Fight Night Combat

European Championships 2021 Postponed - Nov. 10, 2021

Unfortunately we're not going to be able to host the European Championships this November/December. Many jugglers can't travel due to covid, and incident rates are going up in Berlin/Brandenburg. We've been looking for venues, but we can't work out a way to host it and all the visiting jugglers in a way we feel comfortable with safely and responsibly. It may be possible to organise an event in the spring, so we'll look into that early next year.

Super Season 2020 to 2021 - Nov. 30, 2020

The Fight Night Combat 2020 Season has come to an end. Congratulations to Krzysztof Kostera of Poland and Friederike Kraaz of Germany! Krzysztof won three tournaments, and ended the year at the top of the Open Race Rankings. Friederike entered four tournaments, came second in two of them, and ended the year at the top of the Women's Race Rankings.

The 2020 European Championships would have taken place this past weekend... except of course they didn't, due to an ongoing global pandemic. The plan was to have two tournaments with two different ways to qualify: the Open Race Rankings to qualify for the Open European Championship and the Women's Race Rankings to qualify for the Women's European Championship.

But plans change. And so, the current plan:

Cancel the 2020 championships completely.

Create the 2020-2021 Super Season: a 24 month qualification period for the European Championships at the end of November 2021. Every player will accumulate points from all their tournaments between November 5th 2019 and November 5th 2021. See the Super Season standings here: http://fightnightcombat.com/points-and-rankings-SuperSeason2020to2021.html

Expand the 2021 fields from 8 players per tournament to 10 players per tournament.

The top two players of the 2020 season get automatic invites. That's Krzysztof and Friederike.

The rest of the qualification process will remain in place: minimum of three tournaments, only residents of Europe are invited, automatic invites to the winners of the Major tournaments, one wildcard entry per tournament.

There were about 60 tournaments in 2019, but only 30 in 2020. Hopefully we can have another 30 in 2021 to make the qualification process for the 2021 European Championships as normal as possible. So stay safe, and keep hitting other jugglers' clubs.

European Combat Championships 2020 - Jan. 13, 2020

There will be an updated format for the end-of-year final tournament in Berlin this year, and an updated name too: The European Combat Championships 2020. The new name reflects that the 2020 event will have two qualification processes and three competitions.

As normal, there's the Race Rankings 2020, known as the "Race To Berlin", based on the 2020 season's tournament results. This is open for everyone, and invitations will go out to the top eight jugglers living in Europe to come to Berlin on a Saturday at the end of November for the European Open Combat Championship 2020.

Invites for the second competition, and for an all-expenses-paid trip to Berlin, will go out to the top eight women combat jugglers living in Europe. The new Women's Race Rankings 2020 will reflect their participation in normal tournaments, as well as their top results from any women-only Fight Night tournaments they may want to organise at juggling conventions or other events. This eight player final tournament is the European Women's Combat Championship 2020.

The third tournament, to finish off the event, will be a team combat knockout. Each team will feature one participant from the open invite list and one from the women-only invite list.

There will be an optional wildcard invite for a ninth juggler in both races if appropriate. Results and rankings points from women-only tournaments will not count towards the Open Race Rankings. If a woman qualifies for both single player tournaments, she can choose to take part in both or just one, and extra players needed for the team combat tournament will be selected on the day. There will be other updates to the tournament rules and qualification processes as needed throughout the year.

The purpose of the Fight Night Combat website and rankings, from the very start, has always been to encourage more people to organise more fun and fair tournaments, resulting in more opportunities for jugglers to take part and improve at combat juggling. From 2012 to 2019 the tournament calendar has grown from four tournaments per year to 60 tournaments per year. However, in more than 300 tournaments across eight years, there have only been three female winners, there are only 176 women out of 1600 players in the results database, and no woman has come close to qualifying for the previous end-of-year finals events.

This updated championship format and qualification process is to encourage people to organise combat tournaments that are specifically welcoming to female jugglers. Some women will only want to take part in the open tournaments, and that's just fine. However, it's understandable that many women, who would otherwise be interested in taking part in Fight Night tournaments, aren't enthusiastic about combat sessions that mostly consist of getting dunked on by 190cm sweaty men. We are hoping to create some events where it is easier for women jugglers to find enjoyment, find motivation to improve their skills, and to see if a distinct style of combat might develop.

For clarity, normal Fight Night Combat tournaments are not now "men's tournaments" but "open tournaments". No change of name or terminology is needed, as it is assumed that they will be open to all players regardless of gender, ability, or any other factor.

Stay tuned for updates in the coming months!