In the previous post, I gave an overview of the international fencing competition structure. Now let’s dive into the first category: Cadet (Under 17) and review Cadet International fencing competitions.

If your fencer has been doing well nationally – maybe medaling at NACs or Summer Nationals – you’ve probably started hearing about international competition. Other parents mention sending their kids to Europe for tournaments. Coaches talk about “making the travel team.” You see announcements from the USA Fencing on their Instagram and different clubs and fencers publish their reels. Your fencer’s friends say they qualified for Budapest or Grenoble.

So what exactly are these cadet international competitions? How do they work? Who can participate? And should your cadet fencer be pursuing them at all?

Until this season, Cadet competitions were run under the auspices of the European Fencing Confederation (EFC) for 25+ years. These were well established, well organized and well recognized tournaments that many generations of international fencers grew with. Starting this season the FIE created a new FIE Cadet World Cup circuit in conjunction with the FIE Junior World Cups and this might, and definitely will, complicate many things. More about this later.

The European Cadet Circuit (Cadet World Cups)

Despite the name “European Cadet Circuit” (ECC), these are actually Cadet World Cups – open to fencers from any country. They’re organized by the European Fencing Confederation (EFC), not directly by the FIE, but they function as the primary international competition circuit for cadets worldwide. For years these were major in-season competitions for every country and some of them were very prestigious, hard and well attended by every major fencing country in the world, such as the USA, France, Italy, Ukraine, and Hungary, to name a few.

The circuit runs from early October through February, with eight events per weapon/gender spread across Europe. Each event features both individual and team competition.

How it works:

The EFC maintains its own internal ranking system based on results from these World Cups. This ranking only matters for seeding at future ECC events, both individual and team, and the European Cadet Championships – it doesn’t carry any broader significance beyond that.

Each country selects which events to attend based on their own criteria – usually driven by domestic calendar and traditional preferences. For example, USA Fencing historically favored Budapest, Grenoble, and Bratislava for men’s and women’s epee in a few previous years, and changed it to Klagenfurt, Budapest and Krakow this season. These selected tournaments are called ‘designated’. Designated means that a country considers these tournaments for their point ranking system and strives to field the whole roster of 20 fencers.

Of course not all 8 tournaments are selected to be designated for each country. For example, only 3 tournaments are designated by USA Fencing. Other countries use their own criteria to choose designated tournaments. Those tournaments which are designated by most of the “fencing” nations, such as the USA, Ukraine, Italy, France and Hungary, are among the strongest in the circuit. 

Who can participate:

Up to 20 fencers per country per event. This is actually quite generous compared to other international competitions, and it makes these events more accessible for developing cadet fencers.

Individual competitions are similar to individual competitions in most Cadet tournaments – Pools with a cut (usually 20-25% advance) followed by direct elimination. Typically top 4 are medalled but some tournaments also acknowledge the 5th to 8th finishers and give them something symbolic.

Team competition:

Here’s what makes Cadet World Cups unique – they allow up to five teams per country. Other international events limit you to one team. This means if a country brings a full 20-person squad, everyone gets to be on a team. The USA typically sends full squads and often fields all five men’s and women’s teams.

Because there are up to 5 teams in a single competition from each country, the team seeding is very different from anything else out there. Each team is seeded by using either EFC individual ranking of each fencer on the team or by the individual results of the team fencers the day before.

Format of the team competition is direct elimination with a fence-off for Bronze. However, in many cases top 8 or top 16 teams fence for all places. 

In general, team fencing is another exceptional opportunity for travelling cadets to experience international fencing and definitely it is developmentally beneficial for fencers.

American dominance:

As I wrote in my book “From Cool Runnings to World Super Power: The Rise of American Fencing”, from the dawn of this century, the USA has become a dominant force in international fencing, and nowhere is that dominance more visible than in cadet competition.

It’s typical to see multiple Americans in the top 8 of individual events – sometimes sweeping the entire podium. Team competitions often feature three American teams on the podium. The depth of American cadet fencing is remarkable.

Making the travel team:

In a country like the USA, where cadet depth is so strong we could easily roster several countries’ worth of full squads, achieving a top-20 ranking to make the national cadet travel team is a huge accomplishment.

Think about it – your child is in the top 20 in the entire country. There are thousands of cadet fencers across America who dream of standing where your fencer is standing. They earned this through countless hours of practice, through losses and comebacks, through dedication that most kids their age can’t even imagine.

Making the travel team means your fencer gets to wear the USA on their back. They get to stand for the national anthem representing their country. They get to be part of something bigger than themselves, bigger than any individual tournament or rating or college recruitment goal.

That’s worth celebrating.

The cost:

Unfortunately nothing is subsidized by USA Fencing at this level. I believe most countries subsidize only their top 4-6 fencers, if any. For American families, getting your fencer to a European World Cup means spending several thousand dollars on flights, hotels, food, and all the other expenses that come with international travel.

European families have it somewhat easier with cheaper internal travel, but for Americans, this is a significant financial commitment.

But here’s what I believe: if you can afford it, go for it. Your child earned this with their hard work and dedication. They’re in the top 20 in the country – top 20 out of thousands! This isn’t a participation trophy or a “pay to play” opportunity. They fought for this spot and earned it with their dedication.

The experience of representing your country internationally, even once in their lifetime, is something they’ll carry forever. The knowledge that they achieved something so few people ever achieve – that goes a long way, in fencing and in life. It shapes how they see themselves and what they believe they’re capable of.

Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

FIE Cadet World Cups

This season the FIE introduced FIE Cadet World Cups that run in conjunction with FIE Junior World Cups. As of now these are weaker events since for most countries they are not designated for Cadets.

There are significant differences between the EFC and FIE events in almost everything. First, only 12 fencers can participate in the FIE World Cup. This is significantly lower than the 20 fencers allocation in the EFC events leading to less developmental opportunities. The other difference is that there is no team event in these World Cups and that’s a huge miss. As I wrote above, this is a huge opportunity for cadets to experience international fencing. 

And the third thing, maybe the most important, is location. Since the FIE Cadet World Cups are run in conjunction with FIE Junior World Cups, they are all over the world. For Americans this is less important than for Europeans, since both require similar travel. However, for Europeans this is a huge disadvantage. To attend the EFC Cadet events the European fencers hop in the car or on the train and can attend competition with extremely low cost and time constraint, especially for the tournaments in Central Europe, the situation changes if they need to fly to Asia or South America. Fewer fencers will have a possibility to attend the FIE World Cups, thus reducing the quality of such for all attendees, including Americans. 

So while at the first glance it looks like a good idea to have FIE Cadet World Cups, a deeper examination of them points to more disadvantages than advantages. 

Cadet Zonal Championships

Four continental zones hold Cadet Zonal Championships: Pan-American, European, African, and Asian-Oceanic. These happen around late February or early March, about one month before the World Championships. They’re held in conjunction with Junior Zonal Championships.

Format differences:

Most Zonals feature both individual and team events. The Pan-American Zonal is the exception – for some reason, it adopted the World Championship format for cadets, offering only individual competition with no team event.

Unlike the World Cups, only top 4 fencers represent their nation at Zonals.

The prestige question:

For most countries in the world, Cadet Zonals are nearly equivalent to Worlds in importance. It’s a source of enormous national pride. In the USA, it’s treated differently. Our top-ranked cadets rarely attend this event, making it effectively a second-tier competition here. One of the reasons (or maybe it’s the major one) is that the points don’t matter for World’s Team Selection.

I think that’s wrong. Zonals should matter more to American fencers than it currently does. Representing your country at a continental championship is a significant honor, regardless of who else attends.

Cadet World Championships

This is the pinnacle – the most prestigious cadet event in the world, crowning world champions in each weapon. Only the top 3 fencers per country (not 4 like in Zonals!) represent their nation at Cadet Worlds. 

Unfortunately there is only individual competition in the Cadet World Championship.

When and where:

Held in conjunction with Junior World Championships, typically in April. The format in recent years has been three events per weapon over three consecutive days. For example: Junior Men’s/Women’s Epee (Day 1), Cadet Men’s/Women’s Epee (Day 2), Junior Team Men’s/Women’s Epee (Day 3).

The experience:

World Championships is a massive production. Opening ceremony with parade of nations, performances, opening and closing remarks from FIE and local dignitaries. Closing ceremony where the hosting city passes the torch to next year’s host. For example, 2025 was in Wuxi, China, and they passed the torch to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for 2026.

What USA Fencing provides:

For World Championships, the federation pays for everything – travel, accommodation, food. They provide substantial support: medical staff, armorers, physical therapists, coaching staff, team leader. The athletes are extremely well-supported.

My son qualified last year for the World Championships. It was an exceptional experience – a real celebration of fencing with a fantastic sense of team support throughout. The infrastructure around the team made it memorable beyond just the competition itself.

The Competitive Value

What does international competition give your cadet fencer?

They fence styles they’ve never seen before. Fencers from different countries fence differently from each other and from Americans. Every country has its own fencing culture, and your fencer gets to absorb all of it.

Fencers experience what it means to be on a team representing their country. That USA on their uniform isn’t just decoration – it’s responsibility, pride, and connection to every fencer who’s worn it before them.

They learn what high-level international competition feels like before the stakes get even higher in junior and senior fencing. They get comfortable in that environment when they’re still young enough to just enjoy it.

And they come home different – more confident with world level experience behind them. They share stories about fencing in Budapest or Warsaw or Grenoble, they befriend fencers from other countries, and they acquire a broader understanding of what fencing is and can be.

Some of them come home with medals. Some come home having learned hard but invaluable lessons about competition at this level.

And all of them are longing to go back, to do better next time, to prove something, and that’s what drives improvement and turns a good cadet fencer into an exceptional junior fencer.

What’s Next

In the next post, I’ll cover Junior international competition – where things get more serious, the stakes get higher, and the competition structure becomes significantly more complex.

Junior competition marks the beginning of the full FIE competitive circuit, with World Cups that build international rankings, qualifying systems for major championships, and results that start mattering for senior fencing.

For now, if you’re a parent of a cadet fencer wondering about international competition, I hope this helps you understand what these events actually are and the incredible opportunity they represent for young fencers who’ve earned their spot on the travel team.