A tournament doesn't have to be active and you don't have to have a ticket for you to create a character. The system doesn't assign a world for you based on your region, you can pick your own region. However, if you accidentally created a character in the wrong world location you have to wait until the sign-up phase is active! Be sure to grab a ticket to participate in the Tournament, creating a character doesn't mean your signed up for the Tournament! I wanted to paste a helpful FAQ on Tibia's website:
Q: I created my character on the wrong Tournament game world? Can I still change it?
A: "Yes, as long as the sign-up phase is active, you can still change the game world location, your vocation and the starting city on your ticket. To do so, click on "Configure" in the Tournament interface ingame and select a different game world."
Source: https://www.tibia.com/support/?subtopic=gethelp&entryid=187
"Game worlds can now be selected directly when you create a character. You can also change the world later when you buy a ticket."
Source: https://www.tibia.com/news/?subtopic=newsarchive&id=5471&fbegind=14&fbeginm=3&fbeginy=2020&fendd=13&fendm=4&fendy=2020&flist=11111111
To create a Tournament character if you're logged onto the Tibia client you can click on the action button "Open Tournament dialog" and click on Characters and then click on Create new Tournament character and it will redirect you to the Tibia.com you need to logon and it will take you to the page where you can create your Tournament character. (You can log on to your account on Tibia.com alternatively, if you're not on the client. Once you're logged on you can scroll down to where it says Tournament Characters and click on create a character.)
You'll now reach the page where you can name your Tournament character, choose the type of store access (all store products or only store products that do not improve a character's gameplay (cosmetics), and then the game world location (Europe, North America, or South America). Please see picture below for what the page looks like: