About us

SAMBO International Federation (FIAS) is a non-governmental public non-commercial organisation, uniting national SAMBO federations. FIAS is the only recognised international organisation being in charge of the development of SAMBO in the world. 

FIAS has almost a 30-year history. The full name of the organisation originally stated the “International Amateur Federation of SAMBO” (FIAS (Fr.) – Federation Internationale Amateur de SAMBO). By the example of many international sporting organisations the word “Amateur” was removed from the name of the Federation in 2011, however, the FIAS abbreviation remained unchanged.

During the whole period of its existence FIAS has been carrying out serious work thanks to which people in more than 80 countries on all the planet’s continents became the fans of SAMBO. Every year the increasing number of countries establishes even more sections and clubs as well as holds national championships in SAMBO.

In the absolute majority of countries developing SAMBO there function national federations being members of FIAS. They get extensive support from our organisation, in this respect the recognition of all the national federations by the National Olympic Committees of the respective countries is at present one of the key priorities of FIAS.

Every year more than 30 major SAMBO competitions are held at the international level under the aegis of FIAS. The most important ones among them are the World Championship as well as the World Championship among Juniors and Youth. Furthermore, SAMBO is included into the official program of the World Martial Arts games SportAccord and the World Summer Universiade 2013 on par with Olympic sports.

International success of SAMBO over the recent decades conclusively proves that this combat sport has a promising future. Such achievements allow setting an ambitious goal for SAMBO: to become an Olympic event. That’s why it is so indicative that the FIAS headquarters is located in Swiss Lausanne - the city called the Olympic capital of the world.

It is also worth mentioning that the International Federation of SAMBO is even now a full-fledged member of such international organisations as SportAccord, TAFISA (Association for International Sports for All) and WADA (World Anti-Dote Agency). It should be particularly mentioned that the conduction of the anti-dote policy is an extremely important part of FIAS’s work which the organisation pays close attention to.

The development of mass media’s interest to SAMBO promotes the increase of popularity of this kind of sport as well as the increase of viewing audience at the competitions. FIAS closely interacts with AIPS (International Sports Press Association), as well as EBU (European Broadcast Union). All the official competition events of FIAS always hit the headlines.

International Federation of SAMBO constantly carries out different projects and programs on the development of this combat sport. The workshops and other training events among them should be especially mentioned. In addition, FIAS strives for the development of all possible SAMBO trends: for children and youth, men and women, oldsters and handicapped people, for special services/intelligence agencies, as well as fitness-SAMBO and beach SAMBO.

The activities of FIAS are directed to the major distribution of SAMBO all over the world and promotion thereof, as well as attraction of a bigger number of like-minded people under the banner of this combat sport. After all, SAMBO, the abbreviation of which stands for “self-defense without weapon”, is not alone engrossing kind of sport but also the useful-in-everyday-life one.