Curiosities Kick Off

World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2026
Kick Off

Birds are whistling,

… the sun is shining and Mr. Curiossonne is taking one of his long walks. At some far distance he notices a colourful gathering. “What is this?” he thinks and goes for a closer look. First he comes across a lazy farmer enjoying gentile heat of the sunbeams, quickly followed by another farmer already working the land towards hopefully a prosperous harvest. Next he sees some construction workers preparing their tools. Do they have some glorious cities in mind? Mr. Curiossonne comes upon a newly paved road. “Where could this be leading to?” passes his mind. A little further on the track are a couple monks looking around in all directions. As he crosses the whole field he gets a curious feeling, and just at that point he spots some vicious looking figures lurking from behind a tree. “Hmmm… what are they up to?”. Mr. Curiossonne’s interest is triggered and decides to stay around.

This is the 2026 World Team Carcassonne Online Championship!!!

… and the Curiosities!

Something old, something new…

The Curiosities are turning 6 (…or 7?)! YAY!

Some might still remember, others might wonder. “How did it all get started?”

Well, it all began on a cold breezy and snowy day in 2020 in Mexico where, totally bored of some pandemic, a guy called Marco wrote with full enthusiasm a few findings on Facebook.

A year later the organisation invited Marco to write his stuff in a special section, called ‘Curiosities’. Very simple, very basic, no data scrapping scripts, no AI. And on the morning of April 13th 2021 it looked something like this:

‘Now that the first week of WTCOC 2021 is over, our collaborator from Mexico, Marco Rivas, presents us a summary with curious and interesting facts that took place.

• A total of 14 matches, 70 duels and 174 Carcassonne games were played.
• Of the 70 duels, 36 finalised in 2 games and 34 went to the third game.”

… and 13 more dots. Read the whole article again here if you feel nostalgic.

The Curiosities were born!

Over the years, this fantastic newsletter grew along with the WTCOC and JinaJina, Mingo and Szigfrid came to strengthen the team. But now is the time that Marco, the godfather of the Curiosities and also known as manarori, will take a step back and let his baby go.

Thank you Marco for all the efforts and this amazing thing you added to the world of Carcassonne. I’m pretty sure plenty of readers sat down with a bag of popcorn to read about all the numbers, fun stuff and other rarities that happened during the WTCOC. Feel free to spam Marco’s mailbox with your hails and love letters 🙂.

But from old to new now. Where Marco will be leaving a gap, that space will be filled with new young blood full with enthusiasm and crazy ideas. We warmly welcome Alan (kaika87, Malaysia) and Pavel (posij118, Czech Rep.).

Please note that even with these fresh sets of brains we can make mistakes (yes, we are human too) and depend on the information we are given. So feel free to contact us if you spot any errors, discover something unusual related to WTCOC, end up lost in a jungle and have to climb the tallest tree to have some sort of reception to still be able to play your duel, or any other stuff you feel like sharing.

Pré Tournament Facts & Figures

This year the WTCOC is welcoming a record breaking 40 teams and a record breaking 389 players from all over the world. And to avoid that we use a record breaking amount the word ‘record breaking’, we will stick with this.

It’s the 7th edition of the WTCOC

• The 6 previous editions were won by Japan (5x) and China (1x).
• 9 of the players on those winning teams are participating in WTCOC this year.
  • That is 5 players less than last year
  • 4x (Jap) should & Kithara
  • 1x (Jap) nanatakkyu, Setsugentou & YguruguruY
  • 1x (Chn) 203club, mitaocat, tomatoken & qazxswedc
• 2 brand new teams will be spicing up the event. Welcome to Ecuador and Sweden.
• Sadly 1 team is not participating this year. But we all hope that Slovakia will join us again in the next editions.
• We also welcome 96 new players. That’s 24 % and almost a quarter of the entered players this year.
• A watchful eye might ask us: “What about Mano Negra from France?”. Mano Negra is not new and is in fact Latcho Drom from last year and 1-3 from the years before.
• Also in the French team is Valderic returning to the squad after an absence of 5 years.
• RCP player isloun then again has returned after a 3y hiatus.

Of course Ecuador (10) & Sweden (8) entered a full squad of new members. But some other teams went through a real make over.

• 5 debutants: Australia & Japan
• 4: Argentina, Catalonia, China, Finland & Ukraine
• 3: Chile, Croatia, Greece, Guatemala, Spain, Uruguay & Vietnam.

This really shows how our community has grown. Habitués are more and more having a hard time to even get in their team.

6 teams have no new faces for us to look forward to:

• Brazil, Colombia, France, Hong Kong, Mexico, Romania

Since the first WTCOC, 22 players are still standing and, accordingly, participating for the 7th time. That is 3 players less than last year.

• gdarudda (Bra)
• danisvh (Cat+Esp)
• viv- (Fra)
• Karaboudjan & Leuschi (Ger)
• mosopal & szigfrid (Hun)
• ComplixVandh & manarori (Mex)
• Bekse & Zwollywood (NL)
• BBKosta, Mikhail-rus & Someone_you_know (RCP)
• Ervin_G, g3rappa, game__over, Mars15 & mihnea27 (Rom)
• HotlyHotly (Twn)
• ted the notty bear & wallaceprime (UK)

We have 10 individual Carcassonne World Champions (with a total of 11 World Titles between them) joining us this edition.

We have 39 female players participating.

• That is 10% of the field.
• That’s 6 (and 1 %) more than last year.
• Responsible for that are 2 new teams, each bringing 3 female players along. Well done.👍
• Teams with the most female present.
  • 3 Croatia, Ecuador, Lithuania, Vietnam & Sweden
  • 2 Catalonia, Australia, Latvia, Uruguay & Hungary
  • 1 14 teams

You’re never too old or too young to play Carcassonne, no matter what the box says 😎.

• The most ‘life experienced’ players are:
  • 67y Bangla (Bel)
  • 65y Ed Chamon (Bra)
  • 62y Wallaceprime (UK)
• The 3 youngest players are:
  • 10y kissduska (Hun)
  • 13y sou-tata (Jpn)
  • 17y KR_ Knight_ Realm (Bra)

…10? …Yes 10!

Not sure what you were doing when you were 10, or 13, but I’m guessing it was not participating in some World Championship or even travelling half the world for it like sou-tata did for Herne. And if you did something amazing as well at that time, please let us know 🙂.

Carcassonne is a family game, some teams take that very literally. Hungarian player kissemo brings with his wife and son, yes the 10y old wonder, almost his whole family to the team. Croatian captain Bluste went for another approach. Not only did he bring his girlfriend, he also brought his mom to the scene.We’re looking forward to seeing these unique triumvirates at work and challenge them to be the first to win all 3 of them in the same duel.

• Father, mother & son
  • kissemo, vallics & kissduska (Hun)
• Couples
  • adanlasheras & carito36 (Chl)
  • Bluste & lorki0503 (Cro)
  • portgard & Meiasmay (Vnm)
  • stealdogfood & stealcatfood (Vnm), kudos for their chosen names 😀
  • barry10 & Piccione85 (Ita)
• Brothers:
  • Gladki_Alex & pablit8 (Blr)
  • TRojasHenao & Ext4ur (Col)
  • BuHa44 & Tompa99 (Cro)
  • phoam & DiogoAntunes (Por)
  • Mars15 & game__over (Rom)
  • Statmatt & FanaticalLime93 (UK)
• Brother & sister:
  • Gary-San & Zavely (Ecu)
• Father & son:
  • kostra & HappyTim7 (Ger)
• Mother & son:
  • Lamprdlica & Bluste (Cro)

A different bound is that one between pMika, GUN007 and Pakshe. Being a mathematics teacher (pMika) in grade 11, 2 of her over 70 students were the 2 youngsters. In the process, she also became their Carcassonne teacher 😎 Great work!

Also a special mention to sou-tata here, whose father is mashumaro_daisuki. The father didn’t make the team but is most likely known by plenty of us.

RamboPang43200, current Malaysian Champion, is brother to Arnold Pang, 2018 Malaysian Champion who played in the quarter finals at Essen.

The Group Draw

After a lot of requests from the community, the organisation chose to go ‘old school’ and held a successful manual draw on stream.

• The teams were divided in 5 pots based on the team ranking on Carcassonne.gg
  • https://carcassonne.gg/National-Teams-Ranking/
  • Only exception is the adding of new teams Ecuador and Sweden in pot 5
• The first stage of the tournament will be held in 8 groups with 5 teams each.
• It was creative and funny, how they merged 2 games into 1, by using Kingdomino tiles to decide in what group the drawn team had to be placed.
• The first team to be drawn was Guatemala.
• Five times World Japan came out of the bag in style, being the last team to be drawn.
• New teams Ecuador and Sweden were instantly treated with intercontinental meetings.
  • Ecuador ended in a group with 4 European teams.
  • Sweden will be meeting 2 Asian and a South American team. Not only will they meet the reigning Asian & World Team Champions, with Argentina they will also encounter the Copa America winners.
• Brazil and Colombia are back in the same group. They have met on every WTCOC since 2021.

Stats

Here are some interesting stats from just before the start of the tournament. Both the maximum and the average ELO values are from 2026.

• You could say that groups G and H might be the toughest groups, ELO-wise.
• Licinio Ferreira can’t say he didn’t come prepared.

Team Fun Stuff

Did you know that…

• Australian debutant STE MUZZ 1 learned how to play Carcassonne from playing it on Xbox?
• Some players are trying to help with the creation of new teams. Mingo has been supporting with scrapping a zillion players from BGA by nationality, JinaJina has been involved with the birth of the Swedish, Finnish, Australian and several other teams. And Guatemalan player Leykos is currently in the process of training Hondurian players and trying to build a team around them as well.
• Guatassonne, the Guatemalan Carcassonne community, is also teaching the game to schools and trying to create a curriculum for it.
• The Ukrainian team has played 15 friendlies warming up towards this year’s tournament. Other notably “friendly” teams include Colombia (12 friendlies), Spain (8) and Belgium (7) .
• Ukraine also started their own tradition. Their final friendly before the tournament is played against Ukrainian players who didn’t make the main team ‘the Juniors team’. A for the second year in a row ‘The A-Team’ got squashed by ‘the Juniors’.
• Latvian player Alexey_LV is so popular amongst the Guatemalan community that when a player makes a splendid move, they call it an “Alexey’s move” (“Jugada Alexey” in Spanish).
• Peruvian player Eymicienta04 currently lives in The Netherlands.
• Helge_H, captain of the newly formed Swedish team, found his 8th player on the last day.

Mr. Curiossonne needs your help

Although Mr. Curiossonne is able to find out a lot of stuff by himself, he still is in need of your help. So… if you have an interesting rarity that happened during one of your duels, or there are some fun facts to be told about you or your team, or any other stuff that you think is worth mentioning …or from which you think is not… Please let us know.

Thank you for reading, sharing & caring,
szigfrid, JinaJina, Mingo, kaika87, posij118  😘