How the Hunger Games Work: the Reaping, Tesserae and the Rules

Books or films? Everything here holds for both unless it says “in the books” or “in the films”. Nothing below spoils Sunrise on the Reaping.

How does the reaping work?

Every July 4, each district gathers in its main square and a Capitol escort draws one girl’s name and one boy’s name from two glass balls. Those two children become the district’s tributes for that year’s Hunger Games, unless someone volunteers to take their place.

The whole district has to be there; only the seriously ill or dying are excused, and skipping it can land you in prison. Kids aged 12 to 18 stand in roped-off pens, girls on one side and boys on the other, sorted by age with the eldest at the front. Cameras film the crowd as well as the stage.

On the stage sit the mayor, the escort and the district’s living victors. The mayor goes through Panem’s history, the rules of the Games and the list of the district’s past winners, then hands over to the escort, who draws the names. A volunteer must be the same sex as the reaped child and of reaping age. Afterwards each tribute gets one hour in a guarded room of the Justice Building to say goodbye, then a car takes them to the train.

How many times is your name in the reaping?

At 12 your name is in the ball once, and each year adds one more, so at 18 it’s in seven times. Every tessera you take adds another slip on top, and those slips build up year after year too.

Age	No tesserae	Feeding 3	Feeding 5
12	1	4	6
14	3	12	18
16	5	20 (Katniss)	30
18	7	28	42 (Gale)

“Feeding 3” and “Feeding 5” mean taking tesserae for that many people every year since turning 12. The two bold numbers are canon; the rest are worked out from the same rule. At 19 you’re out of the reaping for good.

Why is Gale’s name in the reaping 42 times?

Because he took a tessera for each of the five people in his family (himself, his mother and his three siblings) every year from 12 to 18. That’s seven ordinary entries plus 35 tesserae slips. Katniss, at 16, had 20 slips in all: five ordinary entries plus 15 tesserae, from claiming grain and oil for three people over five years. Her sister Prim was 12, had her name in just once, and was drawn anyway.

What is a tessera?

A tessera is a ration you can claim from the Capitol: a year’s supply of grain and oil for one person, picked up monthly, paid for with one extra entry in the reaping. Anyone aged 12 to 18 can sign up, and can claim one for every member of their family who needs feeding. The grain is dark and dense, and a family’s tesserae aren’t always enough to live on.

Poor kids pay with their odds. Tesserae are common in poorer districts such as 10, 11 and 12 and rare in rich ones like 1, 2 and 4. A Capitol-themed tie-in website puts the gap between District 1 and District 12 at more than 1 to 500; the novels give no such figure. Even inside District 12, the mayor’s daughter Madge and the baker’s son Peeta never needed one. The word comes from small cube-shaped tiles that once decorated wealthy Capitol homes, and the whole system was scrapped along with the Games.

What happens after the reaping? The countdown to the arena

The reaping starts a fixed one-week countdown: travel, a makeover, a parade, three days of training, interviews, and then the arena on July 11.

Date	What happens
July 4	Reaping, the goodbye hour, then a luxury train to the Capitol with your district partner, escort and mentor (a past victor). You watch the other districts’ reapings on the way. District 12 is the farthest out, so its ride is the longest
July 5	Arrival in the early hours. A prep team grooms you at the Remake Center; your stylist designs a costume based on your district’s industry. That evening, the chariot parade through the Capitol in district order
July 6–8	Training in an underground gym: stations for survival skills and weapons, but no fighting other tributes. On day three you get about 15 minutes alone with the Gamemakers, and a score from 1 to 12 is broadcast that night
July 9–10	Coaching from your mentor and escort, then a live interview of about three minutes, hosted for the last 35 years of the Games by Caesar Flickerman
July 11	A hovercraft to the arena and a tracker injected into your forearm. Final prep in the Launch Room, then a glass tube lifts you up beside the Cornucopia. At 9:00 am, the Games begin

In the books your stylist takes you to the hovercraft; in the films it’s your mentor.

What are the rules of the Hunger Games?

There’s really one rule that matters: the last tribute alive wins. The rest is procedure:

• Stay on your plate for 60 seconds. Step off before the countdown ends and buried mines kill you.
• One token from home, approved by a Capitol review board so it can’t be used as a weapon.
• No training before the Games. Officially banned, openly ignored for the Careers (below).
• Everyone in Panem must watch.
• A cannon sounds for every death, except during the opening bloodbath, when the Gamemakers wait until the fighting stops to count the dead. Each night the anthem plays and the faces of that day’s dead are shown in the sky (on screens carried by hovercraft in the books, projected onto the arena’s dome in the films).
• The arena is theirs. The Gamemakers control the climate, can unleash disasters from wildfire to flooding, release engineered animals called mutts, and call feasts at the Cornucopia when the action slows. They will sometimes pick off a tribute for no reason except to show everyone who is in charge.
• Sponsors can help. Capitol viewers donate money through your mentor, who sends food, medicine or the odd weapon in by silver parachute, and gifts get pricier the longer the Games run.

What happens at the Cornucopia?

The best supplies sit at the mouth of the Cornucopia and the worst lie furthest out, a setup built to pull tributes into a fight in the first minutes. On average eight to twelve tributes die in that opening bloodbath. In the 74th Games it was 11 of 24 in the book and 12 in the film. The books describe a giant golden horn; the films made it silver.

Who are the Careers?

Careers are tributes from the wealthy districts, 1, 2 and 4, who train for the Games from childhood in special academies and usually volunteer at 18, after as many years of training as the rules allow. In those districts being a tribute is seen as an honour, so reapings can drag on for hours as volunteers compete. In the first film, only Districts 1 and 2 are treated as Career districts.

Is their training legal? No. Training before the Games is against the rules, but the Capitol looks the other way: the Career districts are loyal, and trained killers make better TV.

Careers usually score between eight and ten in training and band together as the “Career pack”, typically two from each Career district, sometimes joined by strong tributes from elsewhere. They tend to seize the Cornucopia and hunt everyone else down. Their weak spots: they’re used to eating well, so they lean on the stockpile; they’re often too heavy to climb or chase smaller tributes; and they’re overconfident. Since only one can win, the pack turns on itself in the end.

Why did Peeta join the Careers?

Spoiler for The Hunger Games (2008 book, 2012 film). To protect Katniss. In the 74th Games the pack took him in for his strength and as a way to track her down. Katniss didn’t know it then, but he had joined them only to keep her alive. When he urged her to run after the tracker jacker attack, Cato saw it and cut him badly in the leg.

How long do the Hunger Games last?

There’s no set length: a Games runs until one tribute is left, which can take a few days or several weeks depending on the arena. The week before the arena is always the same, July 4 to 10.

Games	How long the arena lasted
1st to 9th	Very short, fought in the Capitol Arena, an old amphitheatre
10th	A few days, which was long by the standards of the time
74th	18 days in the book, just over 9 in the film
75th	About three days; it ended early with no victor

What does the winner get?

A mansion in their district’s Victors’ Village, an income for life, and a year of extra food deliveries for their whole district. The catch: victors must mentor their district’s future tributes, tour every district months later, live under Capitol watch, and know their families can be used against them.

Why do the Hunger Games exist?

They’re the Capitol’s punishment for the Dark Days, a three-year uprising by the districts that ended with District 13 apparently destroyed. The Games were written into the Treaty of Treason that ended the war, as a yearly reminder of who holds power. They ran for 75 years and ended with the Capitol’s fall in the Second Rebellion.

Where to go next

• The Hunger Games districts: what each district makes.
• Every Quarter Quell explained: the three times the reaping rules changed.
• Sunrise on the Reaping explained: the 50th Games, spoiler-free first.
• Everything else is on the Hunger Games world page.