Tournaments Overview

The Nuclear Throne community has hosted a number of tournaments over the years. These are commonly streamed over Twitch with prizes including some variation of a cash prize and a colored role within the Discord.

All tournaments are announced and communicated through the Nuclear Throne Discord.

This list is not comprehensive. Recordkeeping starts from 2022 when the community had a large activity boost, however there were many tournaments in years prior (mainly speedruns).

List of Tournaments:

Nuclear Throne World Cup (Winter 2022)

The NTWC was hosted by Hello with contributions from programmers and artists within the community. It was announced on January 5th, 2022 and began on January 10th, running through February 10th. Unlike other tournaments this one was hosted over the course of the month based on scoring from daily and weekly challenges without a centralized stream, allowing for wider community participation throughout the competition rather than an elimination tournament.

Each group would create their own team name and icon and could have up to three players, with joining midway into the tournament being allowed. There were over 50 teams that participated with 36 of these teams having a full 3 members. The goal was to get the best cumulative score across 31 dailies and 4 weeklies between all team members. Scores would be collected from thronebutt.com once a daily/weekly has ended.

Many played on the stable (u99) version or 2021 openbeta while using the community scouting sheet for mutation seed sharing. If a daily was particularly bad some players would go so far as to play on an outdated version, u98, for a different mutation seed while risking possible crashes.

Along with teams competing to have the best total score, all teams would have an overall total that when crossing certain thresholds, would unlock a new custom skin in NTT. 11 of these 12 kill goals were reached and can still be downloaded from Itch. Rogue's kill goal was not reached and her skin remains unreleased. Full character credits can be found in the 'readme' file.

The full data from each day can be viewed here. There is also a stats breakdown with many of the highest scoring teams, compiled by Lee-Mon.

Crown Clash (Summer 2023)

Crown Clash was hosted by ryguy65. It was announced on July 26th, 2023 and began on August 7th, running through the 15th. This was hosted on Twitch where both streams could be viewed at the same time while commentated over by various community members.

This was a single elimination bracket where each player would run the same seed on NTT v100 with the goal of getting as far as possible. Falling too far behind the other run in terms of distance would result in disqualification to prevent slow runs. Each match was the best of three, and used the grillskills mod to let people pick any mutation they wanted.

Two matches were held daily throughout the week until the final match took place. The initial set of rounds saw higher character variety, while later rounds had more preference towards Crystal who's considered the best in late game. Before a round started sometimes players would agree to both run a more challenging character for more varied matches.

The entire tournament details can be viewed here and every stream was posted on a YouTube playlist.

Nuclear Throne Summer Games (Summer 2024)

NTSG was hosted by Senjey. It was first announced on June 4th, 2024 and began on July 6th running through September 30th. Similar to Crown Clash this event was hosted on Twitch where both streams could be viewed at the same time while commentated over by various community members.

This competition was unique in that players could sign up for any of three different categories, and those with the best cumulative score would progress to the finale. This section will serve as a summary of the official ruleset, with some added context. Streams of the competition can be viewed through Twitch with any titled NTSG, though some footage may be missing. All runs were done on NTT v100.

The first competition was Speedrunning. Both players would run on the same seed and used a special tournament mod which would revive the player if they die at all to prevent a complete loss, although it did give a time penalty. Each round players had to choose a character that they did not previously pick that match.
Winner was decided with a best of 7. The results for the speedrun round can be viewed here.

The second competition was NoMelee. Both players would run on the same seed and used a special nomelee mod that removes long arms from the mutation pool and any melee weapons from the drop pool. The mod would also let them see every mutation set in advance in order to let them plan out an optimal route right before the match began.
At the start of the match both players could pick a character to ban for the duration of the entire match. Most of the character bans included Crystal, Horror, Y.V. and Eyes due to each having high survivability or more favorable mutation rng.
The first two sets of bracket rounds were a best of 3, while the third round onward was a best of 5. The results for NoMelee can be viewed here. Those who lost their matches would be moved to the losers bracket to be given a second chance, as the winner from the losers bracket would go up against the winner in the finale.

The third and final normal competition was Rapid. Both players would run on the same seed and used a special rapid mod that significantly speeds up the game by skipping multiple loops and less challenging non-boss levels to reach more difficult loops (L12+) much faster, among many other optimizations. Runs would also use the popular grillskills mod that completely removes mutation rng, as each player would have a fully optimal build of their choosing.
Similarly to NoMelee at the start of the match both players could pick a character to ban, though in the case of Rapid tournament Crystal was automatically banned for everyone likely due to her highest tier status.
The first three sets of bracket rounds were a best of 3, while the fourth round onward was a best of 5. The results for Rapid can be viewed here. Similar to NoMelee there was also a losers bracket, with the winner from the main and losers bracket would face in the finale.

Following the completion of the normal rounds, the top 8 scoring players with cumulative placement scores from all three competitions were given priority to participate in GrandMasters finale if they chose to. Players could state their preferences to play either Rapid, NoMelee or Speedrunning and would be given matchups in the finale based on that.
Each match was a best of 5, aside from one Speedrunning match played being a best of 7. The results for GrandMasters can be viewed here. Of the 7 matches one was Speedrunning, two were NoMelee, and four were done with Rapid.

Nuclear Throne Christmas Challenge (Winter 2024)

NTCC was hosted by Senjey. It was announced on November 22nd, 2024 and began on December 1st running through the 30th. This event was not streamed but rather players would submit proof of their successful runs via a Google form.

The competition consisted of challenges being posted daily by the Challenge Griller bot who picked from a pool of user-submitted challenges prior to the events announcement. New challenges were posted through Dec. 25th as daily challenges could be completed through the course of the event, while weekly challenges were on a time limit awarding points to the top placement.

A full link of the challenges and leaderboard can be viewed here. Most of these challenges included specific mutation or character builds that were particularly difficult such as Melting Revolver only on Hardmode, or defeating Throne 2 on Loop 50 using the debug mod. Notable outlier challenges included playing the original Wasteland Kings or runs using the Platformer / 3D mods.

Nuclear Throne Summer Games: Plasma Ball Run (Summer 2025)

Plasma Ball Run was hosted by Senjey. It was first announced on June 5th, 2025 and began on June 28th running through July 19th. This was hosted on Twitch where both streams could be viewed at the same time while being commentated over.

During the competition each player would face off in a duel with similar rulesets to the previous NTSG competition, which consisted of either a Speedrun, NoMelee or Rapid format. The full rules of the competition can be found here.

Uniquely this competition also had a game board where players would roll a die and move spaces, with colored spaces offering different modifiers. Winning matchups would give more advantageous rolls to progress through the board faster, with opportunity of extra rolls by placing high on daily/weekly leaderboards. Secret areas could be used to get through the board faster, but were also risky to land on and missed Vault spaces. (Pizza Sewers also had an upside at the cost of visiting an extra space.)

The goal of the game was to reach the Throne and then win another match in order to Thronesit. At the end a decision was made to instead take the top 8 players on Palace spaces to have a final bracket elimination style.

The results for the game board phase can be found here, with the final result brackets found here.

Nuclear Throne House Clash (Fall 2025)

House Clash was hosted by Senjey. It was first announced on September 28th, 2025 and began on October 27th running through November 22nd. This event was not streamed but rather players would have their results pulled from leaderboards or submitted via a Google form.

During the competition each house (team) will select which player will play Dailies, Modded Weeklies or Duels for that week, lasting 3 weeks. The rules can be viewed here, as a summary:

The results for each week and final results can be found here.

Nuclear Throne Wasteland Derby (Winter 2026)

Wasteland Deby was hosted by Senjey. It was first announced on January 21st, 2026 and began on February 21st running through March 1st. This was a speedrun tournament with double elimination, and similar to past tournaments the host would stream both runs through Twitch while commentating.

During the competition players would face off in speedruns while using the ntversus mod to give the same seed. They

During the competition players would face off in double elimiation while using the ntversus mod with a set of speedruns a best of 5 during the early rounds and best of 7 during the later rounds.

Best of 5 would include two Throne speedruns, two Captain speedruns and an all bosses speedrun.
Best of 7 would include three Throne speedruns, two Captain speedruns, and two all bosses speedruns.

The exact rules for the tournament can be viewed here. Unlike previous tournaments the brackets have their own dedicated website, including character and player statistics.

Mini Tournaments (Spring 2026 Onwards)

Following the end of Wasteland Derby, the tournaments channel in the Discord was kept permanently open with monthly tournaments on a smaller scale, taking place entirely over the course of a few hours. The rules document can be found here, with a compilation of all results found here. All mini tournaments thus far has been hosted by ryguy65.