Hello All, I thought due to the advent of the internet, by now I had heard of every odd, weird, funny,  strange, foreign and otherwise outlandish thing there was.  That was mistake, I present to you the official; World Beard and Mustache Championship!

That's right every 2 years teams from all over the world come together to compete in the World Beard and Mustache Championship.  The first known and directly traceable event was organized in 1995 by the First Höfener Beard Club in Germany.  In 1997 the competition was held in Trondeim, Norway  and in 1999 the Swedish Moustache club hosted the event in Ystad, Sweden.

There are currently 18 different competitive categories including the Natural Moustache, the Full Beard Freestyle, the Musketeer and the Imperial Partial Beard.  For more detailed information on the select categories, pictures as well as beard qualification descriptions are available online at the World Beard Championship website.  http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com/

Germany has historically dominated the event, however in 2009 with the competition being held in Anchorage, Alaska the US was able to dethrone Germany which had won overall since the beginning of the competition.  David Traver was crowned overall champion that year having styled his beard to resemble an Alaska snowshoe. 

In 2009 the US was able to capture 12 world championship titles of the 18 available.
This year's competition took place in Trondheim, Norway in the same building that the 2nd national competition took place at in 1997.  The competition was fierce with Germany taking the claim back as World Champions with 7 titles and the US was not far behind with 6.  Elmar Weisser of Germany won best in show with his Reindeer depiction.



The 2013 contest will be held in Stuttgart, Germany and 2015 will be hosted by Leogang, Austria.  Men if you have serious aspirations to ever win a World Beard Championship then you had better start preparing now.  I have included a few more pictures from championship caliber facial hair.  Please enjoy.

Karl-Heinze Hille, Germany, pose after winning the category of partial imperial beard.

Bill Mitchell, USA, winner of the sideburns category.

Wolfgang Schneider won in the category of natural mustache.

Jurgen Draheim, Germany, won in the category Musketeer.

Rooty Lundvall, USA, winner of the full natural beard category.

Nick Federoff Adrenaline Radio Host.