In BP debate, the WUDC manual is the law of the land. Each year, it is revised by the WUDC Adjudication Core. In a nutshell, here are the major changes in this year’s manual. This manual really gets into a lot of technical issues within debate, but there are big-picture changes as well.
This article is written by Ferrari Zhang for the Debating404 project.
Things that stand out a lot to me
POI? Point? Point of Information? Hello?
Prior to this year’s manual, speakers can dismiss every POI offered and still deliver an 85 speech, because POIs were only recommended to be taken, not mandated. No more! In this manual, debaters must take a POI, and will be punished for failing to take POIs in the form of docking speaker points and flipping close calls. Giving and taking POIs are now also a part of role fulfillment for all speakers, on par with iron-clad norms such as the PM’s need to provide a model and the MG/MO’s need to provide an extension. This obviously comes with logical exceptions (e.g if no one gives a POI there is no need to take one), but the wording is noticeably much stronger than before.
I expect this change to be influential across the global debate circuit, just like how the WUDC minute disappeared quickly after it was abolished. I also expect this change to be reflected in other formats, such as Asian Parliamentary and World Schools. Take a POI, or else?
A Farewell to ChatGPT
This amendment to section 1.4 changed only a couple of words, but is very important. Prior to this year’s manual, generative AI, such as ChatGPT, was not mentioned. Every debater knew that this would change soon, and it did. Generative AI now cannot be used for any purpose during prep time.
WUDC CAP: closed rounds are meant to give you heart attacks
Leaking the speaker scores or the call of a closed round by the judge to someone outside of the Adjudication Core is now officially banned by the manual, and judges will “receive severe punishment” for doing so. Debaters will have to endure nights in silent suffering over the closed round results.
Things that stand out to me, but less
Whips Get Another Buff
Whips have been continuously given more leeway in each WUDC manual. For example, they were allowed to re-mechanize their members’ cases starting from the early 2020s. It is common knowledge in the debate circuit that whips are not allowed to give new arguments, and up until the 2025 manual, the WUDC manual reflects that as well: “If a team does make a new argument in the Whip speech, judges should simply ignore it, and not afford it any credit” (Section 2.12 of the 2025 manual). In this year’s manual, this passage was deleted and not rephrased. Instead, non-responsive material is only discredited if it “significantly changes the direction of the case from MG/MO in a manner that other teams reasonably could not have predicted” (same section in this year’s manual). This gives a Whip a lot of leeway, as long as they prove that the new material they give roughly fits in the direction of their partner’s case. This won’t be the end of the world for opening teams, but this will definitely make closing teams’ lives easier if they need to execute a Whipextension.
Oh No My Judge
If a call is not unanimous, previous manuals didn’t give very specific information on what to do, just that if there are disputed calls by the end of OA, the chair should call a vote. Now, this manual requires the chair to call a vote on every disputed split, and forbids a win on “transitivity” for split calls. That is, if the majority of the panel agrees that OG>OO and OO>CG, it does not mean that OG>CG. If somehow, the judges come to a cyclical call (OG>OO, OO>CG, CG>OG), there is now an official method to tie-break, called the ranked pairs method. Essentially, the splits are ordered from the largest margin to smallest margins. Judges go down the list until a full ranking is formed, and ignore the margins that haven’t been counted yet. If properly implemented, this will cause some drama in top-room panels soon. Can’t wait to see it!
Actor and Policy Debates Get Revamped
There is now a highly detailed guideline on how an actor debate should be judged. Nothing pops up to me as new, since many good judges I’ve had the privilege of being judged by already do everything outlined. But, if you want to learn how to judge an actor motion, section 2.8 of the 2026 WUDC manual is probably the most helpful piece of information out there on the Internet.
Counter-props are now also clarified. Extra detail has been added to clarify what types of fiat can be assumed in a counter-prop, and a counter-prop that is not within the broad policy area of the motion has been officially deemed non-permissible. For example, in a sports motion, debaters are no longer allowed to use the sports budget for military spending, and vice versa. If you read the counter-prop section, you might think that most judges already implicitly follow those guidelines. They do. That’s why this section is at the bottom of this article.
Thank you all for reading this article! I hope to do this every year for the next couple of years.
Link to the manual: WUDC Manual
