Within the championship there are two types of competition:

INDIVIDUAL COMPETITION

GENERAL

Each participating country can be represented by at most four competitors. All competitors take part in the rounds which make up the individual competition of the world championship. The competitor with the best total score at the end of the individual competition is declared World Sudoku Champion.

CLASSIC TROPHY

Within the individual competition, two rounds will be dedicated entirely to classic sudoku. Top scorers from these rounds will take part in a classic final in which the winner takes away the Classic Trophy.

SUDOKU TYPES

Puzzle-solving skills of competitors will be tested with various types of sudoku. Two rounds of the individual competition will be dedicated to classic sudoku. Other rounds will feature common and less familiar sudoku variants. All non-classic rounds will also contain a number of classic sudokus. To encourage participants to solve the sudoku variants the ratio of available points / expected solving time for these standard classic sudokus is set to about only half of the other variant puzzles in the same round. For eg if a variant sudoku with expected solving time 5 minutes is worth 50 points then a classic sudoku with same solving time would be worth around 25 points.

TEAM COMPETITION

Before the start of the championship, each country will nominate three of its competitors for the team competition. Team scores will consist of points scored by the three nominated team competitors in the individual rounds + points from two special team rounds.

To allow competitors from countries without a complete team to experience what a team round is about, unofficial international teams will be formed with competitors from such countries. To facilitate the formation of such teams, a number of competitors from the host country have been invited to compete as guests. Guest competitors and international teams will not be listed in the official results.