Olsson wins Holmgång 2026 longsword title in tight Swedish field
Olsson topped a 34-fencer open steel longsword field as three clubs filled the top four and Stockholm depth stretched into fifth place.
Alexander Olsson took the open steel longsword title at Holmgång 2026 after working through a 34-entrant field that kept Swedish club names clustered across the top of the standings. Pontus Westerholm of Medeltida Stridsteknik Linköping finished second, while Henric Hintze and Gustav Strihagen of Stockholmspolisens Idrottsförening Fäktning placed third and fourth, giving the podium chase a distinctly club-heavy shape.
The tournament ran April 18-19 at Eriksdalshallen in Södermalm, Stockholm, where Holmgång once again served as an annual historical fencing competition with a broad program beyond the headline longsword bracket. The 2026 schedule also included beginners open steel longsword, women’s steel longsword, open steel saber, rapier and sword and buckler, putting several HEMA weapons on the same weekend card.
The longsword standings became even tighter just below the podium. Joakim Hammarlätt, Einar Lundgren and Henning Roos shared fifth place, extending Stockholmspolisens Idrottsförening Fäktning’s presence deep into the bracket and showing how little separated the top end from the next tier. In a 34-fencer field, each elimination round carried enough risk to punish a single lapse, and the final order reflected that pressure rather than a runaway favorite.
That compression is what makes Olsson’s win stand out in a Swedish club circuit that continues to produce a dense slate of competitive fencers. The tournament standings credited the title to Halmstad HEMA, while the runner-up from Linköping and the two Stockholmspolisens finishers in the top four reinforced that the field was spread across multiple clubs, not concentrated in one dominant group.
Holmgång’s results were posted through HEMA Scorecard, and HEMA Ratings also logged the event, keeping the Stockholm meet inside the broader competitive record used across the sport. Holmgång had already appeared in Scorecard records in 2024, another sign that the event has settled into an established annual fixture with enough depth to matter well beyond one bracket.
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