Pan No-Gi 2026: Every Black Belt Champion

Four months after Pawel Jaworski and Andre Galvao dominated the headlines heading into Secaucus, the actual results looked nothing like the preview copy. More than 2,300 athletes competed across three days at the Meadowlands Exposition Center, and by the time the black belt brackets closed Sunday night, the story wasn’t the favorites running the table — it was Sarah Galvao’s double gold, AOJ’s quiet sweep through the lighter men’s divisions, and a medium-heavyweight final that didn’t include the man everyone expected to win it.

The 2026 Pan No-Gi Championship ran October 2–4 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, New Jersey.

What Happened at the 2026 Pan No-Gi in Secaucus

Blue and brown belts opened the tournament on October 2, with Lorenzo do Nascimento Tarouco of Alliance taking both his weight class and the open class to set the week’s early tone. By Day 1’s end, AOJ led the adult men’s academy standings with 25 points to Alliance’s 22, while Gracie Barra topped the women’s side at 18. Those numbers mattered less than they usually do once the black belts took the mat for the final two days — academy point totals are a brown-belt story, and black belt golds are what everyone actually remembers from a Pan No-Gi.

Saturday and Sunday belonged to the adult black belts, nine weight classes plus open class on each side. Ten men’s divisions and ten women’s divisions produced twenty champions, and the gap between who was supposed to win and who actually did was wider than the brackets suggested going in.

Men’s Black Belt Results: AOJ’s Quiet Sweep

AOJ had the best day of any academy in the men’s brackets without a single marquee name trending on its own. Marcos Gomes opened the account at roosterweight, upsetting top seed Carlos “Bebeto” Oliveira with an ankle lock finish. Diego Pato followed at light-featherweight, taking a clean 6-0 decision over Shoya Ishiguro for his fourth Pan title — a number that puts him in the conversation for the division’s most accomplished competitor of the current era. Tainan Dalpra closed the men’s sweep at middleweight, handling Elijah Dorsey of Team Lloyd Irvin 9-0.

Three outright wins in ten men’s divisions is a strong day for any academy on its own, and AOJ did it without needing its highest-profile athletes to carry the load. Cole Abate added a fourth result at featherweight, outlasting Sam Nagai through a mix of scoring and a successful submission defense that decided the final exchanges.

The rest of the men’s card split across academies. Jackson Nagai took lightweight for CheckMat, grinding out a back-control decision over Will Wilson of Marcio Andre JJ. Enderson Dias claimed medium-heavyweight for Elementum Jiu-Jitsu on advantages over Alex Munis — a result that matters more for who wasn’t in that final than who was. Felipe Assis won heavyweight by penalty decision over Rider Zuchi, Nolan Stuart took super-heavyweight 4-0 for Brea Jiu-Jitsu, and Seif-Eddine Houmine finished Anderson Kauan with a clock choke to take ultra-heavyweight for GF Team. Gabriel Veloso closed the men’s card with a 2-0 open class win over his own Soldiers JJ teammate, Gabriel Galvao.

Two Grand Slam Bids, Two Letdowns

Pawel Jaworski came to Secaucus as the No. 1 ranked no-gi male athlete in the world, the reigning European, Brasileiro, World, and Pan No-Gi champion, and fresh off an ADCC 2026 leg lock gold run that made him the clear favorite to complete a full Grand Slam this season at medium-heavyweight. He isn’t on the official champions list. Enderson Dias and Alex Munis contested the final; Jaworski’s name appears nowhere in the division’s top two, which means the run ended somewhere in the bracket before Sunday’s final rounds. IBJJF hasn’t published round-by-round detail on that loss, and neither has FloGrappling as of this writing, but the headline is unambiguous either way: the Grand Slam chase that was the single biggest storyline heading into the weekend is over for 2026.

Jaworski’s leg lock game carried him to ADCC gold in 2026, but the medium-heavyweight Pan No-Gi final went to someone else.

Jaworski wasn’t the only Grand Slam favorite to come up short at middleweight — one division down from his own. Tarik Hopstock entered Secaucus as the reigning world champion and the athlete everyone picked to win what IBJJF itself called the tournament’s standout bracket, a 23-man field anchored by his own Grand Slam pursuit. The middleweight final went to Tainan Dalpra and Elijah Dorsey instead. Hopstock’s name is absent from the official result the same way Jaworski’s is one weight class up, which means two of the three men most responsible for this event’s pre-tournament hype left Secaucus with their Grand Slam bids stalled on the same weekend.

Tarik Hopstock entered Secaucus as the betting favorite at middleweight. He isn’t on the final result either.

Andre Galvao’s return to the mat generated its own pre-event buzz, but it’s worth separating fact from assumption here. Galvao registered for the Master 3 heavyweight bracket, not the adult super-heavyweight or open class divisions where he built his legacy — a meaningful distinction, since master divisions run as separate brackets from the adult black belt results above. No official result from that bracket had been published as of this writing. The comeback itself, at an age when most of his generation has been retired for years, is the story regardless of the scoreline.

Hopstock’s reigning World No-Gi title didn’t carry over into a Pan No-Gi final appearance this year.

Women’s Black Belt Results: Sarah Galvao’s Historic Double Gold

Sarah Galvao is a first-year black belt. That fact is easy to lose inside the result itself — she won both the lightweight division and the open class at the same Pan No-Gi, becoming the first competitor to pull off that exact double at this event in the no-gi format. She beat Janaina Lebre by unanimous referee decision in the lightweight final on top pressure, then came back in open class and beat her own Atos teammate, Gabi Pessanha, the reigning super-heavyweight champion, on a back take with hooks secured in the final thirty seconds for four points.

Beating a teammate for an open class title is its own kind of statement, and beating one who had just won her ninth Pan No-Gi title minutes earlier raises the stakes further. Pessanha has been the standard at super-heavyweight for close to a decade; Galvao has been a black belt for less than a year. The open class final was a changing-of-the-guard moment inside a single academy, playing out in front of a crowd that came to watch the sport’s most decorated heavyweight defend her turf.

Black belt action from the women’s brackets at the 2026 Pan No-Gi Championship.

The rest of the women’s card had its own share of statement performances, and AOJ’s day was better than the men’s sweep alone suggested. Ana Lima opened the day at roosterweight with a single advantage off a timed triangle setup against Mariana Rolszt. Mayssa Bastos won an all-AOJ light-featherweight final over teammate Ashlee Funegra for her fifth Pan title, continuing one of the most consistent championship runs in the division’s history. Margot Ciccarelli made it two AOJ women’s titles at featherweight, taking a referee decision over Larissa Campos, the reigning world champion, in a final that stayed level until the closing seconds. Combined with the men’s three, that’s five black belt titles for one academy across a single weekend — the kind of total that normally gets its own headline, except this tournament had a bigger one.

Mayssa Bastos has now won five Pan titles, the latest coming in an all-AOJ final.

Lillian Marchand provided the day’s cleanest finish, submitting Elisabeth Clay with an armbar in the middleweight final in her first year as a black belt — the kind of result that tends to get a rookie noticed well beyond her own weight class. Elizabeth Mitrovic pulled the card’s biggest upset at medium-heavyweight, beating defending Brasileiro and Pans champion Maca Vicentini on a four-point decision built around top control. Larissa Dias took heavyweight for Elementum Jiu-Jitsu on a three-point win combining a guard pass and back attack, setting up her eventual open class runner-up finish against Galvao.

Celebrations were earned on both sides of the bracket across a deep, upset-heavy weekend in Secaucus.

Why Sarah Galvao’s Double Gold Is the Real Headline

It would be easy to lead this recap with Jaworski’s absence from the medium-heavyweight final — that’s the kind of result that generates clicks on its own. But a first-year black belt beating the top seed in her own weight class and then beating a nine-time Pan champion from her own gym for the open class title, on the same day, is the rarer accomplishment. Double golds at Pan No-Gi happen most years to someone, usually a dominant veteran who’s already cleared her own weight class by a wide enough margin to make the jump up worthwhile. They essentially never happen to a competitor still inside her first twelve months at black belt.

Galvao’s path here also says something about how AOJ and Atos have restructured their development pipelines over the past two seasons — both academies are now producing black belts who compete like seasoned veterans within months of promotion, not years. Marchand’s armbar finish and Galvao’s double gold are two data points from the same tournament pointing at the same trend: the gap between “talented brown belt” and “championship-level black belt” is closing faster than it used to.

Numbers That Stood Out

More than 2,300 athletes registered for the full weekend, but the black belt card is what the sport actually tracks year over year, and a handful of numbers from Secaucus are worth holding onto past this news cycle. AOJ’s five titles across both brackets is the single best academy total of the tournament. Sarah Galvao’s double gold is the first of its kind at this event for a first-year black belt. Gabi Pessanha’s ninth Pan No-Gi title keeps her in rare company at super-heavyweight even after Sunday’s loss. And two Grand Slam bids — Jaworski’s and Hopstock’s — ending on the same weekend, in adjacent weight classes, is a coincidence big enough that it’s going to shape how both men get previewed the next time this bracket runs.

None of that shows up in a bracket sheet. It’s the difference between knowing who won and understanding what the weekend actually meant for the sport heading into 2027.

Full Black Belt Results at a Glance

Men’s champions: Marcos Gomes (roosterweight), Diego Pato (light-featherweight), Cole Abate (featherweight), Jackson Nagai (lightweight), Tainan Dalpra (middleweight), Enderson Dias (medium-heavyweight), Felipe Assis (heavyweight), Nolan Stuart (super-heavyweight), Seif-Eddine Houmine (ultra-heavyweight), Gabriel Veloso (open class).

Women’s champions: Ana Lima (roosterweight), Mayssa Bastos (light-featherweight), Margot Ciccarelli (featherweight), Sarah Galvao (lightweight and open class), Lillian Marchand (middleweight), Elizabeth Mitrovic (medium-heavyweight), Larissa Dias (heavyweight), Gabi Pessanha (super-heavyweight).

What This Means for the Rest of the No-Gi Season

Jaworski’s Grand Slam chase ending at Pan No-Gi doesn’t erase a season that still includes ADCC gold — it just means the full sweep isn’t happening in 2026. Expect him back at medium-heavyweight with something to prove the next time this bracket runs, the same way the storylines heading into this event predicted a very different outcome than the one that materialized. Pessanha’s loss carries a similar weight-shift: a nine-time Pan champion getting out-scrambled by her own training partner in the final thirty seconds of an open class match is the kind of result that changes how a weight class gets previewed next season, not just how this one gets remembered.

For a tournament that opened with blue and brown belt brackets and academy point totals most casual fans will forget by next week — covered in full as the black belts were taking the floor — the black belt results are what actually move the no-gi conversation forward. AOJ’s quiet sweep, a teenager-adjacent double gold, and a Grand Slam bid that fell one win short: that’s a Pan No-Gi worth remembering past the news cycle.

Sources

• IBJJF — 2026 Pans Black Belt Male Champions — official results and division-by-division breakdowns.
• IBJJF — 2026 Pans Black Belt Female Champions — official results and division-by-division breakdowns.
• FloGrappling — 2026 Pan IBJJF No-Gi Championship Day 1 Winners — blue/brown belt results and academy standings.