard

Why score Judo with ScoreZen

• ✓One-tap scoring, built for Judo
• ✓Share the live score by QR code or link
• ✓Free for spectators — no app to install to watch
• ✓Keeps working if the connection drops
• ✓34 sports, tournaments and standings included

How Judo scoring works

Three positive scores exist: ippon (instant win), waza-ari (an intermediate score) and yuko (a smaller score, reintroduced in 2025 and not cumulative into a waza-ari). Two accumulated waza-ari equal one ippon and win the bout. Penalties (shido) do not give points to the opponent, but a fighter who receives three shido is disqualified (hansoku-make). If the score is tied at the end of time, golden-score overtime is decided by the first advantage scored.

Match format

A senior bout lasts 4 minutes of stopped time; the clock is halted at every referee interruption. If tied, a golden-score overtime (no time limit, sudden death) decides the winner.

How to win

You win by ippon, by two waza-ari, by disqualification of the opponent (hansoku-make, notably three shido), or by having one more waza-ari at the end of time. If tied, golden score decides.

Recommended ScoreZen setup

In ScoreZen, tap 'Ippon' (the bout ends automatically) or 'Waza-ari' (two waza-ari also end the bout). A 'Shido' counter tracks penalties, and at the third shido ScoreZen automatically ends the bout and declares the opponent the winner (hansoku-make). Golden score, however, is still decided manually by the referee. A 4-minute clock paces the bout.

How judo scoring actually works on the mat

Judo does not add up points. There are three scores and none of them accumulates into another. Ippon ends the contest on the spot; waza-ari is the level just below; yuko is the smallest, added by the IJF from the Paris Grand Slam 2025 and written into Article 15 of the refereeing rules. A second waza-ari is announced waza-ari-awasete-ippon and the contest is over (Article 16). Yuko are counted one, two, three, but the rules say in so many words that they never add up to a waza-ari.

On the ground a second clock runs, and that is the one the table watches. After the referee announces osaekomi, twenty seconds gives ippon, ten to nineteen seconds waza-ari, five to nine seconds yuko (Article 7). If osaekomi starts in regular time — not in golden score — and the remaining time is too short to complete it, the contest is extended until the referee announces ippon or its equivalence, meaning yuko or waza-ari, or announces sore-made, or until toketa and then sore-made. During that extension uke can still counter with shime-waza or kansetsu-waza (Article 8).

Penalties are not points: a penalty never corresponds to a score, and only technical scores go on the scoreboard. Two shido are warnings; the third is hansoku-make, the opponent wins the contest by ippon, and the disqualified athlete can still continue in the competition. A contest cannot be decided by a single shido or by accumulated shido until hansoku-make is reached (Articles 13 and 18). For all IJF competitions, seniors, junior under-21 and cadet under-18 fight four minutes of real contest time — real, meaning the clock stops at every mate and restarts at hajime. Article 6 recommends the same times to national federations, but it opens by saying the duration is set by the rules of the competition: check yours.

No technical score at all, or level technical scores at the end of regular time, sends the contest into golden score whatever the shido count. Golden score has no time limit, the scores and shido from regular time carry over and stay on the board, and it is won by a technical score (yuko, waza-ari or ippon), by hansoku-make — direct or by accumulated shido — or by kiken-gachi; if one athlete refuses to go into golden score, the other is declared the winner by kiken-gachi. An osaekomi started there ends it at five seconds: the referee announces yuko, sore-made. And because yuko are counted individually, a difference of yuko decides in regular time: two yuko against one is a win, no golden score. A waza-ari still beats any number of yuko.

(IJF Sport and Organisation Rules, Appendix D, IJF Refereeing Rules, version 21.01.2026: Articles 6, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19. Pool ranking, veterans and tatami sizes come from the same rulebook, version 14.08.2026, sections 2.5.5.1, Appendix A1 and 8.7. The addition of yuko was announced by the IJF for the Paris Grand Slam 2025.)

The scoresheet mistakes that decide judo contests

The commonest error on a club sheet is writing a shido as a point for the other athlete. Keep two separated zones, technical scores on one side and penalties on the other, and never let one bleed into the other.

Second trap: the osaekomi band. Record the value the referee announced, not your own reading of the seconds. A hold broken at nineteen seconds is waza-ari; broken at nine, it is yuko. Third: ending the contest at the wrong moment. A second waza-ari finishes it, a waza-ari plus two yuko finishes nothing. Wait for the announcement before you touch the sheet.

Fourth: not correcting an error in time. If the referee awards the victory to the wrong athlete, the correction has to happen before the referee leaves the competition area — at IJF events that is the job of the Head Referee Director or the Referee Supervisor, and once a decision has been taken by the referee and agreed with them it is final and without appeal (Article 13). At an event with no CARE system, the rules allow two side judges and a majority-of-three decision. Either way, raise your hand while everybody is still on the mat.

Fifth: writing down the winner without the manner and without the time. Ippon, waza-ari, yuko, hansoku-make, fusen-gachi when an athlete does not appear, kiken-gachi when one withdraws. In a round robin the IJF ranks athletes in a fixed order: number of contests won, then the sum of all scoring points (ippon or waza-ari-awasete-ippon 100, waza-ari 10, yuko 1, hantei 0, counted whether the athlete won or lost, 100 maximum per contest, golden score counting like regular time), then the contest between the two athletes, then the lower total of shido received with a hansoku-make counted as three, then the shortest accumulated time of the contests won. Every one of those columns comes off your sheet, so note the manner and the time straight away; five contests later nobody remembers.

What changes between a club shiai and an international tournament

The scores and the announcements are the same everywhere; the duration, the permitted techniques, the mat and the video are what change around them. Article 6 starts by saying the duration is determined by the rules of the competition, then fixes four minutes of real contest time for all IJF competitions — seniors, junior under-21 and cadet under-18 alike — and recommends those times to national federations. Below cadet, national federations shorten the contests and restrict techniques, and those numbers live in your national regulations, not the IJF text. Read them before you print a running order.

Some techniques are legal for seniors and penalised for cadets, and the sheet is not filled the same way. In cadet events, using the head to throw as tori is a shido; using the head to defend as uke means tori is awarded the score, if any, and uke takes the shido; reverse seoi-nage is different again — no score at all and shido for tori (Article 18.1.4). Cadets entered in a senior or junior event follow that event's age-group rules. Kawazu-gake, kani-basami, do-jime and ashi-garami are hansoku-make at every age, and that hansoku-make ends the competition for the athlete, not just the contest (Article 18.2.2). A table that knows its age band does not argue about a non-score.

Veterans run on their own numbers, and they are IJF numbers, in Appendix A of the same rulebook, not an invention of your national federation. Divisions run in five-year bands from M1/F1 (30-34). M1/F1 to M6/F6 fight three minutes with golden score of no limit; M7/F7 and over, so from sixty, fight two and a half minutes with a golden score of one minute, and if a tie still exists at the end of that minute the referee, in consultation with the table jury, determines the winner without calling hantei. Shime-waza is not permitted in the sixty-and-over divisions, M7/F7, M8/F8 and M9/F9.

Video and the mat are the other gaps. Where a CARE system is installed, review is mandatory for any decision that ends a contest, in regular time as in golden score; where there is none, the rules fall back on two side judges and a majority of three, and your sheet is the only record that survives the afternoon. The contest area at IJF events measures between 8 m by 8 m and 10 m by 10 m with a safety area of at least 3 m, and 10 m by 10 m with a 4 m safety area at the Senior World Championships and the Olympic Games. Two rules protect the IJF schedule and are worth copying at club level: every athlete is entitled to ten minutes of rest between contests, and when one athlete is missing, a last call is announced and thirty seconds counted down before fusen-gachi — which the referee awards only once the Sport Director or the person nominated for the job has given the authority.

What ScoreZen changes for judo

You keep the contest on your phone, one thumb, with the score in front of you and the same figures on the screen everyone else is looking at. The judo cockpit has two score buttons, Ippon and Waza-ari, and it closes the contest by itself on ippon and on the second waza-ari; the shido counter sits apart from the score, capped at three, and the third shido ends the contest in favour of the opponent. The four-minute countdown is there to be stopped at mate and restarted at hajime. Nothing to chalk up, no numbers shouted across the dojo. Then you share the shiai with a link, or with a QR code taped to the door: parents, grandparents and the club-mate who stayed at home follow it live, free, unlimited, with no account to create.

In the hall, TV mode fills a screen or a laptop plugged into a television, and if the club streams its mats the transparent overlay drops the live score into OBS. For the paper trail, the A4 score sheet prints before the first contest, and the tournament sheet prints from the competition you have just run. For a competition day, ScoreZen runs pools plus bracket, straight knockout, championship, Swiss system, best-of-3 and best-of-5 series and rotating teams.

With several mats going at once, one single QR code covers the whole tournament: you launch the contests that are ready, the judoka open the same code, score their own contest from their phone, and the pools and the bracket update while you stay at the table. If the network drops in a basement hall, it keeps counting and resyncs when the signal comes back.

Afterwards the Replay summary and the Story image make the day shareable, the club site embeds the widget, the calendar takes the ICS feed, the fixtures export to CSV, and the read-only public API needs no key. 34 sports, 25 languages. Three trial matches are free for life; after that, one payment of €1.99unlocks it for life, and clubs run at €4.99, €9.99or €29.99per month.

Frequently asked questions