AFLW finals tipping: a four-week competition where everyone starts level

Guide

Nine games. That is the whole of the AFLW finals series: four in the first week, two in the second, two in the third, and a Grand Final under lights on Friday 27 November. Nine picks, four weekends, and then the season is done.

For a tipping competition, that shape is a gift. A group that never got round to starting a season-long AFLW competition in August can start one now, from the first week of finals, and everyone starts level. A group whose season competition was decided weeks ago can start a second one where the leader and the person who forgot to tip in round 4 begin on the same zero. And a group of mates who have been short of something to argue about since the men’s Grand Final in September has a month of it, right up to the end of November.

If you have never tipped before, the game is simple. Everyone picks who they think will win each game. The app keeps score. Whoever gets the most right, wins. A tipping competition is that, played with people you know, with a ladder that updates itself after every result.

How the AFLW finals work, week by week

The AFLW has played an eight-team finals series since 2022, using the same final eight system as the men’s competition. The 2026 home-and-away season ran for 12 rounds from 9 August, and the AFL set the first week of finals for the week starting Monday 2 November. Four weeks of finals follow, finishing with the Grand Final on Friday 27 November, the first AFLW decider ever played on a Friday night.

Here is how the eight teams get down to two.

Week one: qualifying and elimination finals. The top four play each other in two qualifying finals: first against fourth, second against third. The teams that finished fifth to eighth play two elimination finals: fifth against eighth, sixth against seventh. The difference between the two kinds of final is what happens to the loser. Lose a qualifying final and your season goes on. Lose an elimination final and it is over. That safety net for the top four is what people mean by the “double chance”, and it is why the race for fourth spot gets so much attention in the last few rounds.

Week two: semi-finals. The two qualifying final winners get the week off. The two qualifying final losers each host a semi-final against one of the elimination final winners. Lose a semi-final and you are out.

Week three: preliminary finals. The qualifying final winners come back, each hosting a preliminary final against a semi-final winner. That is the reward for winning in week one: a weekend’s rest, then a home game for a place in the Grand Final. Last year North Melbourne beat Hawthorn by 39 points in a qualifying final, held them goalless, and went straight through to a home preliminary final at Ikon Park.

Week four: the Grand Final. The two preliminary final winners meet on Friday 27 November. The venue is decided by the finals themselves: hosting rights go to the higher-ranked of the two preliminary final winners, which could put the decider at Ikon Park, in Geelong, in Adelaide, in Perth, in Brisbane or at Henson Park in Sydney, depending on who gets there.

For tipping, the important part is that each week’s games are made by the week before. You can tip the qualifying and elimination finals once the ladder is final, but the semi-finals do not exist until the first week is played, and the preliminary finals wait on the semis. So a finals competition is tipped one week at a time, in four short bursts, each with its own Monday conversation about who got it right.

Where the 2026 season stood going into the last round

North Melbourne arrived at the 2026 season as the first team to win back-to-back AFLW premierships, having gone through 2025 unbeaten and beaten Brisbane in the Grand Final. Going into round 12, they were on top of the ladder again, level with Geelong on 40 points but with a far bigger percentage (239.7 against 168.8). AFL.com.au’s read was that North had “all but sewn up” the minor premiership. Geelong had won ten in a row, the tenth a 30-point win over Fremantle in the wet at GMHBA Stadium.

Behind them, the ladder after round 11 looked like this: Melbourne third on 36 points, then a four-way logjam on 32 points with Gold Coast, Carlton, the Western Bulldogs and Sydney separated only by percentage. Hawthorn sat eighth on 24, with Adelaide, Fremantle and Port Adelaide on 20 behind them.

That left the last round with three open questions:

The top four. Second through seventh could all still move. With four teams level on 32, the last spot in the top four, and the double chance that comes with it, was going to be decided on percentage and results on the final weekend. Geelong hosted the Western Bulldogs on the Friday night, 30 October.
Eighth. Hawthorn’s place was in its own hands. AFL.com.au’s summary was blunt: a win over West Coast in Perth on Saturday 31 October would lock away eighth, and a loss would open the door for Adelaide, Fremantle or Port Adelaide.
The last game. The round closed with Fremantle against Sydney in Perth on the Sunday afternoon, 1 November: Sydney in the 32-point logjam, Fremantle still in the race for eighth.

By the time you read this, round 12 has been played and those questions have answers. The final ladder decides the four first-week matchups, and you can see each round’s scores in our AFLW round results before you set your competition up. What is already clear is the size of the field: eight teams, nine games, and a two-time defending premier that every other finalist has to get past.

Why a finals-only tipping competition works

A season-long AFLW competition is 12 rounds of nine games, which is more than a hundred picks before finals even start. That is a lot of chances to drift. Somebody misses a round in August, falls a dozen points behind, and quietly stops opening the app. By October the ladder is a list of names and only the top three are really playing.

A finals competition fixes that by being short and by starting everyone on zero. Here is what changes.

Fewer games, so every pick carries more weight. In week one you have four games to tip. In weeks two and three you have two each. In the last week you have one. One wrong call in a two-game week is half of that week’s picks gone. The person who has the Grand Final right can finish ahead of someone who led for three weeks, and everyone in the group knows it from the start.

Everyone starts level. The colleague who joined the office on 1 October, the cousin who only follows the AFLW in finals, the mate who swore off tipping after a bad men’s season: all of them begin on the same zero as the person who has watched every round since August. That changes who says yes when the invite lands.

Each week is its own small event. Because the finals are built one week at a time, the competition has four natural moments: the ladder is set, the first week’s tips go in, the results come through, the next week’s games appear. The group chat has something to look at every Monday for a month.

The rules stay the same as any other competition. Picks lock five minutes before each game, for everyone at the same moment, so the person who tips on the drive home and the person who tips the Wednesday before are on the same deadline for each game. A correct pick is 2 points, a miss is 0, and the ladder updates itself after each result. There are no odds and no betting in the app; just your group, the nine games and the ladder.

One honest note on difficulty: a smaller field can make finals harder to tip, not easier. The top four play each other in week one, so the qualifying finals are often the hardest games of the year to call. Elimination finals put teams that finished close on the ladder head to head. A short competition is a good leveller precisely because the games are close.

Who a four-week AFLW competition is for

The finals-only format suits a few kinds of group in particular.

The family that tips together once a year. The family group chat that runs a men’s competition from March to September often has an AFLW fan in it: the niece who plays, the aunt who has a membership, the dad who started watching when his daughter did. A finals competition is four weekends long, which is short enough that the uncle in Brisbane and the cousin in Perth will stay with it to the end, and it lands just before the summer holidays fill up the calendar.

The office that missed the start. Plenty of workplaces talk about an AFLW competition in August and then never set one up. By the time anyone remembers, it is round 6 and starting feels pointless because nobody can catch the ladder. A finals competition removes that problem entirely. It is also a tidy size for a work group: four weeks, nine picks, finished well before the end-of-year break.

Mates with a gap until next year. The men’s AFL Grand Final was played in September. For a lot of groups, the footy chat has been quiet since, and the next season-long competition is months away. Four weeks of AFLW finals gives the same people something to tip, something to watch on a Friday night and something to argue about on a Monday, before the summer leagues take over.

The season competition that was decided weeks ago. Some AFLW competitions are already over in all but name. One person is 14 points clear, the middle of the ladder has given up and two members have not tipped since September. Rather than let that season fade out, the organiser can start a separate finals competition for the same group, where the runaway leader and the person in last place begin on equal terms. The season competition keeps its ladder; the finals one gives everyone a reason to come back.

People new to the AFLW. Finals are the easiest point to start following a league. Every game is a knockout or close to it, the stories are already written (North Melbourne chasing a third straight flag, Geelong’s run of wins, the four teams on 32 points), and the Grand Final is on a Friday night. Nine games is a gentle first competition for anyone who has never tipped AFLW.

Setting up a finals-only AFLW tipping competition

In TippingMates, an organiser can start a competition from any round of a season, not only round one. For the AFLW, a finals-only competition is simply the 2026 season started from the first week of finals: the competition runs from the qualifying and elimination finals through to the Grand Final, and every member begins on zero. You can see the season, its finals rounds and the fixture on the AFLW 2026 tournament page.

Here is the setup in practice.

Download the app and pick the AFLW 2026 season. The app is free on iOS and Android. Choose AFLW from the list of competitions you can start today.
Start it from the first week of finals. Set the competition to begin at the first finals round so that the home-and-away games are left out and nobody carries points in.
Invite the group. Competitions are invite-only. You can send email invites to specific people, or share a short code or QR code; anyone who joins with the code waits for you to approve them. That is useful for a work competition where the invite might get forwarded further than intended.
Tip week one before the first final. Picks lock five minutes before each game, so members can tip all four week-one games at once, or one at a time across the weekend.
Let the ladder do the rest. After each result, the ladder updates. When the semi-finals are set, the group tips those, then the preliminary finals, then the Grand Final.

If your group already has a season competition, you have a choice. You can keep it running to the end, where the finals games count on top of the home-and-away results. You can start a separate finals competition alongside it for the same members. Or, if you want the season ladder to count in some way, the app lets an organiser import earlier rounds into a competition, so you can carry the season in rather than start level.

A note on timing. Start the competition early in the first finals week and your members have a few days to join and tip before the first game. If someone joins late, they can still tip every game that has not yet locked; the only games they miss are the ones already played.

A finals competition is short enough that the whole thing fits inside one group chat thread. By 27 November it is finished, the ladder is final, and somebody in your group has the bragging rights until next season. The ladder was only ever the excuse: for four weekends in November, the same people watched the same games and had something to say to each other about them on Monday.

Nine picks. Four weekends. Everyone starts on zero.