Karate competition and mats

[Shizentai]

I believe that depends on the location and organizers. Some use it and some don't. I'm not sure as to when it started however.

Most Competitions are regulated by governing bodies such as the JKA, JKF, WKO, WKA and WUKO etc. It does stipulate the use of mats etc in the terms and conditions of their Kumite Rules including sizes etc.

Also I believe that it is a general requirement from an insurance point of view that mats of some discription are used.

We are JKA, but we don't use mats for our regional qualifiers such as below:

It works out fine, the only real problem is due to the floors already being striped, it can be difficult to find the edge of the ring at times. For that reason, I think most of JKA favors either wooden floors or this white/blue/white mat for their big competitions, national and international:

[evergrey]

I haven't seen any Kyokushin tournaments that did not have some kind of mat, though there may well be some... since we fight knockdown and rendering one's opponent unconscious is one potential goal, but killing them and very seriously permanently damaging them is not, I think that mats are prudent. OSU!

[wmac67]

I think people are answering the question as they go along. From my own regional knowledge and experience any tournaments that are WKF sanctioned or run by associations that follow WKF rules for tournament will have mats (usually of the puzzle mat style). The mats are now all blue with the exception of the jogai strip (out of bounds) which is red. However, even though these clubs might be a member of a State or Provincial association which follows WKF rules, they may have style or organization tournaments (ISKF, JSKA, etc) that do not necessarily follow the WKF methodology or rules and may not have mats.