On the morning of a festival, the difference between a calm stage and a chaotic one is usually identity. Who is participant number 4 in Solo Song, Junior category? Is the child waiting in the wings actually registered for this item? Which school does entry 217 belong to? Chest numbers and ID cards answer all of that in a glance — and they are the single cheapest piece of preparation an organizer can do. This guide explains how to design a chest-number scheme, what belongs on a participant ID card, how to print and distribute them for a few hundred or a few thousand participants, and how to generate the whole set automatically in eTalenter instead of typing them into a spreadsheet.

What a chest number is actually for

A chest number is a short code that identifies a participant without identifying them. That second half is the point. When a judge sees “Entry 12” on the call sheet instead of a name, a school and a house colour, the score is about the performance. Anonymity is the strongest fairness mechanism available to a competition, and it costs nothing but a sticker.

Chest numbers do three more jobs on the day:

• Stage order. The draw fixes the sequence in which entries perform, and the announcer calls chest numbers, not names — faster, and no mispronounced names over a PA system.
• Score-sheet matching. Judges write marks against a number. Tabulation later maps numbers back to participants. No handwriting to decipher.
• Crowd control. Volunteers at the stage door can verify at a distance that the right entry is queued for the right item.

Designing a numbering scheme that survives the day

Most organizers invent a numbering scheme on the spot and regret it by lunchtime. Two schemes work well, and the right one depends on the shape of your event.

• One permanent number per participant (for example 1041, 1042, 1043 …). Each participant is issued a single chest number that they wear all day, across every item they enter. Simple to distribute, simple for parents, and the participant’s whole record — five items, five results — hangs off one code. This is the usual choice for a school arts fest, a talent test or a club kalotsavam.
• Per-item entry numbers (Entry 1 to Entry 18 within Classical Dance, Senior). Numbers restart for every competition. Useful for very large multi-day meets where judges want a short number to write, and where the same person rarely appears in more than one or two items.

Add a prefix if your event has meaningful divisions, so a code carries information a volunteer can read without a laptop. Prefixes commonly encode:

• Age group — L-101 for LP, U-101 for UP, H-101 for HS, S-101 for HSS; or J-, I-, S-, SS- for a Junior / Intermediate / Senior / Super Senior talent test.
• Unit or house — RED-14, BLU-14 at a school-level event where houses compete for the championship; or a school code such as SCH07-114 at a district-level festival where schools are the units.
• Stream — separate blocks for the children’s stream and the youth stream when a single organisation runs both.

Three rules keep it clean. Use fixed-width numbers (0007, not 7) so lists sort correctly and printed cards look uniform. Leave gaps between blocks — late entries always arrive, and a spare range per unit saves you from renumbering. And never reuse a number within the same event, even for a withdrawn participant; a discarded number that reappears on a score sheet is the fastest route to a disputed result.

What belongs on the participant ID card

The chest number is worn on the chest; the ID card hangs around the neck and carries everything else. Keep it to what a volunteer, a judge’s assistant or a registration desk actually needs:

• Chest number, printed large — this is the field people read from two metres away.
• Name and photo of the participant, for verification at the gate.
• Age group and unit / house / school.
• The items they are registered for, ideally with venue and stage — this alone eliminates most “which hall do I go to?” questions.
• Event name, date and a support contact, plus the organiser’s logo.

Print cards for the people who are not competing too. Judges, sub-coordinators, draw masters, projector operators, stage volunteers and guests all benefit from a visibly different card — a different colour band per role means anyone can see at a glance who is allowed backstage.

Printing and distributing without losing a morning

The logistics are simple but easy to underestimate:

• Freeze the participant list a few days before the event, generate the full set at once, and treat anything after that as a small “late batch” printed separately.
• Print chest numbers on plain A4 or A5 sheets in a heavy, high-contrast font — they get pinned or taped to a costume, so they must be readable from the audience and disposable.
• Sort and bundle by unit, not alphabetically. Hand each sub-coordinator or class teacher one envelope containing every card for their group; they distribute far faster than a central desk can.
• Print a spare blank set with the next free numbers, so an on-the-day entry can be issued a valid card in seconds.
• Keep one master list — number, name, unit, items — at the registration desk on paper, in case the venue Wi-Fi disappoints you.

Generating chest numbers and ID cards in eTalenter

Doing this by hand means a spreadsheet, a mail-merge and an afternoon. In eTalenter it is a configuration step, and the numbers stay linked to the participant for the rest of the event.

• ID Card Configuration — set the prefix and number format for the event (per age group or per unit if you want the code to carry that information), and codes are allocated automatically as candidates are registered, whether they came in through the public registration form, a sub-coordinator, bulk entry or an Excel import.
• Designer — customise the card layout: your logo, event name, colours, which fields appear and how large the chest number prints. The same designer handles certificates and trophy stickers, so the whole event looks like one event.
• Print in bulk, grouped by unit — ID cards and chest numbers for every participant, plus role cards for judges, sub-coordinators and volunteers.
• The number flows everywhere else — into the draw, the call sheets, the judges’ scoring screens, the projector display and the published results, so nobody re-keys it and nothing is mismatched at tabulation time.

Because the identity is generated once and reused, the same participant record carries through to the end: results, ranks, points, and finally certificates printed with the correct name, item and grade — no separate list, no retyping. You can see the full identity toolkit on the chest number, ID card and certificate generator page.

Frequently asked questions

Should judges ever see participant names?

For individual judged items, no — give judges chest numbers only. Names, schools and house colours invite unconscious bias and give losing participants something to argue about. Names are revealed at tabulation, after the marks are locked. For team items the team name is usually unavoidable, so anonymity there is partial; compensate with clear criteria and multiple judges, as described in our guide to judging and tabulation.

How do chest numbers work for group items?

The team is the entry, so the team gets an entry number for the draw and the score sheet, while each member still carries their own participant ID card. That way a single unit can enter several teams in the same item and each is scored separately, with no confusion about who belongs to which squad.

Can we add participants after the cards are printed?

Yes — that is exactly why you leave gaps in each numbering block and keep a spare printed set. A late candidate is registered, allocated the next free code in their block, and issued a card on the spot; the draw and call sheets pick up the new entry without any renumbering of the participants already printed.

Set it up for your event

Whether you are running a school kalolsavam with four houses, a district festival with dozens of schools, a church talent test across a Junior-to-Super-Senior ladder or a club kalotsavam with numbered age groups, eTalenter generates the chest numbers, ID cards, call sheets and certificates from the same participant list. If you are still deciding how to divide your participants, start with our guide on setting up age groups and houses, or see the full kalolsavam and arts fest management software.

Want help configuring the identity setup for your festival? Message us on WhatsApp or write to support@etalenter.com and we will walk you through it.