Circa Survivor 2026: Everything You Need to Know

The Circa Survivor contest is back for a seventh year and bigger than ever. Explore how to gain an edge in the biggest legal survivor pool.

by Jason Lisk - May 29, 2026

Circa Survivor is back for Year 7, and the stakes have never been higher. Circa Sports has officially opened registration for the 2026 Circa Survivor Pro Football Contest, setting a new guaranteed prize pool record of $20 million — the largest in the history of NFL survivor contests.

For context: last year’s guarantee was $15 million. The actual prize pool reached $18.718 million, because entries exceeded the guarantee. With that kind of momentum, the $20 million floor for 2026 may well be a floor in name only.

Circa Survivor Prize Pool History: Seven Years of Growth

What began with just over 1,000 entries in 2020 has turned into a national phenomenon that has exploded in popularity. Here’s how the numbers have tracked:

Year	Guarantee	Final Prize Pool	Entries	Winners
2020	$1M	$2.39M	1,390	35
2021	$6M	$7.00M	4,080	5
2022	$6M	$6.133M	6,133	2
2023	$8M	$9.267M	9,267	4
2024	$10M	$14.266M	14,266	8
2025	$15M	$18.718M	18,718	5
2026	$20M	TBD	TBD	TBD

The growth is striking. Entries have grown more than 13x since the contest launched in 2020, and the prize pool has grown even faster. In 2025, just five entries survived all 20 weeks to split $18.718 million — an average payout of roughly $3.7 million per winner.

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How Circa Survivor 2026 Works

If you’re new to the contest, here’s what you need to know:

• Entry fee: $1,000 per entry, up to 10 entries per person.
• No rake: Every dollar in entry fees goes directly to the prize pool.
• The picks: Each week, pick one NFL team to win outright. No spreads.
• No repeats: Like the typical survivor format, once you use a team, you cannot pick them again.
• Elimination: One loss or tie and your entry is out.
• Winners: The last remaining entries split the prize pool.
• Pick deadlines: vary during holiday weeks, but for a typical week, picks are due by 4 p.m. PT on Saturdays or before kickoff of the selected game, whichever comes first.
• Outside of Nevada? Out-of-state players must register in person at Circa in Las Vegas, but can submit weekly picks remotely through a proxy service.

The contest runs for 20 pick-weeks, not 18. Two special holiday slates add extra complexity:

• Thanksgiving/Black Friday Week: You must make a pick from the early holiday games and a separate pick from the Sunday/Monday games that same week.
• Christmas Week: Same structure — one pick from the Christmas Eve/Day games, one from the remaining week’s games.

This 20-pick structure — and the unique constraints of the holiday weeks — separates Circa Survivor from many other survivor pools in the country. It requires a different kind of planning.

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Why Strategy Matters More in Circa

With entry fees at $1,000 and tens of thousands of sharp players competing, luck alone won’t get you to the end. The field is significantly sharper than a typical office pool. When obvious favorites get concentrated pick percentages, a single upset doesn’t just eliminate a few unlucky entries — it can wipe out a quarter of the field in a single Sunday.

The players who have survived to the end have done it by planning pick sequences well in advance, managing team usage across multiple entries, and finding spots where the field’s behavior creates exploitable value.

That’s where having the right tools matters.

Circa Survivor Picks: Tools Built for This Contest

Circa Survivor Picks is a PoolGenius product built specifically for Circa’s 20-week structure — not adapted from a generic survivor tool.

A few things it does that matter most for serious players:

• Data Grid: Projected win odds, pick popularity, expected value, and future value scores for every team and week — including our own projections on future weeks, not just market lines (since these are often unavailable during the season, in distant future weeks).
• Entry Tracking: Import and track any entry by name. With 18,000+ entries on a contest page to look through each week, being able to visualize your picks quickly saves time and energy.
• Season Planner & Optimal Paths: Explore pick sequences manually or let the algorithm find your optimal remaining pick path — optimized for survival odds or EV — with the ability to lock in picks and run scenarios. The tool also syncs with tracked entries, allowing you to quickly import picks and run scenario analysis.
• Multi-Entry Survival: Test different pick combinations across your entries and see the expected survival distribution for your whole portfolio.
• EV Calculator: Includes holiday week scenarios, which have their own pick constraints that standard survivor tools don’t model.

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Start With the Free Circa Strategy Guide

Not sure where to start? We’ve put together a free downloadable strategy guide covering the core concepts of Circa Survivor strategy, lessons from past winning entries, approaches to the holiday weeks, and portfolio management for multi-entry players. The 2026 strategy guide will be released later this summer, but the 2025 version still includes key strategy concepts you can study now.

It’s the fastest way to get up to speed on what it takes to compete seriously in one of the most difficult football contests in the world.

Circa 2026 Registration Is Open Now

Circa Survivor 2026 registration is open at Circa Sports in Las Vegas.

With a $20 million guarantee, no rake, and a 20-week gauntlet that will test your patience and your planning, there’s nothing else like it in football.

If you’re going to play, play smart.

👉 Explore Circa Survivor Picks tools
👉 Download the free Strategy Guide