Sumo wrestling is coming back to London.
The Grand Sumo Tournament, the sport’s top tier, will bring some of the world’s best sumo wrestlers to the Royal Albert Hall for a five-day event starting Oct. 15, 2025, the circuit’s first event in Britain since 1991.
That event nearly 34 years ago, at the same venue, was the professional organization’s first tournament outside Japan. Organizers from both Britain and Japan said they expected audiences to be as enthusiastic as they were three decades ago — maybe even more so.
“Back in 1991, the spectators were excited to watch sumo,” Nobuyoshi Hakkaku, the chairman of the Japan Sumo Association and the champion of the 1991 basho (Japanese for “tournament”), said at a news conference in London on Wednesday.
While he felt pressure to perform at the 1991 event, he said, he had been most nervous for the speech he had to deliver in English at the end of the tournament.
There have been other sumo tournaments outside Japan in recent decades, including in New York City in April. But those were not all organized by the Japan Sumo Association, the sport’s governing body in its home country, and not all of them featured wrestlers in Japan’s top division, which holds six official events per year.
Sumo is not only Japan’s national sport, it is an ancient tradition with religious roots that rests on strength, skill and discipline.
While the sport demands physical and mental strength, the rules are straightforward. Two wrestlers (“rikishi” in Japanese) fight in a clay-filled ring (or “dohyo”). Their goal is to push their opponent out of the ring or cause him to touch the ground with any part of his body other than the soles of his feet.
Organizers will spend the coming months educating modern British audiences on the ancient traditions of sumo as well as figuring out logistics for the event — how, for example, does one get tons of the right kind of clay for the ring to the center of the Royal Albert Hall?
More than 40 wrestlers from Japan, all of them men, will attend the tournament in October. While women are allowed to be sumo wrestlers, they are barred from competing professionally.
When asked whether it was time to allow women to compete, Mr. Hakkaku said he could not comment on the matter but mentioned religious aspects of the sport’s ceremonies as a reason.
“Our job is to celebrate hundreds of years of heritage and history,” said Donagh Collins, the chief executive of Askonas Holt, a management and promotion company that is sponsoring the event. But, he added, there was still work to be done in “bringing the sport into today’s world.”
Over time, the sport has not changed, but its competitors have. A sport so intrinsic to Japan’s history and culture underwent a seismic shift in the 1990s, when wrestlers from elsewhere, including Hawaii and Mongolia, began dominating the elite levels.
London is a natural place to bring sumo, Mr. Hakkaku said through a translator, because it is a city steeped in tradition that appreciates preserving history.
“It became an iconic moment for us in 1991,” said James Ainscough, the chief executive of Royal Albert Hall, adding that having sumo in London “felt right.”
In the 1991 tournament, he said, sumo “found its home away from Japan.”
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