Hi there,

We’re excited to officially welcome you to The BMABA Community – our new dedicated space for connecting instructors, clubs, and martial arts leaders across the country.

This is where you’ll find real-time updates, important announcements, peer support, and exclusive insights from our team—including direct posts from our CEO, Giovanni Soffietto.

Going forward, all future updates, news, and conversations will be shared inside the community. That means no more hunting through emails or scattered notices. Just one central hub for everything that matters to you and your club.

Whether you're looking to collaborate with fellow instructors, share your ideas, or stay in the loop—this is your space to do it.

👉 Access the community now via MyBMABA:
🔗 https://members.mybmaba.org.uk

See you inside!

Hi there,

We’re proud to announce that BMABA CIC — the British Martial Arts & Boxing Association — is now officially listed on the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) under registration number 10098149.

This milestone reinforces our commitment to developing nationally recognised, high-quality training pathways for instructors, clubs, and safeguarding leads operating within grassroots martial arts. It also positions us to further expand our educational provision, particularly in areas of safeguarding, coaching, and trauma-informed practice.

What Is The UKRLP — And Why Does It Matter?

The UK Register of Learning Providers is the Government's central portal for verified education and training providers. It is used by funding bodies, regulators, government departments, and employers to confirm that a provider is recognised and meets basic eligibility criteria to offer educational services in the UK.

Being listed as a verified learning provider offers a number of tangible benefits:

• It opens the door to developing Ofqual-regulated qualifications in the future.
• It strengthens our standing with bodies such as CIMSPA, Sport England, and the Department for Education.
• It builds trust and credibility when working with local authorities, schools, charities, and grant-giving bodies.

For our members, it confirms that BMABA CIC isn’t just a martial arts organisation — we are a serious, recognised educational provider working to professionalise standards across the sector.

Why This Matters For Grassroots Martial Arts

Independent martial arts clubs and instructors are often underserved when it comes to high-quality, relevant training and development opportunities. Many courses on the market are expensive, outdated, or not tailored to the unique needs of community clubs.

Our listing on the UKRLP is part of a wider mission to:

• Make sector-leading training accessible and affordable to all instructors — regardless of style or affiliation.
• Develop trauma-informed, safeguarding-led content that raises the bar across the industry.
• Enable clubs to demonstrate formal compliance with safeguarding and coaching expectations — especially when working with schools, charities, or commissioning bodies.
• Ultimately, protect more children and young people by ensuring better-trained, better-equipped instructors.

What’s Next?

This recognition comes at a pivotal moment for us.

• We’ve recently been accepted as members of Sported UK and the Association of Child Protection Professionals (AoCPP).
• We are undergoing ISO 9001 accreditation to formalise our internal processes and quality controls.
• Our Trauma-Informed Coaching Qualification is preparing for launch, setting a new national benchmark for emotional literacy and safeguarding awareness in martial arts instruction.
• We are also working through our CIMSPA Training Provider application, further aligning our standards with national frameworks in sport and physical activity.

Together, these steps form a cohesive strategy: to ensure that BMABA not only supports clubs in their day-to-day work, but also helps shape the future of martial arts instruction in the UK — through recognised qualifications, professional training, and sector-wide leadership.

We’re excited by what this listing enables us to build for our members, and for the martial arts community more broadly. But as always, our mission remains focused on the real-world impact: helping instructors deliver safer, more inclusive, and more effective martial arts coaching to those who need it most.

Thank you for your continued support as we continue to grow — not just as a licensing body, but as a national force for positive change in grassroots sport.

Hi there,

We’re blown away.

In just over two weeks, more than 2,714 people have taken part in our 2025 Great Martial Arts Survey – a phenomenal response, and more than enough to form a truly meaningful body of research into the state of martial arts across the UK.

We’ll be spending the coming weeks digesting and analysing the data, and we’ll be publishing the full findings – including specific deep dives – very soon. But already, it’s clear from our initial sample that the responses we’ve received are broadly representative of the UK population, using comparisons with census data. That means we’ve captured a powerful and accurate snapshot of our community.

But for us, the real story isn’t just in the stats – it’s in the emotional truth behind the numbers.

So many of you – instructors, students, parents – took the time to share your personal journeys. You spoke about the mental health battles, the struggles with identity, the trauma, the healing, and the growth. What you’ve told us is raw, real, and incredibly moving.

This survey proves what we’ve always known deep down: Martial arts changes lives.

It builds resilience, confidence, connection, and healing. It saves lives, too.

It’s time this was recognised, properly.
Recognition should mean:

🥋 More funding for grassroots clubs
📚 Better access to quality CPD for instructors
🏫 Greater support getting martial arts into schools and educational settings

As a CIC (Community Interest Company), BMABA will be championing this harder than ever over the coming months. The power of what we all do as a community must be seen, valued, and supported.

We’ll be sharing some of the incredible quotes and stories that have come in – keep an eye out. These voices deserve to be heard.

From all of us at BMABA – thank you. You’ve helped us start a conversation that could reshape the future of martial arts in the UK.

Watch this space for the full findings!

Hi there,

We're really pleased to unveil our BETA community events board.

The idea? Simple. To create a single register of curated, quality events from right across the UK being run by our more than 6,500 registered clubs.

We'll approve each event before it goes into the community to ensure it's appropriate. It's then free for the poster and the attendee - we won't charge at any point for advertising an event, or for successfully bringing new people to it.

We hope it will help clubs connect and sharing opportunities to attend competitions, seminars, squad days and workshops within the community, without needing to await for any committees or executives to approve.

You can view all current events, and share any of your own future events for free, from https://mybmaba.org.uk/events

Hi there,

We’re incredibly proud to confirm that BMABA is now officially a Community Interest Company (CIC) — a powerful new chapter in our journey to support, protect, and uplift the martial arts community across the UK.

This move cements something we’ve always believed in: BMABA doesn’t exist to generate profit — it exists to make a difference.

Every resource, every programme, every advancement we’ve made is now legally protected and permanently aligned to benefit clubs, instructors, and students.

In 2024, BMABA Limited was valued by investors at £1.65 million. We made the conscious decision to turn down commercial investment — not because the value wasn’t real, but because our values mattered more.

Now, that value — and everything we’ve built together — belongs entirely to the community, within the community, for the benefit of the community.

This shift to a CIC means:

• Every surplus is reinvested back into member support and development.
• Our future will never be dictated by commercial shareholders or private owners.
• Our mission — to raise standards, improve access, and safeguard the future of martial arts — will always come first.

Our Founder, Giovanni Soffietto, said:
“This move secures our legacy. We’re building something that puts ethics before earnings — and ensures every member knows their association is here for them, not for profit. It’s in our DNA, and it’s in our logo: ‘To high places by narrow roads.’”

We want to thank every single member who has helped make this possible.

You are the reason we exist — and together, we’re just getting started.

For the community. For the future. For martial arts.

Hi there,

BMABA have always been clear from day 1 that we're keen to work with and support like-minded organisations. As an independent body focused on trying to bring about systemic improvements to the way martial arts is regulated, the standards to which clubs operate, and the safety under which students can access training, working as broadly as possible and having as many clubs as we can adopt our standards is hugely important.

As early as 2021 we've been working in a limited capacity with the likes of Sport England SCiMA (Safeguarding Code) and from there, a number of other NGBs and Pre-NGBs have, over the past twelve months in particular, come through to us looking to work in partnership.

As of March 2025, we have 9 NGBs, Pre-NGBs (those applying for NGB recognition) and NGO organisations using BMABA as an essential part of their licencing, safeguarding and membership provision.

This is huge. It helps BMABA influence the broader martial arts landscape in a profound and style agnostic way. It also helps our independent clubs benefit from an ever-better-recognised and respected brandname.

When an NGB or NGO comes to BMABA for a partnership, they're typically going to be offering a BMABA membership to their own members, as part of their membership provision. In almost all cases, that means the NGB or NGO is effectively outsourcing things like qualifications, training, safeguarding oversight and compliance to BMABA, so they can focus more on the 'on the mats' aspect of what they do (competitions, seminars, gradings and so on).

We think this is a great mutual benefit. BMABA grow bigger, benefit from increased revenue, influence a broader aspect of the martial arts industry and can then re-invest that growth into more qualifications, technology and resources. NGBs can also ensure their instructors are properly vetted and trained, and have access to the latest legislation and guidelines.

The net result is an industry working closer together on the stuff that matters - safeguarding, compliance, training, CPD, and so on - without diluting any aspect of unique or individual organisation identity.

If you're an independent BMABA instructor or club, these partnerships in no way impact or degrade the service or membership you have with us directly. If anything, it just rapidly helps us scale up the release of new courses, technology and tools.

It's a win, win, win for BMABA, NGBs/NGOs, and independent clubs. Best of all, it allows us to show a unified approach to best practice across our now 110,000+ growing membership base to the likes of Sport England and DCMS.

Hi there,

13 years ago when I first setup BMABA, it was done with the promise that we would remain politics free and transparent, no matter how big we got.

Today we sit with more than 100,000 members, significant revenue and numerous accolades to our name, all of which I am extremely grateful for.

The time has come for me to deliver on the promise made back in 2012 in a way which safeguards this for the next 13+ years of exciting growth that lie ahead.

It's for this reason, today we passed a resolution to convert BMABA to a CIC (Community Interest Company). Until now, whilst run as a not for profit (and being registered as a social enterprise) there would have been nothing to prevent myself or anybody else at board level reneging on this promise. With the conversion to CIC now signed, sealed and in the post to our solicitors for action with the Community Interest Regulator immediately thereafter, I'm pleased to confirm that promise is now legally binding into the future.

Our (soon to be) new CIC status doesn't change the day to day operations. I'll be remaining as CEO with my same brilliant team around me, but we'll benefit from the legal transparency that what we do is for the public interest - that being the interest and good of you, our loyal members.

We also hope to use this legal standing to win funding grants which we can inturn redirect to our clubs.

Nothing changes for you as a member; you don't need to take any action and nothing will be lost in terms of what we do, the team or anything else.

We just wanted to share this positive step forward with the community, so you're not surprised to see BMABA CIC pop up over the next few weeks.

Thank you!

Hi there,

We're really excited to announce an overhaul to our template document section. It's always been a heavy-traffic tool for our members, and the new Policy Creator enables you to select from more than 50+ policies, spanning everything from safeguarding policies and GDPR statements through to head injury management forms and contracts of employment.

Simply input a few key details, and the system will take care of producing in-depth, compliant policies. You can then edit in real-time to make sure it's fully customised and ready for your club.

Once you're done, you can save for later, or copy to clipboard (if you plan to take it to your own website, for example) or print directly from the same screen.

We hope this policy creator will make it even easier to have a comprehensive set of policies at club level, with the backing of BMABA's initial framework to ensure it is compliant and up to scratch.

You can find the policy creator here, as well as on the main menu in MyBMABA.

Hi there,

We're absolutely thrilled to confirm that BMABA are not an Approved Provider (#786494) with the CPD Group. We've now started the process of aligning and submitting all of our awards and qualifications to CPD Group for formal recognition and CPD approval.

Whilst the process may take several weeks, this is a huge step forwards in terms of ensuring BMABA's awards are widely recognised, and carry weight in the broader community.

Look out for the CPD Approved Logo on certification and courses in the near future, as we work to make our qualifications more accessible, professional and recognised.

Hi there,

Since 2022, BMABA have had a unique and industry leading Club Colours Licence. This licence has been regarded as the elite of the elite - the toughest and most thorough vetting process anywhere in UK martial arts.

As part of the high standards enforced by our Club Colours provision, this has afforded us to extend any BMABA club in receipt of 'the Colours' automatic recognition and certification through Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts (SCiMA) - the Sport England championed programme for safeguarding children in martial arts.

We realise the prior licencing and review process was far too manual, and far too slow. It was too difficult for clubs to see who and what was currently verified, and what was not. It was also almost impossible for our office team to provide a timely update or response, as it involved sifting through huge amounts of data as well as alot of manual entry.

Our all-new BETA Club Colours Dashboard is now accessible 'right out of the can' in MyBMABA. It provides realtime updates, a fully automatic and instantaneous refresh or issuance of the award, and visually stunning checks and balances.

Its our hope the Club Colours will become a much more widely adopted standard, with our BMABA School of Excellence badge awarded to those who hold the licence being fully respected for the huge privilege it is.

If you'd like to learn more about whats involved, and to get started, please head to the Club Colours Dashboard in MyBMABA.