Tournament Invitation – UNT 2026

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Tournament Invitation – UNT 2026

Dear Colleagues,

The University of North Texas William DeMougeot Debate Forum and the Department of Communication Studies at UNT are pleased to invite you to attend the 18th Annual John S. Gossett Memorial High School Speech & Debate Tournament October 2-3, 2026. This year's tournament will be IN PERSON and hosted on the UNT Denton Campus.

Congress will have Prelims and Finals on Friday. Congressional Debate will run on a schedule that allows Congressional Debate entries to enter all Individual Events. The Congressional Debate legislation can be found at https://texasforensicassociation.com/congress/ and we will be using the Fall 2026 Legislative Docket. The legislative docket will be announced a month prior to the tournament

We are excited to offer a World School Debate division. World School Debate motions can be found at https://texasforensicassociation.com/world-schools/

Policy Debate, Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas will have 4 preliminary rounds and break to the appropriate amount of elimination rounds according to the division size. Policy, Public Forum and Lincoln-Douglas debate may not enter IE events.

The CX topic will be the high school 2026-2027 Policy topic.

The Novice CX division will follow the Region 2 Novice packet rules. Please see below for more details.

The LD topic for all divisions will be the NSDA topic for September/October - space colonization.

The PFD topic will be the NSDA topic for September/October.

Brackets will not be broken in any debate event. We are planning to have panels in elimination rounds, if possible. For IE, Duo, and Duet, we will have 8 in finals for the events that meet the TFA standard for 8 in a final round.

We will be offering DI, Duo, Prose, OO, USX, POI, HI, Duet, Poetry, Informative, IX, and NX. All Individual Events will be held on Saturday, October 3rd.

Pattern A: DI, Duo, Prose, OO, POI

Pattern B: HI, Duet, Poetry, Informative, IX, USX, NX

Judging:

While we work very hard to provide high quality judges:

-schools are expected to provide qualified judges for their entry. Schools may not completely “buy out” of their judging obliga ons.

-Each school is required to provide at least 1 QUALIFIED judge per event they are entering unless they meet the above requirement.

-Schools are responsible for providing judges to cover their entries.1 judge for every 10 Individual Event entries (or por on thereof), every 2 VCX/NCX teams (or por on thereof), and every 4 VLD/NLD or PF entries (or por on thereof) will be required.We would prefer to have your judges more than your fees!

Judging Fees:

Debate Judges

(CX/LD/PF/Worlds)

$40/round short

Congress

$125 flat fee under 2 entries

IE/Duo/Duet

$125

***Minimum number of rounds per debate judge per debate entry is 2 rounds for prelims (1 CX/LD/PF/WSD team = 2 prelim rounds, 2 CX/LD/PF/WSD team = 4 rounds. Every judge in the pool is obligated 1 round past your school's elimination in that event.

***Judge fees will be assessed at the entry deadline. All judge changes after this point should be emailed directly to Brian Lain. We cannot credit your bill for judges' names received after the initial drop deadline.

Should you have any questions regarding tournament logistics, please contact, Dr. Brian Lain and/or Niko Sims. They can be reached by email – brian.lain@unt.edu and nicholas.sims@unt.edu

Thank you for joining us, and please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your experience more enjoyable.

Best Regards,

Dr. Brian Lain, Director of Debate

Niko Sims, Student and Program Coordinator