ADCC 2026 Fight Card: 7 Essential Things to Know
Ten weeks out from the biggest no-gi grappling event on earth, the ADCC 2026 fight card looks nothing like anyone predicted a year ago. Three of the six reigning men’s champions are gone. The two most marketable athletes in the sport — Kade and Tye Ruotolo — never made the list. And the superfight that was supposed to crown Gordon Ryan’s successor is now a rematch of a points battle from 2019. For a tournament that runs only once every two years, that is a staggering amount of turnover.
Krakow’s Tauron Arena will host the whole thing on September 12 and 13, marking the first ADCC World Championship staged in Poland and the first outside North America since Finland in 2017. Here is exactly who is in, who is out, and why the shakeups matter.
ADCC 2026 Fight Card at a Glance
ADCC keeps its format brutally simple. Six men’s weight divisions (−66, −77, −88, −99 and +99 kg) each field 16 grapplers in a single-elimination bracket. Three women’s divisions (−55, −65 and +65 kg) run eight competitors apiece. Everything is no-gi, everything is submission-first, and matches escalate to sudden-death overtime if nobody finishes. Win your bracket over two days and you are a world champion — there is no seeding safety net and no second chances.
The ADCC stage at the 2024 Worlds in Las Vegas. Krakow’s Tauron Arena takes over in September 2026.
The 2026 edition also carries the sport’s richest purse to date after ADCC raised payouts, though the women’s prize money still trails the men’s by a wide margin — a gap that drew public criticism through the qualifying season. Tickets for the Krakow event sold briskly once trials wrapped, and the European location has reshaped the field: several European and Russian qualifiers who rarely travel to Las Vegas are on the list this time.
Context matters here. ADCC runs on a two-year cycle, which means every edition carries outsized weight — a champion crowned in Krakow holds the title until at least 2028. That scarcity is why athletes structure entire training camps around it and why a single bad scramble can undo two years of preparation. Poland’s polish host, the qualifying trials held across four continents, and a bracket built from regional champions make this the most geographically diverse ADCC field in memory.
Three Reigning Champions Are Out
The headline subtraction is the loss of three defending gold medalists. Diogo Reis (−66 kg), Mica Galvão (−77 kg) and Giancarlo Bodoni (−88 kg) have all been removed from ADCC’s official competitor list. That is half of the men’s champions from 2024 gone in one stroke.
Reis and Galvão both train under the Fight Sports Manaus banner, and their withdrawal follows the arrest of head coach Melqui Galvão — Mica’s father — on allegations involving minors. Bodoni’s removal is less dramatic but no less significant competitively: the American was a legitimate favorite at 88 kg and his absence blows the division wide open. Losing three champions from a two-year cycle is almost unheard of, and it hands opportunity to a dozen contenders who would otherwise have been fighting uphill against a titleholder.
The Superfight: Kaynan Duarte vs. Yuri Simoes
The vacant superfight belt is the emotional center of this card. Gordon Ryan, a seven-time ADCC champion, announced his retirement in early 2026, citing a chronic stomach illness he described as “unfixable.” That vacated the superfight title for only the second time in the event’s history — the last time was Ricardo Arona stepping away back in 2005.
Gordon Ryan with the ADCC superfight strap in 2024. His retirement left the title vacant for the first time in 17 years.
Kaynan Duarte earned the shot the hard way, winning double gold (his weight class plus the absolute) at ADCC 2024. His opponent is Yuri Simoes, the 2022 absolute champion and a three-time ADCC titleholder. The two have history: Duarte beat Simoes 3–0 on points in the second round of ADCC 2019, on his way to his first world title. This is a heavyweight chess match between two of the most decorated absolute-division grapplers of the era, and it is the closest thing the card has to a guaranteed classic.
Kaynan Duarte (right) at Who’s Number One 27. He headlines the ADCC 2026 superfight in Krakow.
Who Else Is Missing From the ADCC 2026 Fight Card
Beyond the three ousted champions, the absentee list reads like a who’s who of no-gi’s biggest draws. Kade and Tye Ruotolo — arguably the two most famous active grapplers on the planet — are not entered, tied up by exclusivity deals with ONE Championship and UFC BJJ. Nicky Rodriguez, the CJI absolute champion who beat Duarte at WNO 27, is out. So is Mikey Musumeci, who simply chose not to compete. And the Tackett brothers, who earned spots through the trials, opted for the Craig Jones Invitational instead.
That last detail points to a bigger story: ADCC no longer has a monopoly on elite no-gi. The rival Craig Jones Invitational, with its million-dollar prize pool, has become a genuine competitor for talent. When athletes can earn more at a rival event with fewer matches, ADCC’s prestige alone stops being enough. The 2026 field is still deep, but it is missing the crossover names that would have filled arenas.
The Izaak Michell Controversy and Craig Jones’ Boycott Call
The ugliest thread running through the ADCC 2026 fight card is the continued inclusion of Izaak Michell at −77 kg. The Australian remains on the official invite list despite being wanted by police in Texas over alleged sexual offenses. Craig Jones — grappler turned promoter, and never one to stay quiet — publicly called for a boycott, asking why an athlete “wanted allegedly for sex offenses in the United States is getting a paid vacation to compete in Poland.”
Craig Jones, whose rival Invitational has pulled talent away from ADCC, called for a boycott over the Michell invite.
The optics are bad, and several other prominent figures in the sport echoed Jones’ criticism. ADCC has not publicly explained the decision to keep Michell on the list. It is the kind of self-inflicted controversy a marquee event does not need heading into its European debut, and it has dominated the conversation on grappling social media more than any actual matchup.
Division Breakdown: Who Can Win in Krakow
With so many favorites gone, several divisions are genuinely up for grabs. At −99 kg, Kaynan Duarte is the clear class of the field even while pulling double duty in the superfight — his combination of takedowns and top pressure travels anywhere. The −88 kg bracket, stripped of Bodoni, becomes a scramble between veterans like Matheus Diniz and Gustavo Batista and rising names such as Jozef Chen.
Kaynan Duarte in action at Who’s Number One — he pulls double duty at −99 kg and in the superfight.
The heavyweight and super-heavyweight picture is compelling too. Felipe Pena, a former Ryan rival who has traded wins and losses at the top of the +99 kg division, headlines a bracket that also features the powerful Haisam Rida. If you want a division where the bracket itself is the star rather than one dominant name, +99 kg is it.
Felipe Pena anchors a wide-open +99 kg bracket in Krakow.
The women’s divisions may be the most stable part of the entire card. Mayssa Bastos (−55 kg), Ana Carolina Vieira (−65 kg) and the returning Gabi Garcia (+65 kg) headline brackets that dodged the roster chaos hitting the men. If you are looking for reliable, high-level grappling in Krakow, start there. Bastos in particular has been close to untouchable in no-gi over the past two years, and a Garcia return always brings a size mismatch that the crowd loves.
The −66 kg division deserves a mention too. With Diogo Reis pulled from the card, the lightest men’s bracket loses its most explosive finisher, and veterans like Gianni Grippo and Fabricio Andrey suddenly look like live title threats rather than dark horses. It is a reminder that in single-elimination grappling, one withdrawal reshuffles an entire weight class.
Gordon Ryan’s Absence Changes Everything
It is worth sitting with what Ryan’s retirement actually does to this event. For most of the last decade, ADCC was structured around one question: can anyone beat Gordon Ryan? Every superfight, every absolute run, every storyline eventually orbited him. His exit at 30 — young for a grappler — leaves a vacuum that Duarte, Simoes and the next wave now have to fill on their own terms.
Gordon Ryan retired in early 2026, ending the era that defined modern no-gi grappling.
That is not necessarily bad for the sport. A wide-open field produces more upsets, more first-time champions, and more of the chaos that makes single-elimination grappling worth watching. The submission-heavy style that ADCC rewards — and the leg-lock game that has taken over the top divisions — means any of these brackets can turn on a single scramble. If you have been drilling your own no-gi heel hook or studying ashi garami leg entanglements, Krakow is the tournament to watch to see the finishes done at the highest level.
What This Means for No-Gi’s Biggest Stage
The honest read is that ADCC 2026 is both diminished and more interesting than the last edition. It has lost star power it may never fully recover while the Craig Jones Invitational keeps writing checks. But a card without an obvious king is a card where anyone can be crowned — and that unpredictability is exactly what made ADCC legendary in the first place.
Mark September 12 and 13 on your calendar, pick a division to follow, and get comfortable with the new names. If you are heading to Poland or hosting a watch party, dial in your own training first — the leg-lock exchanges you will see in Krakow are worth studying rep by rep, whether you are working a no-gi kneebar or just trying to survive the back-take. The era of one dominant champion is over. What replaces it starts in Krakow.
For deeper coverage of ADCC matchups, athlete backgrounds, and the grappling scene heading into 2026, Taipei BJJ has been covering the competitive grappling calendar in detail.
Sources
- MMA Mania — ADCC 2026 fight card: 3 champs out — roster removals, superfight, Michell controversy.
- FloGrappling — When Is The 2026 ADCC World Championship? — date, venue and format details.
- BJJEE — ADCC 2026 Superfight Confirmed: Duarte vs. Simoes — superfight history and Ryan retirement context.
- MMA Mania — Gordon Ryan retires again — retirement announcement and health details.
- Wikipedia — ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship — event history and format background.
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