We are BMABA CIC
About Us
The British Martial Arts & Boxing Association (BMABA)
BMABA CIC is the UK’s leading independent martial arts association, championing safer, more inclusive and professionally led martial arts across the UK.
As a multi-award-winning, not-for-profit Community Interest Company, we support more than 100,000 members through a professional workforce of 6,500+ instructors, assistants and volunteers, spanning 200+ disciplines. We provide the governance, standards and safeguarding leadership of a national body, funded entirely by our own community and with every pound reinvested. We exist so martial arts can thrive at the grassroots, not just as a sport, but as a force for good in communities.
Our role is different.
We’re not a competition body, and we serve no single style. We work across every discipline to support instructors, empower clubs and raise sector standards, delivering bold campaigns, evidence-led reform, and social programmes that use martial arts to change lives. And in a sector with no statutory regulator, we hold ourselves to standards nobody requires of us: certified to both ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022 under UKAS accreditation, approved under Sport England’s Safeguarding Code in Martial Arts, and recognised in Parliament for our work.
Students & Participants
Instructors & Volunteers
Lessons Overseen Annually
For Instructors & Senseis
Do you run a club?
See how our future-focused, industry leading set of resources and tools could help you change the game at club level.
A Word From Our CEO, Giovanni
I started BMABA in 2012, at 20 years old, with £20. Nearly a quarter of that went on the domain name.
Nobody gave us a grant and nobody backed us, and honestly, looking back, I’m glad. It meant everything we built had to be paid for by being genuinely useful to instructors and clubs, one at a time. Fourteen years later that’s added up to more than 100,000 members and over £2.4 million generated and reinvested, and not a penny of it owed to anyone.
I grew up with nothing, and martial arts is the reason I’m here. BMABA exists so it can do the same for the next kid like me. That’s the whole job, and it’s still what gets me to the office early.
WHY WE'RE DRIVEN
We're pioneering a better way for UK martial arts to function.
With no statutory regulator, anybody can put on a black belt and call themselves an instructor, and the public has no real way to tell the difference.
We’ve been closing that gap since 2012, holding our instructors accountable to professional standards, safeguarding best practice and a code of conduct with real teeth. Today we operate the most sophisticated vetting and compliance systems of their kind anywhere in martial arts: live monitoring of insurance, DBS status, safeguarding and qualifications across our entire membership, checkable by anyone through our public National Register.
Together with our instructors, we’re proving what a properly run sector looks like, without waiting for anyone to mandate it.
Join Us
Run a club, and curious to see how we can help?
Its free to join BMABA CIC and you can access CPD, exclusive technology and expert support.
