Torneo di Spada a Palatinato draws international sidesword field in Germany

Eleven fighters generated 37 recorded bouts in Neustadt a.d.W., giving Torneo di Spada a Palatinato a footprint that looks bigger than its small field suggests. The event took place on June 27 in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany, and HEMA Ratings has already created a page for it, though the results are still marked inactive while the organizer validates them and uploads photos.

That page shows why the meet matters beyond a single weekend. The list includes competitors from Pfälzer Schwertlöwen, Schildwache Potsdam, Schwert-Greifen Rostock, Fechtzirkel Herrenberg, the New York Historical Fencing Association and the Cercle d’Arts Martiaux Historiques Européens de Metz, a spread that makes the event feel less like a club in-house and more like a genuine international sidesword stop. The bouts were logged with piranha software, and the page breaks them into 25 fights in one mixed steel single sidesword division and 12 in another, a healthy volume for a field that size.

The numbers matter because HEMA Ratings is built to make this kind of niche competition legible. Its system rewards wins over higher-rated opponents more heavily than wins over lower-rated ones, then applies a weighted rating to reflect uncertainty. Until Palatinato is validated, none of those 37 bouts count toward the rankings, but once the results go live they will feed into a broader picture of who is rising in a weapon category that often lives outside the spotlight until the data lands.

Palatinato was not just a bracket, either. The organizer’s listing says the weekend ran from June 26 to 28 and included two sidesword tournaments, two workshops, free fencing and discussion. Fighters without their own blade could borrow a sidesword, a practical detail that lowers the barrier to entry and helps explain how a German meet drew fencers from Potsdam, Rostock, Herrenberg, Metz and New York.

The event also sits inside a club with some history. Pfälzer Schwertlöwen formed in late 2017 in Neustadt an der Weinstraße, and its regular schedule includes Monday sidesword training, Wednesday longsword training and Sunday free fencing. That base of steady training is what gave Torneo di Spada a Palatinato enough structure to produce a real ratings page, not just a one-off result sheet.