Hobby Horsing Around the World: Where the Sport Is Biggest and How to Find a Club

Hobby horsing is not evenly spread. In Finland it fills sports halls; in some countries it is three people and a group chat. If you are trying to find a club, a show or simply other riders near you, it helps to know what the scene actually looks like where you live. Here is the map as it stands, and the practical route to finding your way into it.

The short history, because it explains the map

The sport grew in Finland through the 2010s, largely among girls between about ten and eighteen who wanted competitive riding without the cost of a live horse. They made their own horses, wrote their own rules and ran their own shows. A documentary in 2017 pushed it into mainstream view, and it spread outward along predictable lines: first to the other Nordic countries, then to Germany and the Netherlands, then everywhere else.

That history is why the map looks the way it does. The further you are from Finland, culturally rather than geographically, the younger your local scene is likely to be. A rider in Estonia has clubs to choose from. A rider in Portugal is probably starting one.

Finland: the home ground

Everything starts here, and the level still does. The Finnish championships are the oldest in the world and the thirteenth edition ran in Seinäjoki in June 2026. Entries run into four figures, the show-jumping standard is the highest anywhere, and placing well in Finland is the benchmark result in the sport.

If you ride in Finland you have the easiest path of anyone: clubs in most regions, a packed calendar of qualifiers, and the national championships as the obvious season goal. If you ride anywhere else, Finnish competition footage is the best free coaching material available, because it shows you what correct gaits and a clean round actually look like.

Sweden, Norway and Denmark

The Nordic scene after Finland is the most developed in the world, and it is organised almost entirely through clubs and social media rather than through formal federations. Swedish riders search for käpphäst, Norwegians for kjepphest, Danes for kæphest, and each of those words will find you local groups, training days and second-hand horses faster than any English search will.

Practically: look for the local-language term plus the word for club or group, join whatever Facebook group comes up, and watch for training days before you look for competitions. Nordic clubs tend to run informal meets through the year and a handful of judged shows in spring and summer.

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

The German-speaking scene is large, well-organised and has its own vocabulary: the horse is a Steckenpferd and the sport is usually just called hobby horsing. Germany has national championships, an active club structure and a strong realistic-enthusiast culture, which is part of why the Haflinger is so popular there.

It is also the market where tack and turnout get taken most seriously. If you want to see what a fully finished competition horse looks like, German show photos are where to look.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

The Baltic scene is smaller than the Nordic one and growing noticeably faster. Estonia in particular has an active community that organises through its own channels in Estonian, and riders there search for kepphobune and for competition dates by year. If you are in the Baltics, the local-language search is not optional: the English-language internet will tell you almost nothing about what is happening twenty kilometres away.

The Netherlands, Belgium and France

Dutch riders use hobbyhorsing and hindernissen for the jumps; Belgian and French riders mostly use the English terms, sometimes cheval-bâton. The Low Countries have an established club structure. France and Belgium are earlier in the curve, with activity clustered around individual organisers rather than a national body, which means a single well-run account can be the entire scene in a region.

The United Kingdom and Ireland

Growing, and helped along by established equestrian events adding hobby horse classes and demonstrations to their programmes. If you ride in the UK, keep an eye on the schedules of mainstream horse shows as well as on hobby horse groups: a class at a big show is often the easiest first competition to get to.

The United States and Canada

The American championships began in 2024 with about 130 riders, founded by four young athletes who met online through the sport. The third edition, in Brighton, Michigan in August 2026, registered 400 competitors. Classes follow the American equestrian pattern, with hunter jumper alongside show jumping and dressage.

North America is the fastest-growing region in percentage terms and the most spread out in practice. Riders often travel considerable distances to a single show, which makes online communities disproportionately important there.

The international layer

Above the national scenes sits the International Hobbyhorse Federation, which now oversees the sport across borders and brings national bodies, including the American association, under a common set of rules. Its most visible result so far is the first European Championship, held in Prague in June 2026: 243 riders from eleven countries, more than seven hundred starts in a single day, and classes covering dressage, show jumping, barrel racing, Western horsemanship and pole bending.

The practical effect for riders is that results and rules increasingly line up between countries, so a horse and a turnout that pass in one place will pass in another. We cover the entry process in how to enter a championship.

When the next season's dates appear

This is the question that brings most people to a page like this, so here is the honest answer: the major organisers publish the following season's dates in late winter, and they are not all out at the time of writing. Rather than trusting a date you find on a social post, check the organiser's own site, and register as soon as entries open. The European Championship filled its entry list well before the event, and places are limited by how many starts fit into a day.

The shape of the season is stable even when the dates are not: qualifiers through spring and early summer, the big European and Finnish meetings in June, the American championship in high summer.

How to find your local scene, in four steps

Search in your own language first. Käpphäst, kjepphest, kæphest, keppihevonen, kepphobune, Steckenpferd, hobbyhorsing. The English-language results will show you shops; the local-language results will show you people.

Find the national association if there is one. It is where qualifying results are recorded and where membership, if your championships require it, comes from.

Go to a training day before a show. Lower stakes, friendlier, and you will find out what level you are actually at before a judge tells you.

If there is nothing, start something. A large number of the clubs listed above began as one rider, a garden course and a social media account. The training at home guide is written for exactly that situation, and the rules guide gives you a rulebook to run a first club day from.