Fechtschule Sofia

This year Fechtschule Sofia, along with other Bulgarian HEMA clubs, will be part of organizing the Sofia Longsword Open - the first dedicated longsword tournament in Bulgaria!

Registration is now OPEN - you can join us in Longsword or Ladies Longsword, and in the Open category fencers will be divided in A&B tiers - for the first time on the Balkans!

Come and fence on the 6th of September - we can guarantee you a solid number of fights and a great time!

SLO2025 Registration — Sofia CrossSwords Register for the first Sofia Longsword Open in Bulgaria

The premium HEMA tournament on the Balkans, Sofia CrossSwords, is now OPEN for registration!

SCS2024 Registration — Sofia CrossSwords Register for the premium Bulgarian HEMA tournament

Sofia CrossSwords is coming back in 2024 - this time with a unique new tournament category - Open Light Longsword.

We are proud to announce that this year we are adding a new Open Longsword category - the Open Light Longsword, first of its kind in the world.

For years HEMA Longsword has used big, long and substantial simulators as the standard. While we all love the thrill and the adrenaline that comes when fencing with such a weapon, we also want Open competitions to be more accessible - for younger fencers, newbies in the competitive HEMAsphere, ladies, for people with injuries and physical limitations.

In the last couple of years more and more manufacturers have introduced lighter models of their longswords, and this year our regular sponsor SIGI Forge presented their own SIGI Light. Less than 48 hours after the announcement we decided on this new category and it will be with swords provided - namely with SIGI Lights.

These lighter simulators represent the lower limit of longswords from the period and SIGI has done their best to make a sword that still behaves as a historical weapon. They allow hard hits with less damage, longer exchanges, less strain on muscles, joints and ligaments.

The Open Light Longsword will welcome anyone who wants to participate, with one caveat - you must choose between the Light Longsword or the standard Open Longsword category.

Sword and buckler fencing often appears chaotic, hard to follow and a challenge to judge. And it is.
But it is also quite beautiful when you can freeze time, as we managed to do during our s&b training last night.
You can see both perfect and imperfect fencing, but it is all s&b in a pure form. With some sword & rotella thrown in for color.

Yet again there was time in the sparring session for some photos - today with sword & buckler.

Every week we shoot all our sparring sessions - video review and the ability to check your fencing from the side is the one advantage we have over historical people.

But another is the ability to freeze the frame completely, which I do much less often. This is with a manual lens and high aperture, so the shutter speed can be higher as well, and focus is not always perfect, but some of them came out quite fine.

And yes, everyone got new SIGI Forge swords today :)

This past Saturday we had a bigger crowd than usual - guests from abroad, from outside the city, and all the regulars. Naturally, that led to a long and varied sparring session.