History of Kendo in Ukraine

An overview of how kendo developed in Ukraine. Since 2026, the majority of clubs and kendoka have organized under the Ukrainian Kendo Association (UKA).

Interest in kendo in Ukraine began to grow in the late 1990s. Informal clubs appeared in cities including Donetsk, Lviv, Kharkiv, and Kyiv, even before a stable national structure or regular access to experienced instructors was in place.

In September 2006 the Kyiv Kendo Federation (KKF) was officially registered. Its president was Godai Hiroki sensei, a Japanese kendoka holding 3rd dan. That same month, together with the Embassy of Japan in Ukraine, the federation held the first All-Ukrainian Tournament for the Cup of the Ambassador of Japan — with a seminar and grading, and with more than forty kendoka from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Lviv, Mukachevo, and Sevastopol.

Through the following years the Kyiv federation linked clubs across Ukraine, ran instructor seminars, and continued the Ambassador Cup series. In December 2009 a nationwide federation was registered on that foundation. In spring 2011 Ukraine joined the European Kendo Federation (EKF), which opened the way to official European seminars, competitions, and dan examinations.

From 2010 to 2021 the community held annual tournaments and international seminars, often with Japanese instructors. The Ambassador Cup remained the main national gathering. New series appeared as well — among them the Open Black Sea Cup (Alushta 2010, Sevastopol 2012, organized with Sevastopol club Kensei) — and clubs kept competing at the Kharkiv Cup and abroad. By 2011 kendo groups were active in many cities across Ukraine. In late 2010 a Sevastopol kendoka took first place at the Open European Naginata Cup in Mainz — reported at the time as Ukraine’s first naginata award at that level.

By the beginning of the full-scale war, the Federation had over 200 active members.

In 2024, the Ukrainian Kendo Federation was officially accepted as a full member of the International Kendo Federation (FIK), marking a major milestone in the international recognition of Ukrainian kendo.

A central part of this story is the national team. In 2010, Ukraine was represented at the European Kendo Championships for the first time, and the team has competed at European level regularly ever since — including through the years of the full-scale war. In 2024 the team reached the World Kendo Championships in Milan for the first time, and in 2025 Yevheniia Kulyk won Ukraine's first-ever European Championship medal, taking third place in the individual division in Leiden.

In 2026 the majority of clubs and kendoka in Ukraine established the Ukrainian Kendo Association (UKA). The Federation had begun as a compact organization with individual membership. As the number of clubs grew and coordination, competitions and day-to-day work outgrew that form, the community carried that work into the Association — with more democratic decision-making and with open, transparent processes built for a larger scale and for present-day ways of working together.