2025 has been a banner year for Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), as the sport rapidly grows and more opportunities are available for athletes in the professional grappling scene. We’re going over some of the best performances and top milestones of the year, as we unveil the winners of the 2025 BJJ Awards here at MMA Mania.
Following up on our Submission of the Year, Event of the Year and Breakthrough Grappler of the Year awards, our fourth category tackles the best promotions of 2025.
There are quite a few top notch BJJ organizations currently running shows, but this award won’t necessarily reflect the biggest or best promotion overall, and we will instead highlight which had the most impactful year in 2025.
3. Polaris
Polaris has been running pro BJJ events for over a decade now, and while many in the US may still (literally?) sleep on this European promotion, they have a clear case for collectively putting on the most entertaining grappling cards in the past year.
Much like CJI, Polaris focused more on team grappling in 2025, but their trademark “Squads” format arguably produced more entertainment with rules that tried to eliminate the common draws and stalling seen in Quintet/CJI style cards. After running through the gauntlet throughout the year, Team Europe ended up winning the Polaris Squads tournament last November, with a stacked roster led by the likes of Mateusz Szczecinski and Jozef Chen.
Outside of those stacked tournaments, Polaris’ super-fights also had a good balance that featured some of the top pound-for-pound champions in the world like Ffion Davies, Helena Crevar, and emerging talent around Europe.
Apart from all those fun cards, Polaris also moved from UFC Fight Pass to FloGrappling in 2025, which has big ramifications on the professional BJJ landscape. Polaris had a pretty great 2025, but we will quickly see the fruits of that new partnership in 2026, as they’re set to have a Polaris vs. WNO Squads event at the end of January.
CJI only holds one event per year, but it was still massive enough to land in this spot on the list.
CJI 2 may not have reached the heights of their inaugural card in terms of impact and entertainment, but it was still by far the best and highest paying event of the year. CJI’s first two cards have already done so much for BJJ and its athletes, and sustaining their annual presence will only further cement their place among the most important promotions in the sport.
That being said, this is an award that solely looks at an organizations’ overall efforts in 2025. So while CJI 2 easily earned our award for Best BJJ Event of 2025, the top spot for promotion of the year belongs to a different organization — one that Craig Jones has been openly beefing with for months.
Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
1. Promotion of the Year: UFC BJJ
2025 kicked off the UFC BJJ rebrand and marked the MMA world leader’s bigger investment and far more serious entry into the sport. Borrowing key elements from CJI 1, UFC BJJ built a good product and used that UFC marketing machine to expose current champions like Mikey Musumeci and Andrew Tackett to new audiences.
While it’s fair to question their methods, controversial contracts and their end goals, seeing that their MMA arm arguably abused that monopsony power for years, UFC BJJ isn’t in a position to do that yet in jiu-jitsu.
If anything, it’s FloGrappling — with ADCC, IBJJF, WNO, and now both CJI and Polaris — that currently holds majority of the power in the sport, making UFC BJJ’s entry a welcome addition and another great option for professional grapplers.
We still don’t know how much more they’ll invest in BJJ to sign more top level talent to complement Musumeci and Tackett and to rival FloGrappling. That said, competition is always good for the athletes, as having more options and more organizations battling for their services will only improve purses.
They’re certainly not perfect, but UFC BJJ made huge waves with their four events in 2025, which nets them our BJJ Promotion of the Year award. Much like how CJI 1 completely disrupted the sport and accelerated the growth of BJJ’s fanbase in 2024, UFC BJJ’s entry in 2025 provided a similar catalyst that drew more eyeballs to jiu-jitsu.
MMA Mania’s 2025 BJJ Awards:
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