This is the Tournament Portal for our 2025 Fall East Tournament which will be held in Plovdiv on November 29th-30th.

Registration

Registration for the tournament opens on October 29th and closes on November 12th.

Participants should complete all the necessary documents and upload them to their Team folder by the 12th of November. Please, don’t wait until the last moment. 

Transfer your registration fees, 35 BGN (17.90 EUR) per student, to the BEST bank account mentioning the school’s name and town in the “основание” until 12.11.2025.

All payments must be made in BGN. 

Please, carefully follow all instructions regarding registration as described in the registration email.

Host Site

The tournament will take place at the University of Food Technologies in Plovdiv.

Accommodations 

From this year, BEST Foundation will only arrange accommodation if requested. For detailed instructions, refer to the registration email.

BEST reserves up to two nights of accommodation for all participants. BEST commits to negotiating accommodation costs at or under 42 BGN (21.47 EUR) per student per night. Participants have to pay for their own accommodation costs while BEST covers the costs of all judges for up to one night in a hotel and up to one chaperone.

All payments must be made in BGN.

Hotels

Judges and Team Coaches will receive emails with their hotel allocation for the weekend. Please refrain from communicating with the hotels directly and contact BEST instead if you have questions or concerns.

Travel

All teams are required to bring a chaperone who will be legally responsible for their team’s safety when traveling to and competing at the venue. Chaperones are required to be aged 18 or over, fluent in Bulgarian, and not high school students.

Teams are encouraged to apply for a travel scholarship. Coaches can fill out the scholarship application form by clicking here. Teams allocated scholarships will be reimbursed after arriving at the tournament venue. Please read our scholarship terms and conditions for further information BEFORE applying for a scholarship. 

Please, keep in mind the distance between the tournament site and the different stations:

Route from the train station to the university

Route from bus station Rhodopi to the university

Route from bus station North to the university

Route from bus station South to the university

If needed you can use taxi if you travel to a more distant destination:

Taxi Numbers:

EKO Taxi  - 032 6155

Taxi 1 - 032 1912

Zeleni Taxi - 032 9999

Perfect Taxi - 032 6112 

For any information or concerns regarding transport in Plovdiv, contact studentleader@bestfoundation.bg or judge@bestfoundation.bg

Judging 

We welcome all high school graduates or above with C1 or higher English to judge at our tournaments. If you are new to BEST and our tournaments, visit our Judging Basics page!

Coaches, you must register if you are judging, too, and don’t forget to include your judges when you fill out your team roster spreadsheet (see below).

Our Judge sign up form can be accessed by following this link.

We will reimburse all judges for their transport if they use trains or buses, but we strongly encourage taking the most affordable option when possible (usually trains). Please purchase your ticket back from the tournament location as well, as we cannot reimburse you without being presented with tickets. We will provide food at the tournament site, and we will also cover one night of hotel accommodations for regional tournaments. 

Coaching

BEST Coaches should download our Coaches’ Checklist and make sure their teams are up to date.

Tournament Schedule

To Be Announced

Debate Motions

VARSITY

Prepared Motions:

This house, as a developing country, would choose to prioritize developing partnerships with many developing nations (ASEAN, the African Union etc.) over the development of relationships with international superpowers (e.g. China, USA, Saudi Arabia etc.)

This house prefers that billionaire-run charitable foundations engage in 'hits-based' giving rather than traditional charity work

Infoslide:

Examples of billionaire-run charitable foundations are Open Philanthropy, Zuckerberg-Chan Initiative, and the Gates Foundation. Traditional charities prioritize low-risk interventions that are known to work (example: malaria nets, GiveDirectly). Conversely, 'hits-based' charities go for higher-risk interventions with potentially much bigger outcomes (example: research into genetically altering mosquitos to not carry malaria, lobbying for welfare reform).

Тhis House prefers a world in which the concept of sin in Abrahamic religions had been based solely on human action, rather than on some temptation from the devil.

Infoslide:

Abrahamic religions are monotheistic religions whose common origin is recognized in Abraham or the recognition of a spiritual tradition identified with him (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). In these religions, the figure of the devil represents evil and sin, inciting the act of inclining toward evil in people.

Impromptu hints:

Society + Labour

Art + Society

NOVICE

Prepared Motions:

This house opposes the rise of the Mystic Arts (e.g. tarot reading, astrology calculations, witchcraft, dream interpretation)

This house, as the environmentalist movement, Would focus on advocating their interests through separate political parties (‘Green Parties’) rather than lobbying mainstream political parties to adopt more pro-environment policies.

This house supports strong government intervention to prevent gentrification.

Impromptu hints:

Society + Labor

Art