This is the Tournament Portal for our 2026 Spring West Tournament, which will be held in Burgas on March 7th-8th.
Registration
Registration for the tournament opens on February 4th and closes on February 18th.
Participants should complete all the necessary documents and upload them to their Team folder by the 18th of February. Please, don’t wait until the last moment.
Transfer your registration fees, 17.90 EUR (35 BGN) per student, to the BEST bank account mentioning the school’s name and town in the “основание” between January 12th and 18th 2026.
All payments must be made in EUR.
Please, carefully follow all instructions regarding registration as described in the registration email, sent to all coaches on 18.02.2026.
Logistics
Tournament Dates: 7-8 March 2026
Registration Opens: February 4, 2026
Registration Closes: February 18, 2026
Number of contestants: by February 11, 2026
Number of student participants confirmation by BEST team: February 12, 2026
Fee payment: February 12-18, 2026
Host Site
The tournament will take place at High School “Petko Rosen” in Burgas.
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 30 EUR (58.67 BGN) per student per night. This does not apply for single rooms. 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 EUR.
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:
Distance from the central train station/bus station South to the high school
Public transport from the central train station/bus station South to the high school
Public transport from the high school to the central train station/bus station South to the high school
It’s recommended to use the Transport Burgas application for up-to-date information on public transportation.
If needed you can use taxi as the Burgas taxi’s prices are max 4 to 4.60 EUR (8 to 9 BGN), only if you travel to more distant destination:
Taxi Numbers:
EKO Taxi:
Telephone number - 0565155; 0887751551
Supertrans Taxi:
Telephone number - 0889121212; 0899111213
Burgas Taxi:
Telephone number - 0878111234; 056844321
Indicar Taxi:
Telephone number - 0898 500 585; 0886 887 007
Judging
We welcome all high school students (only if they are 18 years old or above), 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 would put a nationwide cap on the advertisement budgets that political parties have in the run up to elections
This house believes that financial regulators in Western liberal democracies should aggressively limit systemically important institutions‘ total financial exposure to frontier AI providers.
For the purposes of this debate: Systemically important institutions are very large financial companies, such as major banks or insurers, whose failure could seriously damage the wider economy. Frontier artificial intelligence refers to the most advanced general-purpose AI systems, and frontier AI providers are the companies that develop or operate them. Financial exposure means situations where these financial institutions could lose significant amounts of money if an AI company fails or loses value, such as through loans, investments, or insurance. This does not include simply using AI tools or services in everyday business, like chatbots or software.
This house regrets the significant involvement of high profile individuals in politics (celebrities, billionaires, notable authors, Nobel prize winners). Examples of involvement in politics include: running for election, leading campaigns & fundraisers, giving speeches at major rallies, & endorsing candidates.
Impromptu hints:
Media, Culture
History, IR
NOVICE
Prepared motions:
This House would ban international aid charities from using sensational, graphic, or overly-emotional images of suffering.
THW not allow teenagers to access AI chat bots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, etc)
This House believes that society places unreasonable expectations on celebrities to speak out on political issues.
Impromptu hints:
Media
History, Education