How the rankings work

BJJ Ladder uses a simple points system, so anyone can check a ranking by hand. Each podium finish at a tracked event earns points. Points are weighted by how big the event is and how recent it is, then added up.

1. Points per result

2. Event weight

3. Season weight

Rankings should show who is good now, so older results fade out over four seasons. A season is a calendar year.

Example: a gold at the 2025 Pans is worth 100 × 70% × 70% = 49 points today.

4. Divisions

• Weight-class rankings only count results in that weight class, for one ruleset: gi (IBJJF classes), no-gi (IBJJF classes) or ADCC (ADCC classes). The open class (absolute) has its own ranking.
• Pound-for-pound rankings add up every result in one ruleset family, including the open class. The no-gi list combines IBJJF no-gi events and ADCC.
• Men and women are ranked separately. All rankings are for adult black belts.
• Ties are broken by number of golds, then by the most recent result.
• The move column compares with the ranking calculated at the end of the 2025 season.

5. Why points and not Elo?

Elo needs every match result. Our source lists podiums (and for some editions only champions), not full brackets, so a points table is the honest choice. If we add a source with match-level results, we will switch to a match-based rating and say so here.

6. Data sources

All results come from results tables on English Wikipedia, used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Each event page links the exact page revision. The IBJJF website's terms of use do not allow automated collection of its results, so we do not copy data from it. We also do not collect data from Smoothcomp.

7. Known gaps

• Full podiums (gold, silver, bronze) are available for Worlds 2021–2023, Pans 2022–2023, Europeans 2022 and ADCC 2019–2026. For other editions only champions are listed, so silver and bronze medals from those editions are missing.
• Events not listed above (for example ONE Championship, the Craig Jones Invitational, Polaris, AJP or WNO) are not included yet.
• Wikipedia tables do not always agree on name spellings. We merge obvious variants of the same athlete, and keep uncertain pairs separate rather than guess. The full list of merges is in the dataset.
• Team names are only listed on full-podium pages, so team medal counts cover those editions only.