Quick answer
A martial arts logo has to be stitched onto a gi patch, printed across a rash guard, set at the top of a grading certificate and hung behind the ring on fight night. Our £129 logo includes every layout (horizontal, stacked and icon-only), so a karate dojo, BJJ academy, MMA gym or boxing club can brief the patch maker, the kit printer and the app developer from the same master files.
This page is for clubs that teach a combat sport or a martial art, from a Saturday kids’ karate class in a school hall to a full-time MMA gym with its own cage. If you run a general gym or a strength studio, our page on logos for gyms and fitness studios fits you better. Here members wear your badge on their bodies, earn it rank by rank, and carry it into other clubs’ halls at every competition.
Dojo, academy, gym or boxing club?
Every discipline has its own culture, and members often notice when a badge borrows the wrong one. A karate crest that looks like a cage-fighting brand worries parents; a jiu-jitsu patch that looks like a children’s swimming badge loses the adults.
| Club | Where the logo works hardest | What to plan for |
|---|---|---|
| Karate, taekwondo and other traditional arts | Chest badge on the gi, grading certificates, licence and syllabus cards | A compact crest that keeps its shape when embroidered at palm size |
| Brazilian jiu-jitsu | Back and sleeve patches, ranked rash guards, the academy belt bar | A set of patches in different sizes, all drawn from one mark |
| MMA and kickboxing | Fight shorts, walkout tees, cage and corner banners | A heavy wordmark for waistbands and a simple icon for the cage post |
| Amateur boxing | Club vest, coaches’ tracksuits, the club show poster | Club colours that do not clash with the red and blue corners |
| Children’s martial arts schools | Belt certificates, stickers, membership cards, the parents’ group | Friendly enough for a six-year-old, serious enough for the instructor |
The gi patch and the academy back
In jiu-jitsu the patch is the brand. Members tend to buy the academy gi or sew patches onto their own, and they wear them at open mats and competitions all over the country. If your students compete under IBJJF rules, its uniform page says patches may only be fixed in the authorised regions of the gi shown in its rules book, should be cotton and properly seamed, and will be removed by the gi inspectors if they are unseamed or in the wrong place. It also says painted gis are forbidden unless the paint takes the form of an academy or sponsor logo.
What it means for your logo: draw the patches as a family, one for each region of the gi your students’ rules allow, rather than one badge shrunk to three sizes:
- The back patch carries the stacked logo and is the one spectators read across a hall.
- Sleeve and shoulder patches carry the icon alone, because a patch a few centimetres wide cannot hold lettering.
- The trouser patch is a short word or the icon, sitting on curved fabric that creases as soon as someone moves.
Woven and embroidered patches fill in fine detail, so thin outlines, small text and gradients need to go. Traditional arts work the same way on a smaller scale: many clubs sew a single badge on the chest, and that badge is often the only place a student ever sees the club’s mark. A patch maker will ask for vector artwork and thread references, and our embroidery and signage logo guide lists exactly what to send.
Boxing vests, corner colours and the club sash
Amateur boxing has a rule that should shape the club colours before anyone draws a logo. England Boxing’s Technical and Competition Rules 2026 say no boxer may wear a red vest while boxing from the blue corner, or a blue vest from the red corner. If the waistband of the shorts is the same colour as the rest, a red, blue or white sash must be worn to mark the waistline.
What it means for your logo: unless every boxer will own a second vest, build the club colours around a pair that is neither red nor blue, such as black and gold, and keep a one-colour version of the logo that stays readable on vest fabric above the sash.
The same rule book sets minimum dress for coaches at its competitions: a T-shirt, polo shirt or tracksuit, with vests and singlets on the prohibited list. What it means for your logo: your coaches stand in the corner for every bout, so the club icon belongs embroidered on their polos and tracksuit tops, the kit the rules allow in the corner.
Rash guards, fight shorts and sublimated kit
No-gi and MMA kit is usually printed by sublimation, which means full colour all over and artwork that runs across seams and side panels. That freedom tempts clubs into busy designs; the logo is what keeps a busy rash guard recognisable as yours.
Ranked rash guards are the real test. Where an academy sells a rash guard in each belt colour, the same logo has to sit on white, blue, purple, brown and black. What it means for your logo: a version that switches cleanly between white and black covers all five belt colours without five colour schemes.
On fight shorts the horizontal logo usually runs along the waistband or down one leg, and the icon goes on the opposite hip, where it stays visible when the fighter turns side-on to the camera.
Many clubs now sell kit through short pre-order windows rather than holding stock. What it means for your logo: the master file carries fixed thread and ink references, so this term’s hoodie badge matches last term’s whichever printer runs the drop; this workwear and merch design guide sets out how.
Belts, grading certificates and the syllabus card
Gradings are where children’s clubs build loyalty, and every grading produces paper. The certificate carries the stacked logo at the top, the student’s name, the grade, the date and the instructor’s signature, with your association’s mark beside it where the association allows. Parents frame these, so they deserve the full-colour version on decent card.
Belts are a narrower canvas. A belt end is only a few centimetres wide, so club names embroidered there need the horizontal wordmark in a single thread colour with generous letter spacing. Syllabus cards, stripe tape, membership cards and the grading sticker on a child’s licence book all take the icon, which is why it has to read at the size of a thumbnail. For a kids’ class, a friendly character can sit alongside the main badge on stickers and certificates; our page on mascot logos explains how to keep a mascot as a second mark rather than the logo itself.
Fight night: banners, walkouts and the poster
A club show or an inter-club event puts your logo in front of more strangers in one evening than a month of social posts. Plan for:
- The corner and cage banners, which take the horizontal logo large enough to read from the back row and in the background of every fight photo.
- Walkout tees and hoodies for the team, with the stacked logo on the back where the crowd sees it as the fighter walks to the ring.
- The event poster and fight-week graphics, where your mark sits beside the promoter’s and the sponsors’ logos and must not disappear among them.
Local businesses often sponsor kit and shows. Agree a clear space around your logo before a sponsor’s artwork arrives, so a bigger company’s mark never crowds yours off your own banner. When a show date is set, a matching poster and banner set from our poster and banner design costs £89.
Beyond fists, dragons and the yin-yang
Combat sports logos fall into a few well-worn routes. Each can work, but each needs a reason:
- Clenched fists and boxing gloves are on nearly every boxing gym’s window. A stronger route draws the club’s initial from something only boxers notice, such as the ring ropes or a corner post.
- Dragons, tigers and samurai bring fine detail that embroidery loses, and they can look borrowed. A single strong silhouette works better, and only when it connects to the club’s name or lineage.
- Japanese or Chinese characters need checking by a fluent reader before they go on a hundred gis. Get the meaning and the stroke order confirmed first.
- Flames, barbed wire and skulls date quickly and put off the parents who pay for most junior memberships. A heavy, condensed wordmark looks tougher for longer.
What £129 puts on the mat
Our Logo Design costs £129 with all layouts included. The horizontal version goes on cage banners, the website header and the waistband of fight shorts; the stacked version takes the back patch, walkout tees and grading certificates; the icon covers sleeve patches, belt bars, the booking app avatar and the coaches’ polos. A single-colour version handles vests and ranked rash guards, a 3D mockup lets you see the badge before anything is stitched, and the pack holds every file format a patch maker, embroiderer or sublimation printer is likely to want. We keep drawing until the club is happy: concepts are unlimited, so are revisions within your brief, and the copyright passes to you on delivery. Banner, poster and website prices are listed on our pricing page.
Switching over between gradings
Launch a new badge at a grading, not halfway through a term: every student who moves up a belt that day takes home a certificate, and a patch if you issue one, in the new design, so the change spreads without anyone being asked to buy anything. Let existing members keep the old patch until their gi needs replacing, order junior kit first because children outgrow it fastest, and swap the corner banner and coaches’ polos before the next show so photos carry the new mark from the start. First concepts reach you within 48 hours of your completed brief, and customers rate us 4.8/5 Excellent. A grading day makes the best launch date, so order your martial arts club logo at least a month before the next one and leave the patch maker time to sample.
