Blades and maraging steel.

The rule at all three weapons

Under the FIE Material Rules (edition dated August 2026), every foil, epee and sabre has a flexible steel blade with a button at the front and a tang at the rear, a handle and a metal guard, and the use of maraging steel blades is obligatory at all three weapons (m.2.1). A weapon may be used only if it conforms to the Material Rules and the safety standards annexed to them (m.1.1 and m.1.2). It must be built so that it cannot normally injure its user or the opponent, and any treatment of the blade between guard and tip, by grinding, filing, heating or other means, the groove included, is forbidden (m.1.3).

What Annexe A asks of blade steel

Annexe A to the Material Rules is the FIE's specification for the manufacture of blades. It says blade steel must withstand high exertion, resist breaking strongly and have low susceptibility to corrosion, and it recognises two ways of making a blade: forging a steel cylinder or folding a sheet of steel (Annexe A, 1. Weapons, para 2).

• Mechanical properties (Table I): after heat treatment, a yield strength (Rp 0.2) of at least 1900 N/mm2 and a tensile strength (Rm) of at least 2000 N/mm2, among other minimums.
• Composition (Table II): the listed steel type, labelled "GMG", has nickel 18 to 20 percent, cobalt 8 to 13 percent, molybdenum 4 to 5 percent, titanium 0.5 to 2.0 percent and no more than 0.03 percent carbon, a nickel-cobalt maraging composition.
• Inspection before sale: every blade must pass a non-destructive electromagnetic (eddy current) control over its whole surface before it is put on the market (para 6.7). At World Championships and Olympic Games, eddy-current control of blades at weapon control is mandatory (m.42.2.g).

Fatigue thresholds for homologation, by weapon

Annexe A sets the number of bending cycles a blade type must survive to be homologated. These are the stated results only; the test method is not reproduced here.

For the fatigue requirement, at least 8 blades must exceed the values. Homologation stays valid only if the maker sends blades for a periodic simplified test at least once every two years, one of them 9 to 6 months before an Olympic Games; after 4 years without these tests a blade is removed from the FIE's official blade list (para 7). If blades taken by the SEMI, the FIE's equipment commission, for occasional checks fail, the homologation is annulled (Annexe A, "Occasional check").

Marking

The maker's identification mark and the year and month of manufacture must be cold-stamped on each blade near where it enters the guard, no deeper than 0.5 mm (Annexe A, para 8), and the FIE quality label on blades is 7 mm wide (Annexe A, 4). At official FIE competitions blades must carry the label of guarantee the safety standards specify (m.37.2).

How the maraging requirement arrived, weapon by weapon

The FIE's 2009 homologation handbook records that blades have had to comply fully with the Annexe A specification since 1990, that the FIE Congress of July 1994 made SEMI approval a condition of applying the FIE label, and that the Congress of December 2001 placed no time limit on the validity of FIE-labelled blades. The current rules replace that last point with the periodic tests described above. The handbook's 2009 epee and foil blade list marked some approved blades as non-maraging, so non-maraging FIE-labelled blades were still listed in 2009.

Epee

An FIE application note, reproduced in Appendix A of USA Fencing's October 2026 rules, says non-maraging epee blades were no longer accepted for homologation after 1 January 2014, and already-homologated non-maraging epee blades were not accepted in FIE competitions from 31 December 2015.

Sabre: the dates disagree

No single FIE decision document reconciling these dates was found. Earlier, the joint SEMI and Medical Commission session of July 2014 recorded three penetration incidents through 800 N jackets and plastrons, said maraging sabre blades might reduce broken-blade injuries through their longer life, and noted that the Medical Commission was to propose them for FIE competitions.

Foil

No FIE document giving the date from which maraging blades became compulsory at foil was found. The July 2020 edition says only that the rule was already enforced for epee and foil.

Why maraging steel: claims and disagreements

• British Fencing (Safety Guidelines, 23rd edition, sections 2.1 and 2.2; British Fencing lists a 24th edition, Board approved in September 2026, which could not be read) states that almost all serious fencing injuries are caused by penetration by a broken blade, and advises considering blades of special steel such as maraging steel.
• The International Molybdenum Association (MolyReview 2/2014, trade press) says injuries from failed carbon-steel blades in the 1980s led the FIE to seek a better material, and that a maraging steel with 18 percent nickel, 9 percent cobalt and about 5 percent molybdenum was chosen.
• Leon Paul (maker's claim) says maraging blades, tested over many bending cycles, break less often.
• Whether maraging blades break differently is disputed. An informal online fencing FAQ (2002) says maraging foil blades are supposed to break more cleanly; Wikipedia's Outline of fencing calls the flat-break idea a myth and says the reason for requiring maraging steel is fewer breaks. Neither is a governing-body or peer-reviewed source, and no FIE statement on how blades break was found.
• What the alloy contains is described differently: the FIE's Annexe A gives the nickel, cobalt, molybdenum and titanium figures above; a fencing website describes an iron, nickel and titanium alloy; Material Intelligence names iron, aluminium, titanium and niobium among other metals. The FIE text is the rule.

Accounts linking maraging blades to the death of the foil fencer Vladimir Smirnov at the 1982 World Championships are set out on recalls and incidents; no FIE document found ties a dated blade rule to that death.

Below FIE level

National rules differ. British Fencing's Domestic Variations (updated 6 December 2023) say FIE-homologated maraging blades are not required for any weapon at domestic events. In USA Fencing's October 2026 rules, the word "maraging" appears only in the Appendix A epee note, not as a requirement in m.2. Each body's rule applies to its own events; the national equipment rules page has the detail, and blade sizes for young fencers are on youth equipment levels.