This year registration for tournament participation will work a bit differently than it has previously. Axel Pettersson explains how it works:

This year at Swordfish we will introduce tiered registration for the tournaments. It will work like this:

The top 100 ranked through HEMA Ratings (counting from the data of April 30) in every weapon category will get the chance to register 2 weeks before the rest. Then the registration will be open to everyone. This means that tournament registration for the top 100 ranked in each weapon category will open June 1, and for everyone else June 15.

The reason this is done is simple: at Swordfish we have a limited amount of slots we can allocate to each tournament, and we want to make sure that the top fencers get a chance to register and not lose the opportunity to compete due to missing registration. The HEMA Ratings is the one tool the community has to manage this. Earlier years we have allowed for known top fencers to register later to make sure they have a slot; the HEMA Ratings statistics allows us to be less arbitrary with this selection. It is not perfect, but it is what we have. Basically, Swordfish is the arena where the community gets a chance to see the top fencers face off and produce the best fencing we as a community can offer, and we don’t want to lose that through the best fencers missing registration.

Axel Pettersson & the Swordfish crew