World Beard and Moustache Championships
The first World Beard and Moustache Championship was held in 1990 in Höfen-Enz, Germany.
The event was organized by the First Höfener Beard Club, one of about a dozen beard and mustache fraternities in Germany today. The club sponsored a second championship in 1995.
Since then the competition has grown into a biennial event hosted by beard and mustache clubs mostly in Germany, Sweden, and Norway.
The whiskered compete in 17 officially sanctioned categories: 8 styles of mustache, 4 varieties of partial beard/goatee, and 5 appellations of full-beard.
Styles range from the historic (musketeer, Wild West, imperial) to the biographical (Fu Manchu, Garibaldi, Verdi). The truly weird fall into the freestyle categories.
While a few of the hirsute compete au naturel, most rely on sprays, mousses, and waxes—not to mention blow-dryers, combs, picks, brushes, scissors, or curlers—to stay in championship form.
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