Jozef Chen has weighed in on the debate surrounding ADCC 2026’s move to Poland…

Pushing back against criticism from fans unhappy that the tournament is no longer being held in the United States.

Chen explained that he is already familiar with both Poland and the host city of Kraków:

I’ve been to Kraków. I’ve been to Kraków multiple times, the city that is hosting ADCC.
I’ve been to Poland. I did my trials in Poland, all this type of stuff.

The conversation then shifted toward the criticism he has seen online since ADCC announced its return to Europe:

I’ve seen the Simple Man. They’re just complaining that it’s in Europe. I don’t know.

Part of me is like, ah, Americans, you know.
I’m like, bro, you can go to other parts of the world.

Chen also rejected the idea that hosting ADCC outside of the United States represents a major departure from tradition:

ADCC before, they weren’t always in one place. There was I believe 2017 was in Helsinki. Before that they had an ADCC in Beijing.
They had ADCCs before, it was everywhere.

So I don’t necessarily view it as a change.
I view it as a return to what they were doing before.

The discussion later turned to the 2017 ADCC World Championship in Helsinki.
Although Chen did not attend the event himself, he referenced reports he has heard about the atmosphere:

The one in Helsinki in 2017, apparently it was dead. Like, there was very few people. Obviously, I wasn’t there, so I can’t vouch for what it was like and so on.
But apparently the Vegas ones were pretty crazy.

Despite that, Chen believes the global grappling landscape has changed significantly over the past decade:

It’s been like 10 years since the 2017 ADCC almost. So you can think that maybe grappling has evolved elsewhere…

Poland is probably one of the biggest grappling countries in Europe. They have an IBJJF world champion. This is pretty big.

They have two now (IBJJF World Champions). They have Paweł Jaworski and they have Adam Wardziński.

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