Lomme Roller Derby edges Stockholm 165-161 in Europe regional thriller

Lomme Roller Derby escaped Stockholm 165-161 in one of the tightest bouts of the 2026 WFTDA Regional Championships: Europe, a four-point finish that barely let the Belgian club breathe at Centre Namurois des Sports Tabora in Namur, Belgium. The tournament ran June 12-14 and was hosted by Namur Roller Derby, the 2011 club that bills itself as Belgium’s biggest derby program, with 12 teams chasing a place at WFTDA Championships in Malmö, Sweden.

The score told the real story. Lomme and Stockholm both cleared 160 points, which meant this was not a defensive chess match so much as a straight-up scoring race, with each side finding enough room to keep pressure on the other until the final whistle. WFTDA Stats had Stockholm ranked 11th in Europe and Lomme 12th, and the result played like exactly that kind of paper-thin matchup. Before this bout, Lomme had lost 145-137 to London on June 12, while Stockholm had been beaten 151-92 by Nantes, so both teams entered the final with very different margins but a shared need to reset quickly.

In a game this close, the winning margin usually lives in the small stuff: one jam where a jammer gets free a beat sooner, one trip where a pack slows just enough to waste clock, one penalty that forces a pivot in strategy. Lomme did enough of those little things to keep the lead intact, and Stockholm never found the sequence that would flip the result. That is why a four-point derby bout stings. It rarely comes down to one dramatic moment. It comes down to a handful of almost-moments that add up to the final number on the board.

For Lomme, the victory also sharpened its regional profile. The Lille, France club was founded in July 2012 as Lille Roller Girls, and WFTDA Stats lists its highest-ever regional ranking as eighth in May 2023. It had also never played a closer game than its 136-135 loss to Nantes Duch.es on Feb. 11, 2023, so this was a new benchmark for pressure management. Stockholm brought a deeper history into the bout, founded in 2007 as the first roller derby league in Scandinavia and first skating against Helsinki Roller Derby in October 2010, with seven skaters later selected for Team Sweden at the 2011 Roller Derby World Cup. In a weekend built to separate the best from the rest, Lomme survived by the slimmest possible margin and Stockholm was left with the kind of defeat that usually haunts a team until the next whistle.