Pawel Jaworski won the medium-heavyweight and absolute titles at the 2026 IBJJF European No-Gi Championship, which finished on 1 November at the PalaPellicone in Ostia, Rome. The Polish Academia Gorila athlete finished all eight of his matches by submission. The win completes the IBJJF No-Gi Grand Slam for the 2025/2026 season and makes him the first male athlete to do it.
Jaworski came to Rome with World No-Gi gold, plus double gold at both the No-Gi Brasileiro and the Pan No-Gi. He also won ADCC gold this season. On the final day he submitted his semi-final opponent in 50 seconds, then beat Pierpaolo Chiappe in the medium-heavyweight final by submission. He went on to win the absolute later in the day, finishing Marcelo Fausto in the final with an inside heel hook. His next event is the World No-Gi Championship in Las Vegas in December. He was unsure whether the result "officially counts as a Super Grand Slam", but said he was grateful to have reached this point.
Black belt champions
Linus von Schrenk, the Berlin grappler who has been a black belt only since May, won the heavyweight division (up to 91.5 kg). He finished Poland's Karol Kania with a standing toehold in the final. According to his coach at BJJ Akademie Berlin, Dima Murovanni, this makes him the first German man to win the IBJJF European Championship at adult black belt.
Norway's Tarik Hopstock won the middleweight title for the second year in a row, on advantages over Darlan Casaca in the final. Injana Goodman of Grapple Collective won middleweight gold for the second year in a row, after taking the same title in Rome in her first season as a black belt. She beat Amanda Shurtz 11-0 in the final. In the open-class final she lost to Academia Gorila's Martyna Kapuscinska by straight ankle lock. Kapuscinska, the No-Gi Brasileiro and Pan No-Gi champion, also won the medium-heavyweight title and finished all six of her matches by submission.
The Linus von Schrenk win was one of three national firsts in Rome. Sergio Riquelme became the first Spanish adult black belt champion at the event, taking the featherweight title on advantages over Ireland's Sam McNally in the final, and Aleksandre Tevzadze, who came up through the London scene, became the first Georgian, finishing Mahir Zuka with a guillotine for ultra-heavyweight gold. London also produced a third champion in Nia Blackman, who won the heavyweight title by decision over Maria Vicentini and reached the open-class semi-final.
Scottish roosterweight Shay Montague, who competes for ECJJA, won his third black belt title, finishing Liam White with a rear naked choke in the final. Britain's Faris Benlamkadem of Los Banditos took bronze in both his weight division and the open class. He finished Sebastian Sonntag with an arm-triangle in the absolute before his run ended against Jaworski in the semi-final.
Team standings
Academia Gorila won both the adult male and adult female team titles, a year after finishing second overall. According to Jaworski, it is the first European team to win both at once. In the men's standings, Ireland's ECJJA was second, its second adult podium in three years, and CheckMat was third. ECJJA head coach Darragh O'Conaill, back in competition after two years away, won the Master 2 title in three matches, his fourth black belt European No-Gi title, and Marcus Phelan won Master 1 for the same team. ZR Team Association and Círculo De Jiu-Jitsu were second and third in the women's standings. CheckMat won the juvenile and master team titles.
