Carcassonne scoring guide: roads, cities, monasteries and farmers
June 18, 2026 · 4 min read
Quick answer
In Carcassonne you score features as you complete them: roads earn 1 point per tile, cities 2 per tile plus 2 per pennant, and monasteries 9 when fully surrounded. At game end, incomplete features score reduced points and each farmer earns 3 points per completed city touching their field.
How do you score completed features?
Most Carcassonne points are scored during the game, the moment a feature holding your meeple is finished:
- Road — 1 point per tile, once both ends are closed off
- City — 2 points per tile, plus 2 points per pennant
- Monastery — 9 points when its tile is surrounded by all 8 neighbours
Scoring a feature returns the meeple to your supply — Carcassonne is as much about recycling meeples as about the points themselves.
What happens at the end of the game?
Incomplete features score reduced points: roads 1 per tile, cities 1 per tile plus 1 per pennant, monasteries 1 point plus 1 per neighbouring tile.
Then come the farms: each farmer scores 3 points per completed city touching their field. Farm scoring decides more games than anything else — and it is also the rule that has changed the most between editions, so agree on which version you play before the first tile hits the table.
Common scoring mistakes in Carcassonne
- Scoring a city or road that still has a gap — a feature is complete only when every open edge is closed.
- Forgetting pennants — 2 points each in completed cities, 1 each at game end.
- Miscounting farms — fields are separated by roads and cities, so trace the boundaries before counting cities.
- Mixing farm rules from different editions within the same group.
What's the easiest way to track Carcassonne scores?
Carcassonne endgame counts are famously easy to get wrong. A permanent record of the final scores won’t stop the farm arguments — but it does settle who actually leads the rivalry.
RivalBoard is a free score tracker for exactly this: log each Carcassonne match in seconds and your group gets a shared leaderboard with win percentages, streaks and head-to-head records. Still weighing your options? See our comparison of paper, spreadsheets and apps for tracking board game scores.
Frequently asked questions
How many points is a completed city in Carcassonne?
2 points per tile plus 2 points per pennant. If the city is still incomplete when the game ends, it scores 1 point per tile and 1 per pennant instead.
How do farmers score in Carcassonne?
Farmers stay on the board and score only at the end of the game: 3 points for each completed city that touches their field. Fields are separated by roads, cities and the edge of the map.
Do incomplete features score anything in Carcassonne?
Yes, at reduced value during final scoring: incomplete roads score 1 per tile, incomplete cities 1 per tile plus 1 per pennant, and monasteries 1 point plus 1 per surrounding tile.
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