Five Las Vegas Kids Are Headed to the ADCC Youth World Championship

The 2026 ADCC Youth World Championship lands in Austin on August 9 with well over 200 invited grapplers, and five of them train at one Las Vegas gym. Here's what the event actually looks like, and why the local pipeline matters.

A youth grappling stage built like the real thing

ADCC has spent the last two decades building a reputation as the toughest no-gi tournament an adult grappler can enter. This August, the organization runs its youth version of that same stage. The 2026 ADCC Youth World Championship is scheduled for August 9 in Austin, Texas, and as of the latest count from FloGrappling's running invite tracker, 229 athletes have been invited across age brackets from 7-8 all the way up to 15-17, split by gender.

That is not a small regional bracket. It is a genuine world championship with an invitation-only field, which means every kid who steps on the mat in Austin already beat out a stacked pool just to get the invite in the first place.

The Las Vegas connection

Five of those invited athletes share the same home gym. Jaxson Hollis (boys 9-10), Alexandria Kanis (girls 11-12), Micah Kobe Caliboso and Nakoa Navarro (both boys 15-17) and Nichole Weaver (girls 15-17) are all listed on the official invite roster training out of 10th Planet Las Vegas.

Landing five separate invites out of one academy, spread across three different age brackets and both genders, says something about how deep the youth program at that gym runs. It is not one standout kid catching a lucky bracket. It is a pipeline, the kind that only shows up when a room has enough mat time, enough coaching attention and enough kids pushing each other week after week.

How a kid actually gets an invite

The invitation process runs on two tracks. The first is a set of regional Youth Trials, held separately on the East Coast and West Coast in the United States plus a Brazil trial, with roughly eleven spots per division up for grabs at each. The second track is points accumulated from medal finishes at ADCC-sanctioned Opens across the 2025-2026 season, the same kind of regional qualifiers that feed the adult ADCC World Championship pipeline.

That structure matters because it means an invite to Austin is not a participation trophy. A kid either won through at a trial against a regional field, or built up ranking points across multiple tournaments over more than a year. Either path takes consistent training, not a single good weekend.

What the mat looks like on fight day

ADCC's opens run no-gi only, and the youth divisions follow that same format with a modified version of the adult scoring rules, plus tighter safety restrictions on some of the more dangerous leg attacks and certain neck cranks for the younger brackets. It is still a submission-first environment, just one built with a growing body in mind.

For a family watching from Las Vegas, the appeal of an event like this is less about any single match result and more about what it says is possible. A kid who started white belt no-gi classes a couple of years ago winning an invitation to compete on the same kind of stage ADCC built for its adult champions is a concrete example of where consistent training can actually lead.

The 5 Las Vegas names on the ADCC Youth Worlds roster

All five train out of 10th Planet Las Vegas and are listed on the official 2026 ADCC Youth World Championship invite roster.

1. Jaxson Hollis: Competing in the boys 9-10 division, one of the youngest brackets on the card.
2. Alexandria Kanis: Invited in the girls 11-12 division.
3. Micah Kobe Caliboso: One of two Las Vegas invitees in the boys 15-17 bracket, the oldest youth division.
4. Nakoa Navarro: Also invited in the boys 15-17 division alongside Caliboso.
5. Nichole Weaver: Rounds out the group in the girls 15-17 division.

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