Buhurt (Armoured Combat)
A modern full-contact sport fought in steel armour. It is not a reconstruction of technique but a competition: the team with fighters left standing wins.
Quick Facts
UkraineCharacter & Origin
Training
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Buhurt (Armoured Combat)
Buhurt is a modern full-contact sport fought in steel armour with blunted weapons. The word itself is medieval and denoted a group contest of horsemen, but today's discipline is recent. Its forerunner was the American Society for Creative Anachronism, which from 1966 held tournaments with rattan weapons. Steel buhurt in its present form arose in the late 1990s and early 2000s in parallel in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine; this page therefore names no founder. The turning point was 2009, when the first Battle of the Nations tournament was held at Khotyn Fortress in Ukraine, bringing unified rules and international entry. Competition falls into three types. One-on-one duels are scored on hits and divided by weapon — sword and shield, sword and buckler, longsword, polearm. Team categories run from five against five through twelve against twelve to thirty against thirty. Mass battles, the buhurts proper, are won by the team with fighters left standing; a man who goes down is out. The equipment is modern and only the shape is historical. Armour is made of steel or titanium alloy and is completed by a helmet, plate gauntlets and a padded gambeson; a full kit costs two to three thousand dollars and upwards. This is the main difference from HEMA, which works with fencing masks and padding and reconstructs technique from period treatises. Buhurt reconstructs no historical source at all — it is a sport that borrowed an appearance. Several bodies govern it: Buhurt International, the IMCF founded in 2013, and further regional federations.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.