Lahtela tops HEMA Ratings’ deep June longsword field as top 10 tightens

Miro Lahtela sat atop HEMA Ratings’ June 2026 mixed and men’s steel longsword table, which listed 7,374 entries, and the margin at the top was tight enough to make every major summer result matter. Lahtela of EHMS held first place with a weighted rating of 2064.9, while Antoni Olbrychski of Akademia Szermierzy sat second at 2054.5 and Stephen Cheney of Bucks Historical Longsword was third at 2054.2.

That top-three spread of just 10.7 points captures the pressure inside one of historical European martial arts’ deepest weapon classes. Benjamin Aycrigg of Atlanta Historical Fencing Academy stood fourth at 2005, Kristian Guivarra of Vanguard Swordsmanship Academy was fifth at 1978.5, and the rest of the top 10, Zdeněk Brýdl, Bohdan Donchenko, Sergey Vasiliev, Ville Välimäki and Mikołaj Kołodziej, kept the table packed with fighters from across established clubs rather than one dominant national pipeline.

The shape of the ranking matters because HEMA Ratings is not just measuring the field, it is helping organize it. The system says it uses the Glicko-2 algorithm and that one of the main uses of the ratings is tournament seeding, which can create fairer pools. That turns the June table into a working tool for the calendar, not a static leaderboard.

The clearest immediate consequence was Tyrnhaw 2026. Priority access for the top 300 fighters in all HEMA Ratings categories opened June 7, and standard registration opens June 14 at 17:00 CET. Tyrnhaw will use the official FEBUS ruleset, so every point in the rankings can translate directly into who gets first crack at the bracket and where a fighter lands once the pools are set.

Lahtela’s No. 1 position also reflects durability as much as form. He debuted on HEMA Ratings in May 2016 and has competed in 15 divisions across 55 events. His record stretches across four continents, 16 countries and three U.S. states, with 467 opponents from 37 nationalities. That breadth gives his lead real weight in a class where the best are constantly crossing borders to test themselves against new styles and new rooms.

Olbrychski’s rise keeps the chase interesting. Akademia Szermierzy describes him as a multi-medalist and instructor, and the club has already framed longsword as HEMA’s most popular weapon category, noting in 2023 that the ranking then included nearly 7,000 fighters. June’s total of 7,374 shows that the pool has only grown deeper since then, which makes every point at the top harder to protect and every event on the summer schedule more capable of reshuffling the order.