The Tianyuan competition is sponsored by the Zhongguo Qiyuan, New People's Evening News, and New People's Weiqi Monthly Magazine. It consists of a preliminary tournament in which 32 players compete against one another to determine the challenger to the previous year's winner. The preliminary is a single-elimination format, and the title match is decided in a best-of-three. As of 2023, the winner receives 400,000 RMB in prize money and the runner-up receives 200,000.
