Winter Holidays Open is an international World Schools tournament for high school students. This year’s tournament (December 13th to 15th 2019) will be the 7th of it’s kind in Zagreb, Croatia.
Winter Holidays Open started out as a small tournament organized by Croatian Debate Society with a goal of providing an international debate experience for debaters from the region. With 32 teams from Slovenia, Romania, Germany, Bosnia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Croatia, the first WHO took place in 2013.
After several years of hard work, participant feedback and help from our Chief Adjudicators Geetha Creffield, Bojana Skrt, Alfred Snider, Aisha Ahmad, Anna England Kerr and Marija Jarnjak, the tournament grew to an event welcoming around 90 teams in Zagreb each year, with debaters and adjudicators from 28 nations – Australia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, India, Jordan, Lebanon, Moldova, Mongolia, The Netherlands, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE and USA joining us so far.
In 2017 we introduced Novice Break, an opportunity for novice teams to experience the excitement of elimination rounds. All teams at the tournament can face each other during the 6 preliminary rounds, after which there’s separate breaks with best 16 non-novice teams advancing to Open Break and 4 best Novice teams advancing to Novice Break.
We hope you’ll join us in 2019 for a great event for both new and experienced debaters.
