SIGI launches global HEMA event calendar for tournaments and workshops

SIGI Forge has stepped into HEMA infrastructure with a move that could shape how fencers find their next bracket, class, or weekend workshop. Its HEMA Event Calendar is now live as a worldwide aggregator for tournaments and workshops, built around the simple problem the sport keeps running into: where do you find all the upcoming events in one place?

The answer SIGI is pushing is a centralized, non-profit calendar that lives on its site and on a separate domain, with tools aimed at making discovery less of a scavenger hunt. The calendar allows anonymous event submissions after an anti-spam check, supports subscriptions for Google Calendar, iCalendar, and Outlook, and is mobile responsive. It also lets users filter by category, country, organizers, featured events, and cost, turning a scattered list of local notices into something closer to a working schedule for the international scene.

That matters in a sport where information is still fragmented across clubs, country groups, and social feeds. SIGI says the project began as a smaller effort for the students of its club before it grew in scope, and that arc fits the larger need: HEMA’s event economy depends on visibility. Clubs need to fill workshops and tournament pools. Traveling fencers need to know what is on the map before they book a train, a flight, or a hotel. A searchable calendar reduces the friction between those two sides of the sport.

The pressure for a better system is already visible in the tools the community has built around the gap. The HEMA Alliance says its own event calendar serves the global community and that not every listed event is affiliated. It also says HEMA has hundreds of clubs across the world and that its official Facebook group has 9,000-plus members and keeps growing, a sign of both scale and fragmentation. HEMA Scorecard fills another part of the ecosystem as a free online tournament management tool, while a HEMA Tournament Finder resource points to the same recurring problem: there is no complete events calendar, and travelers still struggle to track down tournaments.

SIGI’s calendar is entering that landscape with a broader promise than convenience. SwissHema already presents the listing as an International HEMA Event Calendar, suggesting the tool is being used as community infrastructure rather than a brand add-on. If it keeps attracting submissions and cross-linking from other groups, it may become a default route for discovery in a sport that has long relied on scattered posts, private messages, and luck.