Sword Fight VIII fuels July sidesword ratings with 30 fighters, five debuts

Thirty fighters changed July’s Mixed & Men’s Steel Single Sidesword board on the strength of 123 bouts from one tournament, a concentration that gave ranking movement, seeding and rating volatility far more weight than a busy, fragmented month would have. Sword Fight VIII 2026, held July 11, supplied every single sidesword result driving the update, and the category also logged five debut fighters, including Habibi Favilla.

That one-event spike matters because the July board sits inside a much larger pool: HEMA Ratings lists 847 active fighters in the category overall, but only 30 competed in the July window so far. In a system built on head-to-head results, that means each pool match and elimination bout from Sword Fight VIII carried visible consequences for weighted rating and rank, especially in a class where a handful of new names can quickly alter the look of the ladder.

Sword Fight VIII was not a one-weapon stop. HEMA Ratings shows the same July 11 event also generated 149 Mixed Steel Longsword fights, 168 Mixed Steel Sabre fights and 152 Mixed Steel Single Rapier fights, making it one of the broader multi-weapon tournaments on the calendar. The single sidesword count, however, is the clearest sign that the division is getting enough volume to produce meaningful movement rather than one-off noise.

The ratings system behind the board is built for that kind of churn. HEMA Ratings says it uses the Glicko-2 algorithm, the modernized rating model created by Harvard statistics professor Mark Glickman, and it tracks both weighted rating and rank. The site says its database is intended to collect results from as many HEMA tournaments as possible, which is why one well-attended event can dominate a month’s signal in a narrower weapon category.

The July update also points to where the category is growing. Five debuts is not a giant influx, but it is enough to show renewal at a moment when single sidesword is drawing results from a large, multi-weapon tournament and feeding them into a global ratings board. HEMA Event Calendar describes itself as a worldwide tournament and workshop aggregator, the HEMA Alliance maintains a global events calendar with the note that not all listings are supported or affiliated, and Historical Fencing Research says there is no complete HEMA events calendar, which helps explain why a single tournament can still carry so much of the month’s competitive weight.