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Jogo do Pau

Portugal’s art of the staff.

A Portuguese martial art fought with a long wooden staff. It grew in the mountains of northern Portugal, where it was used for self-defence and to settle disputes, and it is still taught in clubs today.

Fact file

Country
Portugal
Type
Weapons
Sources: Federação Portuguesa de Jogo do Pau · Joaquim António Ferreira, "Arte do Jogo do Pau" (1886)

History

Jogo do pau is Portugal's traditional stick-fighting art. It comes from the rural north — Minho and Trás-os-Montes — where men carried a long wooden staff for work, travel and settling disputes at fairs and pilgrimages.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was taught in Lisbon's gymnastic clubs, and masters wrote it down: Joaquim António Ferreira published "Arte do Jogo do Pau" in 1886, and Frederico Hopffer wrote on it in the 1920s. Today it is taught in clubs in Portugal and abroad, with its own federation.