The ADCC Submission Fighting World Championship is an international submission grappling competition, organised by the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC). ADCC is considered one of the most prestigious No-Gi submission grappling tournaments in the world, and is commonly referred to as The Olympics of Grappling. The inaugural tournament was held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, in 1998 and is held every two years. Host countries have included Brazil, China, Finland, Spain, the UK, and the US. Competitors can only participate after winning ADCC trials or by invitation.
The competition was created by Sheik Tahnoun Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the son of the former United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, together with his Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor Nelson Monteiro. Royler Gracie characterised this as the beginning of "the modern era of submission grappling". Thousands of submission grappling tournaments around the world use elements of the ADCC format and rule structure. To date, the great majority of ADCC champions have been black belts in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, which has the most similar rules to ADCC. However, there have been notable exceptions to this such as Americans Mark Kerr (collegiate and freestyle wrestling) and Jeff Monson (collegiate and freestyle wrestling), Russian Karimula Barkalaev (sambo, judo and MMA), Japanese Sanae Kikuta (judo/shoot wrestling), and South African Mark Robinson (judo, freestyle, Greco-Roman, and sumo wrestling), along with silver and bronze medalists such as Caol Uno (shoot wrestling), Mach Sakurai (shoot wrestling/judo), Aleksandr Savko (freestyle wrestling), Tito Ortiz (collegiate wrestling and MMA), Megumi Fujii (judo/sambo), Seiko Yamamoto (freestyle wrestling) and Nick Rodriguez (collegiate wrestling).
Mo Jassim took over as head organizer ready for ADCC 2019 and has since made sweeping changes to the organization. He announced that he had plans for adding more women's divisions and allowing reigning absolute champions to compete in weight-classes despite being booked for the main event superfight. It was announced in 2020 that for the first time in the competition's history, there would be more than two years between editions due to the setbacks suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 edition of the ADCC World Championships would then take place in 2022 instead, and would still be helmed by Jassim. After the success of the 2022 ADCC World Championship, it was announced that Jassim would return for the 2024 ADCC World Championship be the first person to operate as head organizer for three editions. The 2022 edition took place in front of 13,000 fans in attendance at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.
In January 2023, ADCC announced an exclusive multi-year streaming deal with UFC Fight Pass and left their previous broadcaster FloSports. Just three months later on April 27, 2023, ADCC announced that they would be returning to FloSports for the foreseeable future.
On June 25, 2023, it was announced that the following edition of the ADCC World Championship would include three women's weight classes, marking the first time since 2007 that there was more than two available. It was also later announced that this the 2024 ADCC World Championship would also be the first edition to include a women's absolute division since 2007. On July 17, 2023, head organizer Mo Jassim announced that there would be a children's version of the ADCC World Championship held for the first time during the 2024 edition of the tournament. In 2024 it will be held 17-18 August at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
At the end of 2021, ADCC was awarded with 'Promotion of the year' by media outlet Jitsmagazine at the 2021 BJJ Awards as a result of the trials events held that year and the introduction of the ADCC Hall of Fame.
In 2022, ADCC was awarded with 'Promotion of the Year' by Jitsmagazine at the 2022 BJJ Awards for the second year in a row, and the 2022 ADCC World Championships was awarded with 'Fight Card of the Year'.