Vytal Festival

“

The Vytal Festival was created to serve as a celebration of peace between the Kingdoms. Every two years, a Kingdom would be chosen to open its doors to the world, allowing citizens from every corner of Remnant to meet and indulge in one another's cultures.

”

—Ozpin

Overview Image Gallery

A poster for the Vytal Festival, featuring an emblem formed from of all the four kingdoms' symbols

The Vytal Festival was an international festival held every two years in one of the kingdoms of Remnant in celebration of the end of the Great War. During the festival, the various cultures of the world were celebrated with dances, parades and a combat tournament. The kingdom to host the festival would rotate every two years and that kingdom opened its borders to international visitors. Such rotation ordered itself from Atlas, then to Vacuo, then to Mistral, then to Vale.

Team RWBY participated in the 40th Vytal Festival, held in Vale. In "Where There's Smoke..." it is revealed that the previous Vytal Festival took place in the city of Mistral, and RWBY: After the Fall reveals the 38th Vytal Festival Tournament took place in Vacuo.

Following Amity Colosseum's transformation into the Amity Communications Tower and the destruction of Atlas, it is unlikely that the Vytal festival will continue.

Background

The Vytal Festival was inaugurated following the end of the Great War, a destructive conflict taking place eighty years before the events of the series. The war, fought between kingdoms over conflicts of self-expression and individuality, was brought to a conclusion by a peace treaty. Such a treaty was signed on Vytal, a small island north of Vale. In celebration, the Vytal Festival was created with the purpose of honoring the diversity of the cultures of Remnant. Atlas hosted the first Vytal Festival Tournament sometime after the Great War.

The Festival has a unique symbol, fittingly consisting of a combination of all four kingdom's emblems in order to signify unity. The Vytal Tournament has been going for ~80 years.

Tournament

"Vytal Festival Tournament" redirects here, for the World of Remnant episode of the same name, see Vytal Festival Tournament (WoR episode).

The festival culminates in a combat tournament between representatives of each of the four Kingdoms

A major part of the Vytal Festival is the combat tournament, in which students from the Huntsman Academies compete. Symbolically, the tournament battles represent a reminder to always strive for excellence in combat and teamwork.

The festival is of significant importance and prestige, as Glynda Goodwitch pushed students to practice months before it begins and the members of Team RWBY showed great excitement upon hearing of it in "Jaunedice", wherein Professor Goodwitch states that Beacon students competing in the tournament would be representing all of Vale.

Given that there are eight contestants in the final round, it can be assumed that a total of 32 teams, or 128 students, compete in the Vytal Festival tournament; 8 in the final, sixteen in the doubles and 32 in the team round.

Rules

Professor Port explains the rules of the tournament

The tournament consists of three rounds, the first being a 4 on 4 team round. The winners of the team bracket may select two members of their team to fight in the next round, a 2 on 2 doubles bracket, the victors of which may choose one representative to fight in the 1 on 1 bracket. The remaining combatants will undergo several more 1 on 1 fights to prove a victor. There are no specific brackets for age or schooling.

Contenders are knocked out of the battle by falling below an Aura threshold of 15% or by being knocked out of the fighting arena. Aura monitors are able to measure the aura of competitors as numerical values, made visible to spectators and competitors on large displays.

Arena

Main article: Amity Colosseum

Amity Colosseum, where the tournament is held

The setting for the combat tournament is Amity Colosseum, a large arena complex floating atop gravity dust with many rings of bleachers for spectators, who are flown in on airships. As the Vytal Festival grew in scope and size, the stadium was built collaboratively from the resources and contributions of the four kingdoms and is capable of long-distance travel to each of the kingdoms, typically heading to the specific kingdom hosting the tournament.

The arena with two different biomes, ice and fire

The tournament takes place in a large octagonal arena. The arena is capable of changing its environment into several different "biomes", including grasslands, forest, fire, ice, geyser fields, stormy mountains, desert, an ocean and beach with a wooden ship, and several others. The arena also has artificial weather effects such as thunderstorms and an artificial sun. Such environmental Dust controls were created by Arthur Watts. A smaller central octagon is flatt ground unaffected by arena changes. Around the arena is a forcefield protecting observers from bullets and debris.

During the team round, the arena is split down its middle into two biomes, each chosen randomly at the beginning of each fight. During the doubles round, four biomes are present. In some biomes, Dust crystals are scattered around the arena for combatants to use.

The singles rounds take place only in the central octagon, the outer quadrants being out-of-bounds. The finals also took place at night or evening, in contrast to the preceding rounds which took place during the day.

40th Vytal Festival

Preparations for the Vytal Festival

During Team RWBY's first year at Beacon, the 40th Vytal Festival is held in Vale. According to Weiss Schnee, the festival takes considerable planning and organization to set up. Preparations for the Vytal Festival were held as early as Team RWBY's first semester in Beacon.

Representatives of the four kingdoms converged upon Vale beginning in the second semester of Team RWBY's first year. In "Welcome to Beacon" the Atlesian contingent, including Penny Polendina and led by James Ironwood, arrived aboard three Airships. Haven Academy of the Mistral region, sent teams SSSN and ABRN. Under disguise, Cinder Fall, Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai and Neopolitan also claimed to be from Haven. Shade Academy in Vacuo contributed teams BRNZ and NDGO.

Visiting students from the other academies received accommodation on the Beacon campus and were involved in events such as the Beacon Dance and sent on a range of missions supervised by Beacon Academy professors.

As seen in "Extracurricular", during the second semester, sparring matches in preparation for the tournament were held. Participants in these matches included Pyrrha Nikos, Team CRDL and Mercury Black. The same episode also states that contestants must first qualify for the tournament before competing.

The fairgrounds on the Beacon campus

For the duration of the festival, a large fairground was set up on Beacon Academy's campus where visitors from all kingdoms can intermingle. Among the stalls at the fairground were a noodle stall and a boot vendor. One such stall was called Curry Up, frequented by Team CFVY.

The 40th Vytal Festival was marked by a stronger security presence than usual, with a sizable fleet of airships constantly overhead as well as Atlesian Knight-200s patrolling the grounds. This was due to the precautions of General Ironwood who was appointed to head of security by the Vale council following the events of "Breach", where Grimm were able to enter the city.

Unbeknownst to the populace, the matches of the 40th Vytal Festival were manipulated by Cinder Fall, who had managed to breach the Cross Continental Transmit System with a virus, giving her the ability to decide the matchups in the tournament.

The festival was marred by Yang's apparently unprovoked attack on Mercury in the first singles match of the tournament. This caused widespread controversy amongst audiences. Unknown to the public, these events were also manipulated by Cinder. Emerald, working under Cinder's direction, used her Semblance to create illusions that led Yang to attack Mercury, mistakenly believing it to be self-defense. The controversy and shock among the spectators attracted Grimm, which attempted to enter the City of Vale. Huntsmen and Atlas androids managed to hold them off but had to call for additional help.

The Festival was interrupted by a Grimm invasion

The following night Penny was destroyed by Pyrrha in a fatal accident, also orchestrated by Cinder. Cinder then took control of the broadcast and used it to transmit a message condemning the kingdoms' governments and the state of the world. The subsequent horror and panic amongst the audience attracted even more Grimm which overwhelmed the City of Vale's defenses. With the Grimm attack imminent, the Festival was canceled and Amity Colosseum was evacuated.

Following the Battle of Beacon, Amity Colosseum and Penny's body were transported back to Atlas. Because the CCTS went down during the Battle, Ironwood secretly began converting Amity Colosseum into Amity Communications Tower to restore the system online. Meanwhile, Penny was rebuilt and brought back to life thanks to her father Pietro Polendina.

Tournament Matches

The below listing only shows matches which are known to have occurred and does not reflect the entire tournament.

Round 1 (Team)

Teams
Winner		Loser	Biomes	Episode
RWBY	vs.	ABRN	Ice, Lava	"Round One"
Cinder's Team	vs.	Unidentified Team	Unknown	"Round One"
JNPR	vs.	BRNZ	Woods, Mountains	"New Challengers..."
SSSN	vs.	NDGO	Desert, Ocean	"New Challengers..."
CFVY	vs.	Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen
CRDL	vs.	Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen
FNKI	vs.	Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen
Penny's Team	vs.	Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen

Round 2 (Doubles)

Winner			Loser		Biomes	Episode
Cinder's Team Emerald Sustrai Mercury Black		vs.		CFVY Coco Adel Yatsuhashi Daichi	Forest, Savanna, Urban, Geyser	"Lessons Learned"
Penny's Team Penny Polendina Ciel Soleil		vs.		CRDL Russel Thrush Sky Lark	Mountains, Ocean, Cyber, Geyser	"Never Miss a Beat"
RWBY Yang Xiao Long Weiss Schnee		vs.		FNKI Flynt Coal Neon Katt	Geyser, Lava, Desert, Urban	"Never Miss a Beat"
SSSN Sun Wukong Neptune Vasilias		vs.		Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen
JNPR Nora Valkyrie Pyrrha Nikos		vs.		Unknown	Unknown	Off-Screen

Round 3 (Singles)

Winner			Loser		Episode
Yang Xiao Long		vs.		Mercury Black	"Fall"
Team RWBY disqualified due to misconduct
Pyrrha Nikos		vs.		Penny Polendina	"PvP"
40th Vytal Festival ended due to interference
Undetermined Matches / Outcome Unknown
Contestants					Episode
Sun Wukong		vs.
3 other unidentified finalists

Trivia

• While the World of Remnant episode "Vytal Festival Tournament" states that the festival is held biennially, screenshots from the show proper as well as the official poster indicate that it is held "annually". Series writers Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross have confirmed that the official poster was a misprint and the Festival is held biennially in canon.
• In an AfterBuzz interview, Miles and Kerry mentioned that Pyrrha and Nora were supposed to face Sun and Neptune in a doubles round match. Unfortunately, the fight had to be cut for time and lack of relevance to the plot. Neptune's fear of water would have played a role in the fight, and the biomes used would have been "anti-grav" (the Tron-like biome seen in the background of Penny's fight), swamp, ice, and desert. Obviously, Pyrrha and Nora would have won the fight so Pyrrha could progress to the singles round. Given that Sun appears as one of the finalists in "Fall", canonically, this match could not have actually taken place.
• One of the glass vitrines in Haven Academy contained a Vytal Festival Tournament trophy, a silver version of the Vytal Festival Emblem shown on the poster.
• It was a difficult process deciding who the announcers for the Vytal Festival would be with Lisa Lavender even considered at one point. However, Kerry Shawcross was the one that eventually decided on them being Bartholomew Oobleck and Peter Port.