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No-gi competitions explained: ADCC, EBI, and the scene
A beginner's guide to the no-gi competition scene — what ADCC, EBI, and the major events are, whether you have to compete, and how beginners get started.
If you have started watching no-gi, the competition scene can look bewildering — a dozen promotions, different rules, names you do not recognise. Here is the beginner’s orientation: the events that matter, and whether any of it is something you need to do.
What are the major no-gi grappling competitions?
The best-known is the ADCC, the apex world championship of the sport. Beyond it sit a range of professional and amateur promotions with their own formats — submission-only events, overtime-based events, and points-based events among them — plus countless local and regional tournaments where most people actually compete. As a beginner you will almost certainly start at a small local event, not a televised one. The differences between their formats are covered in the competition rule sets section, from overtime-based to pro-match styles.
What is the ADCC?
The ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship, held since 1998, is the most prestigious event in submission grappling — the sport’s apex. It invites the best grapplers on earth under a neutral rule set where almost every submission is legal, and it is a big part of the case that no-gi is a discipline in its own right rather than a uniform-free version of another sport. It is the event the whole scene orbits, but you will not need to know its bracket history to enjoy training.
Do you have to compete to train no-gi?
Not at all. The large majority of people who train no-gi never compete, and that is completely normal — they train for fitness, problem-solving, self-defence, or simply because they enjoy it. Competition is one option among many, not a requirement or an expectation. If it is not for you, you lose nothing by skipping it.
How do beginners start competing?
Through small local tournaments, which run beginner and novice divisions specifically so new competitors face people at their own level. Talk to your coach when you feel ready — usually after a few months of consistent training — and treat your first competition as a way to test yourself under pressure, not as something to win or lose. A good school will guide you to the right first event and help you prepare for how its rules work.
The short version: the ADCC sits at the top, a busy scene of varied formats sits below it, and almost none of it is compulsory — compete if you want to test yourself, and ignore it entirely if you do not. New here? Head back to the start hub.