Geraud lemenager wins crowded Sword of the South 2026 longsword bracket

Geraud lemenager won the Longsword - Open Steel bracket at Sword of the South 2026, taking first in a 45-fighter field in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia and closing out a final against Mark Holgate of Adelaide Sword Academy. The result gave Aiginskalk - Historical European Martial Arts the top spot in a tournament that produced a final four with four different clubs and a top eight that stretched across six programs.

The final itself was the clearest sign that this was not a routine bracket. Ironclad Academy Of The Sword posted the championship bout between lemenager and Holgate, and the matchup delivered the kind of last-fight pairing that usually comes only after multiple rounds of clean wins, hard seeding fights, and surviving the kind of pressure an open-steel longsword division brings. HEMA Scorecard listed the division at 45 entrants, a size that kept the bracket compact enough to read but deep enough to reward consistency over one-off upsets.

Behind lemenager and Holgate, Jim Campbell of Ursa Major HEMA Academy finished third and Lionel Penington of Ironclad Academy Of The Sword took fourth, giving the semifinal line a distinctly club-driven shape. The next four places extended that pattern rather than flattening it out: Jack Jones of Scholar Victoria was fifth, Simon Airey of Ursa Major HEMA Academy was sixth, Chan Ning Long of Einherjar HEMA Club was seventh, and Noah Sarunic of Adelaide Sword Academy was eighth.

The distribution mattered. Adelaide Sword Academy put two fencers into the top eight, with Holgate runner-up and Sarunic in eighth, while Ursa Major HEMA Academy matched that depth by placing Campbell on the podium and Airey in sixth. Ironclad’s Penington reaching fourth reinforced the point that the final stages were not dominated by a single home club or a single regional pipeline. Even in a field anchored in Adelaide, the bracket read like a cross-section of the wider Australian HEMA circuit.

HEMA Ratings records the event as taking place on June 20, 2026, and lists lemenager’s nationality as Australia. Ironclad Academy of the Sword also described Sword of the South as its first international Sword of the South event, and the Facebook event page for the championship showed 128 people interested and 56 people going. For a first international running, Sword of the South 2026 produced the rare combination of strong turnout, a crowded open-steel bracket, and a podium that reflected real competition between clubs rather than a single dominant camp.