We’re proud to announce our first HEMA Tournament, Herne's Cup! Taking place March 8th & 9th 2025.
At Herne’s Cup, we want to create an environment for newer and intermediate level HEMA competitors to test their skills against their peers. We designed our first Herne’s Cup event to exclude the top level of HEMA competitors in all categories to create this level playing field - it was important for our team to produce a tournament that could help develop the next generation of talent in our sport. We will be doing a full open later in the year.
We also wanted our tournaments to be a safe environment with a clear ruleset which promotes clean fencing and sportsmanship. As such, we have written a ruleset aimed at making matches engaging and competitive, whilst also ensuring safety with a clear penalty system. Our overall aim for Herne’s Cup events is to make all rules as clear and codified as possible: we want to avoid interpretation of core rules, meaning that all competitors know the rules and our expectations before their first match begins.
As our first Herne’s-branded event, and as our first event trying out new rules and procedures in the UK HEMA-scene, we expect there will be some things that work well and others that do not. We are open to any and all feedback before, during, and after the event to make it the best possible event for the community.
Our commitment to Women’s + HEMA
At Herne’s Cup, we’re making it our aim to highlight the growing popularity and quality of Women and Under-represented Genders (W+) tournaments in the UK. As such, we want to include as many W+ fencers as possible, therefore only excluding the very top of the field across multiple weapons. As HEMA Ratings only officially features rankings for W+ Longsword, and because Longsword is fairly ubiquitous across W+ tournaments, we have used this as our benchmark for overall rankings.
To ensure we highlight the success of W+ fencers at Herne’s Cup, we will be running tournaments across all weapons in both Open and W+ categories. Also, all medal matches across both categories will be fought independently of any other matches. When you fight for a medal at Herne’s Cup, you will have the whole room watching!
On that note, we are pleased to announce will be running both Open and Woman's+ Tournaments in the following weapons:
Please click the buttons below to download and familiarise yourself with the eligibility criteria, tournament and equipment rules.
LET THE HUNT BEGIN!
Meet the Organisers.
With years of UK and International tournament experience between them, the Herne's Cup Committee are dedicated to bringing quality events to the UK HEMA scene. On the tournament weekend, the committee will be on hand to assist with any logistics or rules questions. Let us know if you have any questions or feedback so we can run the best event possible for our community!
