27/01/2026
First of all, we would like to sincerely thank everyone for your support, trust, and participation. The level of interest in this competition truly exceeded our expectations, and we are grateful to every club, coach, athlete, parent, referee, and volunteer who was part of this event.
We were honoured to welcome 70 clubs, with 1,058 entries and 574 competitors, representing England ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ฅ๓ ฎ๓ ง๓ ฟ, Romania ๐ท๐ด, Scotland ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ, Nepal ๐ณ๐ต, India ๐ฎ๐ณ, the Netherlands ๐ณ๐ฑ, Denmark ๐ฉ๐ฐ, Pakistan ๐ต๐ฐ, Algeria ๐ฉ๐ฟ and Wales ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ท๓ ฌ๓ ณ๓ ฟ.
We were also privileged to host 11 international referees from Romania ๐ท๐ด, Malta ๐ฒ๐น, Slovakia ๐ธ๐ฐ, and Hungary ๐ญ๐บ, working alongside our officials from England.
๐ Special thanks to our incredible Staff, Judges, Referees (with appreciation to Chief Referee Sensei Kourosh Lotfi), Medical Team, and Security Officers for your professionalism and dedication throughout the day.
๐ Outstanding performances from our top clubs:
๐ฅ๐ Elite Karate Club London
๐ฅ๐ Sport Karate Academy
๐ฅ๐ Pro-Karate Academy
๐
And congratulations to all competitors, your hard work, discipline, and fighting spirit are what truly make this event special.
As many of you know, our original entry limit was 700 competitors. Due to the overwhelming demand and many requests from clubs and coaches, the competition grew to 1,058 entries. While this level of trust means a great deal to us, accepting entries beyond our planned capacity placed us in a very difficult situation on the day.
For this, we would like to offer our sincere apologies to the athletes, parents, coaches, referees, and clubs. We acknowledge that the competition did not run as smoothly as planned, with delays, waiting times, limited space, and pressure on facilities. We fully understand the frustration this caused.
As the organising team, we take full responsibility. The sports hall was not sufficient for the number of competitors, spectators, and officials present. This experience has been challenging for everyone involved, organisers, staff, referees, athletes, and parents, and we genuinely apologise.
Since 2014โ2015, we have been organising competitions and continuously learning from both good and difficult experiences.
We started at YMCA Walthamstow with 3 areas, then moved to SportsDock, then to Harlow, always adapting and improving after each event.
After last Elite Open, we secured K2 Crawley, a spacious venue where we successfully run our Elite Open Grand Prix in October across 8 areas.
Following this event, we are now seriously reflecting on relocating the June competition to a larger venue if a suitable option becomes available in time. If not, we will implement strict solutions to ensure that what happened this time does not happen again.
From now on, entry limits will be non-negotiable.
We are fully aware of what must improve, staffing levels, tatami management, scheduling, and crowd control, and all feedback, especially critical feedback, will be carefully reviewed and used to raise the quality of future events. We are moving forward, not backward.
Organising events of this scale is never easy. Many of us have attended competitions that have run late into the night, sometimes until midnight or beyond (abroad). That does not remove responsibility from us, but it reminds us that every organiser learns through experience.
We also wish to mention that during the event, we experienced significant pressure from the leisure centre management, including repeated demands to finish early before our finishing time, lights being switched off twice without warning, and announcements instructing people to leave before the competition had concluded. This added unnecessary tension, and a formal complaint has been submitted regarding this matter.
Despite the challenges, our intention has always been clear: to deliver high-quality, fair, and professional karate competitions, with strong refereeing standards and international participation.
Once again, thank you for your support, patience, and understanding. We remain committed to learning from this experience and delivering better, stronger, and more organised events in the future.
OSS! ๐ฅ
