US States and Cities With the Most BJJ Gyms (2026)

California has the most BJJ gym listings of any US state, with 547. Las Vegas, Nevada, leads the city ranking with 86. These figures come from a public directory snapshot captured on July 22, 2026.

The normalized snapshot contains 7,193 listings across the 50 states and Washington, DC. The source marked 114 as verified and 7,079 as unverified. We included both groups, so the results measure directory coverage rather than confirmed active academies.

How we counted BJJ gym listings

The ranking data come from the MatMade locations directory. We also consulted the IBJJF registered-academy directory and other directories as separate references. We counted each MatMade public record once, aggregated the data locally, and publish only aggregate calculations, without academy profiles, addresses, contact details, or source records.

The method was consistent across states and cities:

• Include records assigned to one of the 50 states or Washington, DC.
• Include records marked verified or unverified.
• Normalize state abbreviations, capitalization, Unicode, and surrounding whitespace.
• Count 26 records without a city in their state totals, but exclude them from city rankings.
• Treat a city as a city-state pair, so similarly named cities in different states remain separate.
• Keep the source’s locality labels. New York, Brooklyn, and Queens remain separate, as do Las Vegas and Henderson.
• Give equal counts the same rank and retain all ties at the state rank 15 and city rank 20 cutoffs.

We did not merge nearby cities into metro areas or divide the totals by population. The tables are raw directory counts.

States with the most BJJ gym listings

The table extends through rank 15. Connecticut and Missouri are both included because they tie at that cutoff.

1. California

California’s 547 listings equal about 7.6% of the national directory snapshot. Los Angeles appears in the city table with 31, while San Francisco has 23. The state can therefore lead without one California city approaching Las Vegas’s count.

2. Texas

Texas has 432 listings. Three Texas localities reach the city ranking: Houston with 42, Austin with 24, and San Antonio with 23. Keeping those cities separate avoids turning a statewide total into an unsupported metro estimate.

3. Florida

Florida places third with 418 listings. Miami has 43, the third-highest city-state count, and Orlando has 22 at the rank-20 cutoff.

4. New Jersey

New Jersey has 266 listings and ranks fourth. No single New Jersey locality reaches the national city table below, which indicates that its state total is spread across city labels rather than dominated by one top-20 entry.

5. Illinois

Illinois has 213 listings. Chicago accounts for 51 of them and ranks second among city-state pairs in the snapshot.

Cities with the most BJJ gym listings

City names can repeat across the country, so each row includes its state. We retained all four cities tied at rank 20.

The New York result needs a careful reading. The directory records New York, Brooklyn, and Queens as separate locality labels. Combining their 40, 24, and 23 listings would create a new geographic category that does not exist in the source, so this ranking leaves them separate. The same rule applies to Las Vegas and Henderson.

Other BJJ academy directories

No directory covers every active BJJ academy in the United States. We reviewed these sources separately and did not merge their records into the ranking:

• The IBJJF registered-academy directory covers schools registered with the federation, not every gym that offers BJJ.
• BJJ Metrics maintains a separate gym dataset with its own collection and classification choices.
• Gyms.JiuJitsu.com is another independent directory whose coverage and update schedule differ.

Each source defines and collects its population differently.

Totals can also differ because directories handle affiliates, shared facilities, duplicate profiles, closed schools, boroughs, and multi-location businesses in different ways.

What these rankings cannot tell us

The snapshot does not measure academy quality, student enrollment, mat capacity, schedule depth, instructor credentials, competition performance, or business health. It also cannot confirm that every unverified listing was active on July 22, 2026.

A high state count may reflect population, directory coverage, or how businesses are recorded. A high city count may reflect municipal boundaries rather than a broader training market. These figures are useful for comparing one directory’s geographic distribution, not for declaring where the best instruction is found.

Use the map as a starting point, then confirm any academy through its current website and schedule before visiting. If you are assessing a local market for your own school, continue with our practical guide to starting a BJJ academy.