- Would you rather compete in roach racing or making babies cry?
Everyone wants to be the best at something. Luckily, there are enough bizarre competitions in the world to ensure that each of us can have our crack at winning, no matter our specific skills.
Whether it’s a contest of wits, strength, endurance, or the ability to do multiple harebrained things at once, people just love to compete. Here are six examples of some of the weirdest contests and championships in the world.
1. Gravedigging
You might imagine that digging someone’s final repose is a solemn enough occasion that you wouldn’t compete about it. That’s not the case in Hungary, where the national gravedigging contest takes place.
More than a dozen two-man teams take part in the competition annually. The goal is simple: dig a Hungarian standard-sized grave (5.5 feet deep, 6.5 feet long, 2.6 feet wide) as fast as possible.
Looks don’t matter in this contest. The walls of the grave don’t have to be straight or neat as long as the dimensions match.
The morbid competition is organized by the Hungarian Association of Cemetery Maintainers and Operators, who want to promote the traditional gravedigging art and break taboos around death.
The winners of the 2026 competition were Robert Nagy and Laszlo Kiss, who finished their grave (well, not their own) in 1 hour and 21 minutes. They won about $640 for their effort.
2. Heavy Metal Knitting
The Finns must get really bored over their frigid winter because they’re way overrepresented with bizarre competitions. The country that introduced the world to competitive wife carrying, mobile phone throwing, and hobby horsing is now bringing you the Heavy Metal Knitting World Championships.
You don’t knit with potentially toxic metals, though. Instead, you’re supposed to put on your best performance of knitting while headbanging to hard-rocking metal.
While the competitors don’t need to finish an entire knitting project on stage, they must make tangible progress on something recognizable as a knitted piece. As they do say, they shall rock out as hard as possible for 1 minute.
Sadly, it seems this delightfully weird contest has come on hard times. The 2023 competition was canceled, and although the organizers announced a 2024 contest, there haven’t been any updates since.
3. Naki Sumo
Naki Sumo, or the Sumo Baby Crying Festival, brings together four centuries of cultural tradition and an utterly strange competition. Held on May 5, or the Japanese Children’s Day, Naki Sumo consists of sumo wrestlers gently cradling babies in their arms.
And then they attempt to make them cry as loudly as possible.
Two sumo wrestlers and babies enter the sumo ring, and the baby that cries first is the winner. The wrestlers may obviously not harm the babies, but they can employ various strategies, such as bouncing the baby, yelling loudly, or making scary faces.
Although the competition might seem weird, it’s rooted in a deeply held Shinto belief that the cries of innocent children drive away evil spirits. By making the babies cry in the sanctified sumo ring, the wrestlers hope to help them grow up healthy and strong.
4. Greased Palm Climbing
Climbing a palm tree is hard enough as it is. You really don’t need to add anything slippery to make it harder, but that’s what they do each year during Indonesian Independence Day.
As part of the celebration, people erect palm tree trunks and hang various rewards at the top. They will slather the trunks in grease and oil until they glisten in the sun.
At that point, the competitors are unleashed. They scamper up the slick trees either solo or as teams, utilizing various methods to not slide back down.
Once they reach the top, they can grab one of the rewards. They can range from household items to cash awards to motorcycles and even cars.
5. Cockroach Racing
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not handle cockroaches enough to make them race. That’s obviously not the case in Australia, which has hosted cockroach racing since 1982.
The revolting sport started in the Story Bridge Hotel in Brisbane as a way to prove that the area’s cockroaches were the fastest in all of Australia. I’m not sure why you’d boast about that, but it resulted in the first roach races.
The racing cockroaches are typically Madagascar hissing cockroaches, the largest of their kind in the world. They’re placed in the middle of a circular arena and released from their enclosures. The winner is the roach that first touches the edge of the field.
Do they catch the roaches as they run out of the ring, or do they let them just skitter off into the building?
6. Shin-Kicking
Combat sports are some of the most popular in the world, from boxing to MMA to wrestling. On the lesser-known but equally brutal end of the scale is shin-kicking.
This sport is played annually at the Cotswold Olympic Games in England. Two competitors grab each other by the collar and attempt to kick each other in the shins to throw the other off-balance. The winner is the one who scores two wins over three bouts.
Although the sport sounds like something a bunch of sauced-up blokes might invent on the way home from the pub, shin-kicking actually has centuries of tradition behind it. The first competition was held all the way back in 1612, when lawyer Rober Dover received King James I’s blessing to organize this local sporting event.
Interested in more bizarre competitions? Check out our previous lists of odd contests here and here.