Beard club prepares for world event in Pittsburgh
LIBERTY TWP, MERCER CO. — After years of a growing regional culture and appreciation of the act of “bearding,” Pittsburgh will host people and beards from around the world over the July 4 weekend for the World Beard and Moustache Championships.
Although there will be stiff competition in the different facial hair classes, divided into four main categories that make up the competition, the Western Pennsylvanians hosting the event are no slouches when it comes to bearding. The host group, the Mad Viking Beard Club Pennsylvania, has members from all over the region, including New York and Maryland, who plan to throw their facial fibers into the fuzzy fray.
Brandon “Party Viking” Barnes, president of the Mad Viking Beard Club Pennsylvania, said he and other members of the club have been going the extra mile when it comes to beard care for the past few months in the lead up to the world championships. While his own beard, which on May 10 extended from his lower lip to the center of his chest, has been a longtime resident of his face, Barnes said the main key to getting into bearding is just quitting shaving for a while.
“All we do is be lazy and not shave — and brush it once in a while,” Barnes joked.
Barnes said the Mad Viking Club formed around 2013. After a few years of meetings and members performing charity work, the club became a certified nonprofit in 2016, which Barnes said still is a surprising fact for people to learn. The main benefactor of the club’s fundraising efforts — including the World Beard and Moustache Championships — is UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.
“We operate like a VFW or Fire Hall — we vote in new officers to run the club every few years,” Barnes said. “People think we’re either a biker club or that we’re hipsters. A lot of people are shocked we do things for charity.”
Jason Sealand, founder of the Mad Viking Beard Club Pennsylvania, started the club through his business, Mad Viking Beard Company, after seeing the love of bearding growing in the region. The beard and mustache world championships take place every two years and locations alternate between the U.S. and abroad — the 2023 event took place in Burghausen, Germany, where Sealand said bearding has long been popular.
“It picked up in around 2011, it started growing over here,” Sealand said.
Sealand said the club joined the World Beard and Moustache Association in 2017, which is what has led the group to finally hosting the world championships this year.
The club regularly meets at locales around Western Pennsylvania, like Primanti Brothers restaurants and Big Rail Brewing in Mercer County, where members met Saturday, May 10, after doing litter pickup on nearby roads.
While several members of the group are unified by facial hair and their appreciation for it, charity and outreach are the main purposes of the club. Bill Steubing has been a member since 2019, and travels from Jamestown, N.Y., to take part in activities because it is the closest bearding organization to his hometown.
Steubing said he wasn’t aware of bearding as an activity until he came across the Mad Viking Beard Club, but was interested in getting involved because of the philanthropy and outreach the group does. The first outing he attended with the club was a cleanup, but not before giving his beard some extra time to grow to help make a good first impression.
“Six years ago, I joined when they were doing a road cleanup,” Steubing said. “I had more of a business beard, and I grew it out when I joined.”
The Mad Viking Beard Club has been in the thick of planning the world championships for almost a year, with Erin Neiper, the club’s secretary, building the event website in preparation for the event.
The World Beard and Moustache Championships has four categories — mustache, partial beard, full beard and craft beards — which each have different classes that people can compete in, depending on the length or type of facial hair they have. Classes range from “business beard,” which are beards “up to 1 centimeter, as appropriate for traditionally accepted, well-trimmed and professional style,” to “full beard freestyle,” which gives bearders a chance to make their facial hair into fun shapes and sizes to be judged. Classes also are separated into lengths; and there are classes for people age 60 and over.
Neiper said people who want to enter the competition can find their category with the help of the championships’ judges, who will place people into the competition that best fits their facial hair.
“We have a group who is going to prequalify everyone, and the experts will put them in the right categories,” Neiper said. “There are some variations, some categories are very close, but most people just qualify for one or the other.”
Neiper, herself, may not be able to grow a beard on her own, but she will be competing in the craft beard category, which has rules similar to the authentic beard and mustache categories, just for people who make beards out of different materials. Neiper said the event is seeing a lot of entries in these categories because women and children can compete in them.
“We’re actually offering more categories than normal,” Neiper said. “The reasoning is there is a larger community in the U.S., especially the craft categories. So we’re really highlighting those.”
Most of the rest of the members of the Mad Viking Beard Club are competing in more typical classes, where beards are judged based on length and volume. Other people will bring the creative beard shapes to the competition, but local members agreed keeping a beard in a certain shape is more trouble than it’s worth.
“It takes a lot of time and effort to get it to stay a certain way,” Steubing said.
The World Beard and Moustache Championships take place July 3 to 5 at Heinz Hall in Pittsburgh, but Barnes said bearded blokes likely will be seen all over the city through those days. The Mad Viking Beard Club will get to throw the first pitch at a Pittsburgh Pirates game July 2, the day before the event officially begins.
The organizers of the event also plan to attempt to break a Guinness World Record for most beards connected to one another, by having everyone with a beard link their beards together on the Roberto Clemente Bridge.
Jon “Toad” Hill, the club’s first officer, will be a judge for the competition — his first time getting to be on that side of the table.
Neiper said the club anticipates that up to around 3,000 people will attend the world championships.
Barnes said he hopes bringing the competition to Pittsburgh helps generate interest in not only bearding, but the charity work performed by the club and other bearding organizations around the world.
“I’d like to see more people get involved,” Barnes said. “It doesn’t have to be long enough or anything.”
Barnes said it is still slightly surreal to him that a club based in Western Pennsylvania is responsible for bringing people from around the world to Pittsburgh for a world championship event for people with facial hair.
“I've been the president of this club for six or seven years, and if you asked me seven years ago, that I would be asked to run a world event, I would have looked at you like you were crazy,” Barnes said.
For more information on the World Beard and Moustache Championships, visit its website at wbmc2025.com.
