Ask most people what an eisteddfod is and they will describe a concert. Ask anyone who has ever sat on the organising committee and they will describe a spreadsheet. An eisteddfod is a competition — entries, sections, adjudicators, placings, certificates and medals — and the thing that makes it genuinely hard to administer is not the size of the audience. It is that a single eisteddfod is really two competitions running on two different clocks at once. This guide explains how an eisteddfod is actually structured — the sections, the school-year groups, how adjudication ends in a placing rather than a mark band, and what a committee has to settle before it can open entries. If you are here looking for eisteddfod management software, the structure below is the part that decides whether any tool will fit.

The section list, the year groups and the award rules described here are taken from the published syllabus of a national youth eisteddfod — the Rhestr Testunau, the official list of subjects — and rebuilt section by section. Where this article steps beyond what that syllabus states, it says so and labels the advice as a committee decision rather than a rule.

An eisteddfod runs two competitions on two different clocks

Every eisteddfod section falls into one of two worlds, and they behave nothing alike:

• On-stage sections — solo singing, recitation, cerdd dant, folk dance, street dance, group dance, instrumental music, choir singing, acting, group drama. These are performed live, adjudicated in the room, and their entire timeline is the day itself. The constraint is stage minutes.
• Off-stage sections — literary and composition, music composition, art, design and technology, cookery, science and technology. These are made in advance and submitted. They are marked before anyone walks on stage, often by a different adjudicator entirely, and their constraint is a submission deadline and a marking window.

Committees that have only ever run a concert-shaped event plan the stage and then discover, three weeks out, that a third of their competitions have already needed to close, be collected, be coded and be marked. The off-stage half has no stage manager and no running order — it has a receiving desk, a storage problem and a marking turnaround. Plan it as a separate project with its own dates, or it will be the thing that is late.

This split is not unique to Wales — a Kerala kalolsavam divides its catalogue into stage and off-stage items in exactly the same way, for exactly the same reason. What is unusual about an eisteddfod is how much of its prestige sits on the off-stage side: composition and literary work are not a sideshow there, they are headline sections.

Competitors are grouped by school year, not by age — and the year is fixed on a single date

This is the detail that trips up anyone arriving from another competition circuit, and it is worth getting right before you print anything. An eisteddfod of this kind does not band competitors as “7–11” and “12–15”. It bands them by school year, and it fixes which year a competitor belongs to on 31 August, with an upper limit of 25.

Group	Roughly which ages	What it is in practice
Year 2 and under	about 4–7	The youngest band — infants and the first years of primary
Years 3 and 4	about 7–9	Lower primary
Years 5 and 6	about 9–11	Upper primary — usually the biggest entry of the day
Years 7, 8 and 9	about 11–14	Lower secondary, a three-year band
Years 10 and 11	about 14–16	Upper secondary
Years 12 and 13	about 16–18	Sixth form / senior secondary
14–25 years	14–25	The open youth band, expressed in ages rather than school years

Two consequences follow that a committee has to decide on, because the year-group system creates them:

• The last band overlaps the two before it. A 15-year-old is in Years 10 and 11 and inside 14–25. Your syllabus has to state, in writing, which sections a competitor of that age may enter and whether they may enter both. Do not leave it to the entry desk on the day.
• One fixed date beats a hundred birthdays. Because the group is settled on 31 August, a competitor’s band cannot drift during the season — someone who turns 12 in October is still in the band they were fixed into. That is a gift administratively, but only if the cut-off is applied by the system rather than by a volunteer reading birth certificates against a printed list.

In eTalenter this is an Age Groups Setup field: enter the band and its cut-off date once, and every entrant is classified automatically at registration. The same mechanism handles LP/UP/HS/HSS in a school arts festival — see how to set up age groups for the general pattern.

The sections an eisteddfod actually competes

Here is the catalogue, split the way the syllabus splits it. Print this, or copy it into your own syllabus draft as a starting point — it is the fastest way to check you have not quietly forgotten a whole section three weeks before entries close.

Section	Stage or off-stage	Entered as	What the committee has to provide
Solo Singing	On stage	Individual	Accompanist or backing arrangement, and a stated key/repeat policy
Recitation (Llefaru)	On stage	Individual	Set pieces published with the syllabus, or a stated free-choice rule
Cerdd Dant	On stage	Individual	Harp accompaniment and the counter-melody arrangement
Folk Dance	On stage	Individual	Music source, floor space and a costume expectation
Disco, Hip Hop and Street Dance	On stage	Individual	Track submission deadline and a content-suitability rule
Creative Composition Dance	On stage	Individual	A stated brief or theme, if you set one
Group Dance	On stage	Team	Roster limits, changeover time, props handling
Instrumental Music	On stage	Individual	Piano/keyboard provision, tuning time, page-turner policy
Choir Singing	On stage	Team	Risers, minimum and maximum voices, conductor eligibility
Acting	On stage	Individual	Monologue length and set/props limits
Group Drama	On stage	Team	Get-in/get-out minutes, lighting and set constraints
Literary and Composition	Off stage	Individual	Submission deadline, anonymity/coding, word or format limits
Music Composition	Off stage	Individual	Accepted formats (score, audio) and a playback method for marking
Art, Design and Technology	Off stage	Individual	Delivery window, storage, display space, safe collection
Cookery	Off stage	Individual	Kitchen access, timings, hygiene and allergen rules
Science and Technology	Off stage	Individual	Bench space, power, and a rule on adult assistance

Now do the arithmetic, because this is where eisteddfodau surprise first-time committees. Sixteen sections, seven year groups, and every section offered to every group gives you 112 separate competitions in one event. Not 16. Each of those 112 has its own entry list, its own running order or marking pile, its own adjudicator sheet and its own first, second and third. If your plan says “we have sixteen competitions”, your plan is out by a factor of seven.

That multiplication is the family resemblance across every traditional-arts circuit. An Irish feis gets there by crossing age with competitive grade; a fleadh cheoil gets there by crossing instrument with age code across a qualifying ladder. An eisteddfod gets there by crossing section with school year. Same explosion, different axes.

Three sections are team entries — and that changes registration, not just the stage

Group Dance, Choir Singing and Group Drama are entered by a team, while the other thirteen sections are entered by an individual. That sounds like a stage-management detail. It is actually a registration detail, and it is the one most often bolted on late.

• A team is one entry with a roster, not eight entries. It needs a name of its own, a member list, and a rule about whether a member may also appear in a second team in the same section.
• One school or branch can reasonably enter more than one team in the same section — two choirs, two drama groups. If your entry form assumes one team per organisation, you will be editing it by hand on entry day.
• A team competitor is usually also an individual competitor elsewhere in the syllabus, so the same person must resolve to one record across both. Otherwise your programme clashes them against themselves.

eTalenter treats this as a participation type on each section: Individual sections take a candidate, Team sections take a named team built during registration with its members attached. Several teams from the same unit in the same section is normal and supported.

Adjudication ends in a placing, not a grade band

Here is the structural fact that most changes how you set up scoring. In this eisteddfod’s rules, a certificate and a medal are awarded to first, second and third in every competition, and no banded marking scheme is published. There is no “80% and above is an A”. The output of adjudication is an order.

That is genuinely different from a Kerala kalolsavam, where a published manual converts a percentage into an A, B or C grade and grades carry points. It is also different from the American school music festival model, where every performer receives a rating and two ensembles can both be “Superior”. An eisteddfod adjudicator must separate the field. Three things follow:

• Marks are a working tool, not the published result. Adjudicators still score against criteria to think clearly and to defend the decision — but what goes on the results board is 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
• Ties have to be broken, not tolerated. Decide the rule in advance and publish it: highest weighted criterion wins, or the adjudicator’s casting decision is final.
• The spoken adjudication matters as much as the placing. In eisteddfod culture the adjudicator speaks to the competitors. Build the time into the running order — a couple of minutes per competition across 112 competitions is hours.

Below is a rank-based adjudication slip you can copy for any eisteddfod section. Note the shape: criteria and marks exist to produce the placing, and the placing is what is announced.

Criterion	Weighting	Marks awarded	Adjudicator’s note
Technical accuracy (pitch, diction, timing, technique)	30
Interpretation and musicality / characterisation	25
Communication with the audience	20
Suitability of the chosen piece to the competitor	15
Stage presence and overall impression	10
Total	100
Placing awarded: 1st ____   2nd ____   3rd ____   |   Competition no. ______   Group ______   Adjudicator ________________

If your eisteddfod also awards an overall shield to the most successful school or branch, you need placings to convert into points. A common and defensible weighting is 10 points for first, 6 for second and 3 for third, totalled per organisation across all 112 competitions. eTalenter ships exactly that mapping with its eisteddfod template, and the standings update as results are confirmed rather than being added up by hand at the end of a very long day.

What your syllabus has to settle before entries open

Everything in this section is committee advice, not a rule of any particular eisteddfod. But each of these is something a syllabus must answer, and each one causes an argument on the day if it does not:

• Time limits per section, and whether there is a warning bell. Publish the limit and the consequence of exceeding it.
• Set pieces or free choice for recitation and singing, and whether a piece may be repeated from a previous year.
• Language of performance, where the eisteddfod has a language purpose. This is often the section rule that most needs stating plainly.
• Entry limits — how many entries one competitor may make, and how many one school or branch may enter per competition.
• Accompaniment — who provides it, whether backing tracks are allowed and in what format, and when they must be submitted.
• Submission and collection for every off-stage section: deadline, labelling, anonymity, storage, and who is responsible for getting the work back to the competitor afterwards.
• Qualification — if your eisteddfod runs local or regional rounds feeding a larger stage, state exactly who progresses and what happens if a result is corrected after the fact.
• Appeals — who may lodge one, in what window, and what the adjudicator’s authority is.

If you want a clause-by-clause starting point, our sample competition rules and guidelines template covers each of these as an adaptable numbered section.

Setting an eisteddfod up in eTalenter

eTalenter is a competition engine rather than a Wales-specific product, which is exactly why an eisteddfod fits it — the shape maps cleanly onto what the system already models. In practice:

• Age Groups Setup holds the seven year bands with the 31 August cut-off, so entrants classify themselves correctly at registration.
• Event Levels model whatever hierarchy you run — branch feeding region feeding national, or a single-venue eisteddfod with schools as the units. Levels are yours to name; nothing is hard-coded to one country’s structure.
• Competition Items hold the sixteen sections, tagged on-stage or off-stage so the two clocks stay visibly separate.
• Assign Competitions to Groups is where the 112 come from — section × year band, each row carrying its own participation type, language, fee and time limit.
• Public Registration opens entries to schools, branches and parents, with coordinator review before an entry is accepted.
• Judging & Scoring gives adjudicators the criteria on screen and resolves to placings; tabulation is live rather than a post-event reconciliation.
• Certificates and results publishing produce the certificate for every placed competitor and push results to a public page, a podium screen or social cards.

If you run a schools-based arts competition of any kind, the school arts fest software page covers the same engine from the schools angle, and managing a festival of 1,000+ participants covers the event-day logistics an eisteddfod at full size runs into.

Frequently asked questions

How many competitions does an eisteddfod actually have?

Multiply your sections by your year groups. A syllabus with sixteen sections offered across seven year groups is 112 distinct competitions, each with its own entry list, running order and placings. Committees consistently underestimate this, and it is the single most useful number to establish before you print a programme or book a venue.

Is an eisteddfod judged on marks or on placings?

On placings. In the youth eisteddfod syllabus this article is built from, a certificate and medal go to first, second and third in every competition, and no banded marking scheme is published. Adjudicators may still score against criteria as a working method, but the published result is an order of merit rather than a grade such as A, B or C.

Why are competitors grouped by school year instead of age?

Because the eisteddfod is built around schools and youth branches, so the school year is the natural unit — a Year 6 class competes as a Year 6 class. The year is fixed on 31 August and the upper limit is 25, which means a competitor’s band is settled for the whole season and cannot shift mid-way when they have a birthday.

Planning an eisteddfod, or any multi-section arts competition?

eTalenter runs the whole thing from one place — online entries, year-group classification, competitor numbers and certificates, on-screen adjudication, live tabulation and published results — whether your event is 112 competitions or a single afternoon. Talk to us on WhatsApp or email support@etalenter.com and we will set up a trial event with your sections and year groups already loaded, so you can see your own syllabus running before you commit to anything.