The Academy
Byron Bay’s home of jiu-jitsu.
The Academy Byron Bay started with a journey that shouldn’t have been possible. Thalison Soares grew up in the Brazilian Amazon, a world away from a jiu-jitsu mat. He went on to become a Black Belt IBJJF World Champion, and instead of building his career in one of the world’s established jiu-jitsu hubs, he brought it here: to Byron Bay, a place with no elite BJJ scene at all. That’s the whole idea behind The Academy, not importing a franchise, but building something real from the ground up, in a place that needed it. Today, The Academy is home to over 700 students across all ages and levels from first-timers on the mats for the first time to competitors training at a world-championship standard. People don’t just train here because it’s local. Students travel from across Australia and from around the world to be part of this academy which has made Byron Bay, of all places, a reference school for jiu-jitsu on the international stage. What hasn’t changed is the reason it exists: to give people in this community access to the same level of coaching, culture, and competition pathway you’d find anywhere in the world while also giving the wider jiu-jitsu world a reason to come here. This is a place people choose to travel for. What keeps them coming back is the same thing that built it in the first place: discipline, community, and the belief that showing up every day is what actually changes people, on and off the mat. Led by a World Champion. Built for everyone.
Coaching that meets you where you are, not a one-size lesson plan. From your first class to your hundredth, our coaches teach to the person in front of them.
Kids, adults, competitors, NoGi specialists every level has its own path here, not a one-size funnel. We take kids from their very first class through to high-level competitors. Adults get the same standard, a real foundation built for the lifestyle and the community, with Pro Training there for anyone who wants to compete. NoGi isn’t a side option it’s its own program, built for the sport it actually is.
VISITING TA
The Academy has become one of those Byron Bay places people build a trip around training partners fly in from across Australia and all over the world. Here for a week or a season, the mats are open.
Multiple times a year we bring world champions and elite coaches onto our mats for camps and seminars open to every level, the kind of instruction you’d otherwise have to fly to Brazil, the US, or Europe to get.
This isn’t a jiu-jitsu school that happens to be in a beach town Byron Bay is part of the pitch. Beaches, hinterland, a slower place to live and a faster place to train. Local or visiting, you’re training somewhere people plan holidays around, with coaching that holds up anywhere in the world.
