The best BJJ content creators to follow in 2026
We asked a room full of practitioners who they actually watch, then asked those creators to introduce themselves and pick the one video they would want a new viewer to see first. The answers were not the famous people.
Collage: Open Mat Locator, from the creators' own profile photography.
Every "best BJJ YouTubers" list on the internet is a scrape. The same handful of large channels, ranked by subscriber count, written by someone who has never trained. Nobody asked the creators anything, and nobody asked the people watching them either.
So we did both, in two directions.
First we put the question to two rooms full of practitioners, the BJJ EVERYTHING Facebook group and r/bjj: who do you actually watch? Then we opened a questionnaire to the people making the stuff, asking them to introduce themselves in their own words and to pick the single video they would want someone who has never seen their work to watch first. Some names came from the rooms. Some came from creators who found the form and answered it. A few came from both.
The names the rooms returned were not the famous ones. The most-recommended creator appears on none of the lists currently ranking for this question. Neither does the second.
The five profiles that follow are the people who answered the questionnaire. Every quote is theirs, published with their permission. After them is everyone else, verified but not interviewed.
Carsahh
Purple belt under Andrew Perkins·Mat Chess MMA, Seattle
30K on YouTube·18.4K on Instagram
"I make travel vlogs where I visit unique gyms and communities around the world, with the goal to understand new cultures and lives through Jiu Jitsu."
He runs two channels on purpose, and the reason is the most useful thing any creator told us. carsahh is match commentary and sparring footage, built for beginners who want to hear how someone thinks during a roll. Carsahh EX is the travel work, and he writes it to be watchable by people who do not train at all.
The split came out of a failure. He made a vlog about competing at IBJJF No-Gi Euros and posted it to the commentary channel, because the travel channel did not exist yet. It underperformed badly. "The commentary lovers didn't enjoy the vlogs," he said, and that was the moment the two audiences became two channels. He still rewatches it: "I still watch it from time to time to inspire myself and remember how far I've come."
He answered our questions from Peru, and the answer to what he wishes people understood about making BJJ content is worth quoting at length:
"I'm sitting in Peru right now as I type this eating ceviche that costs $3, accommodation covered, flights covered, and a four figure deal to help with expenses AND make money off this trip. This all happened because I put so much effort into building relationships and being a good friend to everyone."
That philosophy is also his answer to filming etiquette. Asked whether a gym has ever told him no: "A few times, but like I said build your relationships and your reputation will speak for itself."
He got into it for the money, and says so plainly. "I wanted to make money off jiujitsu while doing it, and that brought me to YouTube." The first thing he posted was "a really trash vlog at a camp in South Carolina with Ricardo Liborio." Asked whether it is a living now: "As of July and August I'll be making more money from content than any other thing I've ever done. We'll see about after that though lol."
On whether filming everything has hurt his actual jiu-jitsu, he was the least conflicted of anyone we asked: "So much easier. Get your reps in."
Trains at:
Follow: @carsahh on Instagram · @carsahh on YouTube · @carsahhEx on YouTube
kev
Blue belt·Sonoma Valley Jiu Jitsu, Sonoma, California
1,101 followers on Instagram
"i travel to jiu jitsu gyms and events, documenting the people, culture, and communities that make the sport special."
He is the smallest creator on this page by a factor of thirty, and he gave the most considered answers of anyone we asked. He writes in lower case, does this alongside a full-time career, and describes it plainly as a hobby.
He also does the same thing Carsahh does, and has arrived at the opposite conclusion about it.
The full answer, on whether filming has helped or hurt his own jiu-jitsu: "visiting so many gyms has exposed me to different coaches and techniques, partners to roll with, and styles to test my game against. at the same time, filming can be distracting, and constantly traveling means I lose some of the consistency that comes from training at one academy under the same coach... you need a coach who knows your game, training partners who push you consistently, and a community that holds you accountable. local gyms are the backbone of jiu jitsu, and I think it's important that we support them, not just financially, but by being active members of those communities."
Asked why he started filming at all: "i feel that those who deserve the most recognition are often the least likely to seek it. i want gym owners, members, and leaders in the community to feel seen and encouraged for all of their hard work and dedication."
On the hardest part of the job, he offered something nobody else did:
"most people don't know this about me, but i have terrible anxiety. every time i walk into a new gym, my heart races and i freak out. it can be intimidating on its own to walk into a new gym. on top of that i need to earn the coaches trust that i am there to represent their gym well, im not trying to highlight clip their white belts for views."
Which leads directly to the clearest statement of filming etiquette anyone gave us. He always asks. Some gyms have said no, and every one of them changed its mind after watching him train first.
"i have no issue with a gym saying no. being cautious of filming is the right thing to do as an owner or coach in my opinion. if someone tells me they don't want to be filmed, i make note of that and make sure they're not in my content. it's all about consent."
He also keeps a rule we have not heard from anyone else: he never posts his own submissions from a gym he is visiting. He is there to represent the room, not to farm clips out of it.
His three recommendations for a traveling grappler, all chosen for the same reason, that their open mats draw people in from other gyms: Rolling Oak in the North Bay, Ralph Gracie Berkeley in the East Bay, and 10th Planet Sacramento. The best open mat he has ever dropped into was Combat Therapy in Santa Rosa, one of the first gyms he ever filmed.
Trains at:
Follow: @rollwithmekmg on Instagram
Nathan Sarnella
Blue belt under David Ross, Alliance·Core BJJ, Stanhope, New Jersey
35.1K on Instagram·12.1K on YouTube
"Entertaining jiujitsu content of either grappling strangers, Bjj breakdowns, or competition days."
He is the only person here who is not at least a purple belt, and the only one still in school. Asked whether the content pays: "I'm a college student right now, so this is how I make my money during the school year and summer. But it's not a lot lol." Alongside that he has a Gold BJJ sponsorship and a product he is building in public.
He started because his older brother was posting on YouTube. The first thing he put out was, in his words, "a crumby highlight reel."
His answer on filming etiquette is the one every traveling grappler should read before walking into someone else's gym with a camera:
The full version: "Usually I ask the guy I'm rolling with if he minds if I film. Also I don't like to film on the first day dropping into a new place unless I sent an email or dm previously." Given that his content is largely built on grappling strangers, that restraint is the whole reason gyms keep letting him back in.
On what he wishes people understood: "Anyone can make good content, it's about reps the more you do the better you get. Also it's about luck, but the more you do something the better of a chance you have to get lucky."
And on the part nobody talks about, which is running out of things to film: "my days are mostly the same. I'm starting to think I need projects instead of daily life to post."
The best open mat he has ever dropped into was Pure MMA's Fourth of July session. "Had hundreds of people and great vibes, I made a video on it."
Most common DM he gets: people telling him to pull up to their gym, or asking to grapple him. Favorite submission to film is an armbar. Favorite one to actually hit is a rear naked choke. Asked what is on his camera roll that will never get posted: "Lots lol."
He is also the only creator here who runs an open mat you can just turn up to. It is on the last Wednesday of every month at Core, it starts at 7pm, it is gi and no-gi, and his words were "all are welcome."
Trains at:
Follow: @sarnella_bjj on Instagram · @Sarnella_bjj on YouTube
Xavier Debique
Purple belt·PSF Ocala, Florida
19.6K on Instagram·14.7K on TikTok·357 on YouTube
"Documentation content." He started filming because he wanted "a memory bank of my Bjj journey," and the first thing he posted was, by his own account, "the worst highlight reel ever."
His YouTube channel description is the whole ethos in one line:
He also runs a college jiu-jitsu program, which is the piece of his work he is proudest of and which has drawn the least attention. Asked what he made that did not perform, he named his first college program video.
He is the shortest answerer of the three and the funniest for it. What he wishes people understood about making content: "If you wanna make it keep posting." Hardest part: "Editing." Whether a gym has ever told him no: "Yes. And I said okay and just trained like normal." Whether the content pays: "Side income." Whether it made his jiu-jitsu better: "Better."
Most common DM: "How to get better." Favorite submission to film is any flying submission. Favorite to hit is a rear naked choke. On what will never get posted: "No comment."
The best open mat he has ever dropped into is Carbon SG. His parting request, in full, was: "Send me groceries."
Trains at:
Follow: @bjjstruggles on Instagram · @bjjstrugs on YouTube · @bjjstruggles on TikTok
Adrian
Blue belt under Joey Diehl·RMMA, Bartlett, Illinois
AdrianDoesJiuJitsu on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
"Anything and everything jiu jitsu from skits, opinions, etc."
He is the only person here who did not decide to do this. His coach did.
What he posted first was a highlight video, and it "did horrible." So he switched to comedy skits, in his words, for longevity. "And hey it worked."
Asked who the content is for, he did not narrow it at all: "Everyone. People that train and people who don't train."
The question that got the best answer out of him was what he is proudest of that did not perform. He named a video about post-practice poops, and he is still annoyed about it: "I thought that was gonna be a banger cause I feel like that was relatable."
He is also the only creator here who says making content made his jiu-jitsu better for a reason nobody else gave. Not reps, not review. Pressure.
That cuts both ways. Asked what the hardest part is, he did not say filming or editing: "Training around, it definitely gets in the way when your thinking about content and then training and forgetting the drill because your thinking of a video."
No gym has ever told him no, which he attributes to asking first. "Not yet. But I would completely understand, I would make sure with the owner first."
On what he wishes people understood: "A lot of work goes into a 10 second clip let alone any of these clips." And, separately, the most honest line anyone gave us about the grind: "I wish I could keep pushing out content but it's hard when you want to be original."
It pays a little. "I do this for the love of the game, but mostly just side income." The most common DM he gets is people asking him to buy them a rashguard, plus oil check comments. The creator he thinks nobody talks about is Jiu Jitsu Johnny.
The best open mat he has dropped into was Pure MMA's Fourth of July session, hundreds of people, and he made a video about it. The gym he would send a traveling grappler to is his own.
He picked one video for someone who has never seen his work. His entire explanation was "No words needed": the reel
His parting message, unprompted, was for the reader rather than for us: "I want to tell people that if they have a dream go out and chase it!"
Follow: @adriandoesjiujitsu on Instagram
Jiu-jitsu creators are native to exactly one platform
Something showed up once we started counting followers, and it is the most concrete finding here. Almost nobody is big in two places at once.
Xavier Debique has roughly 34,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok. On YouTube he has 357. That is not a rounding difference, it is a different career. Carsahh runs the opposite way: 30,000 on YouTube against 18,400 on Instagram.
Where the audience actually is
Xavier Debique
Rose Miller
Roger Costa
RJ Navarette
Nathan Sarnella
Chewjitsu
Roy Dean
Every bar is that creator's own total, so the shape reads as split rather than size. Four are pinned to short-form, two to YouTube, and only Nathan Sarnella comes near an even split.
Nathan Sarnella is the rare exception, at 35,100 and 12,100, which is close to balanced by the standards of everyone else on this page.
The outlier worth sitting with is Roger Costa, whose real audience is on Facebook, a platform no creator list covers. Which is also, for what it is worth, where we found most of the recommendations for this article.
Everybody here is bad at jiu-jitsu, apparently
Read enough of these and a pattern gets hard to ignore. Xavier's handle is bjjstruggles and his channel promises to showcase how bad he is at it. Rose Miller, a black belt, named her brand Tryhard Hobbyist and sells a course called "Suck Less." One of the two biggest podcasts in the sport is called I Suck At Jiu Jitsu, hosted by a black belt who owns three schools.
The people selling humility are, with striking regularity, the most decorated people in the room.
Everyone else the room named
Two communities were asked the same question, BJJ EVERYTHING on Facebook and r/bjj. What follows is everyone who came up, plus a short section at the end of people we went and found ourselves, marked as such. Real names, ranks, gyms and handles were all checked in August 2026.
Named in both communities
10Ten people came up independently in both rooms. If there is a consensus in jiu-jitsu about who is worth watching, this is the closest thing to it.
Jordan Preisinger
Jordan Teaches Jiu Jitsu · 2nd degree black belt, Limitless BJJ, Trenton, Ontario
Beatrice Jin
berimbozo · Black belt, Kogaion Academy, Arlington, Virginia
Rose Miller
rosierollz · Black belt, Corvus Grappling Collective, San Diego
Dominique Bell
Dubious Dom · Black belt under Andre Galvao, Atos
Josh Beam
Purple belt, ODSY, former Marine
Randy William
Black Belt Randy · 2nd degree black belt, police officer
Jason Rau
Black belt under Matt Serra · Vanguard Academy, Long Island
CholoMMA
An Atlanta crew, not one person
Wristlock Johnny
Pseudonymous
A "dirty move of the month" account built on wristlocks and the borderline techniques nobody teaches in class, filed firmly under educational purposes only.
The teachers
9Named in one room or the other. All of them teach for a living, and the content is downstream of that.
Nick Albin
Chewjitsu · Black belt, Derby City MMA, Louisville, Kentucky
Shintaro Higashi
Judo 6th dan, BJJ black belt · Kokushi Budo Institute, New York
Eli Knight
4th degree black belt · Royce Gracie lineage, Charlotte, North Carolina
Roy Dean
4th degree black belt, plus judo, aikido and Japanese jujutsu
Marcos Tinoco
BIG OSS · Black belt under Marcelo Garcia, Day 1 Academy, Newton
Will Brooks
Black belt · Grindstone Jiu Jitsu, Ohio
Karel Pravec
Silver Fox · 5th degree under Renzo Gracie, New Jersey
Charles Harriott
Black belt, Carlson Gracie line · traveling instructor, Gainesville, Florida
Phil Migliarese
6th degree Relson Gracie black belt · Balance Studios, Philadelphia
Nicknamed the Jiu-Jitsu Matrix, and running online BJJ education since before the phrase "creator economy" existed. Also a yoga instructor and author.
The analysts
5Nobody here is selling you a technique. They are explaining what already happened in somebody else's match.
BJJ Scout
Anonymous, permanently so by choice
Jake Luigi
Less Impressed More Involved
BJJ Heavy
Anonymous
One guard breakdown is a Super Mario 64 title screen, another is a Smash Bros character-select roster, and a third is done in Dark Souls art. The channel's own description promises studies "with a video game nerd twist."
Rixty Garami
Anonymous beyond a first name · United Kingdom
Deliberately abandoned short breakdowns for thirty-to-sixty-minute video essays on how elite athletes' systems actually work. Says outright it is not his job.
Grappling Theory
Anonymous · launched 2026
Concept-driven breakdowns of why positions work or fail, using real match examples rather than move lists.
The podcasts
4Long-form audio, which the threads returned far more of than we expected. Every one of these is hosted by a black belt.
BJJ Mental Models
Hosted by Steve Kwan · Black belt, Canada
I Suck At Jiu Jitsu
Hosted by Josh McKinney · Black belt, Metro East Illinois
A deliberate humility play from someone with twenty regional golds who owns three schools, and one of the largest BJJ shows anywhere.
Bulletproof For BJJ
Joe Worthington and James Tomlinson · Strength coaches, Australia
The competitors who post
4Worth separating out, because their audiences are downstream of results rather than of anything they made.
Jozef Chen
Black belt, B-Team · Nomadic Grappling, Shanghai
Youngest ever winner of an ADCC European Trials.
PJ Barch
2nd degree 10th Planet black belt · 10th Planet South Bay, Chula Vista
Roman Mori
Brown belt, ultra-heavyweight · Army Ranger veteran
Five we found ourselves
5Everyone above was named by one community or the other. These five were not. We went looking, mostly because the threads turned up almost no comedy accounts and almost no women, and both of those are gaps in who gets nominated rather than an accurate picture of the sport.
The Gilman Brothers
Tobias and Aiden Gilman · Argyle Jiu-Jitsu, Texas
Comedy about gym culture, training camp and the general indignity of combat sports, and by some distance the largest audience in this section.
Kiaya Jackson
10th Planet black belt · 4x PGF champion
One of very few women named anywhere in this exercise, which says more about who answers Facebook threads than about who is worth watching.
Shawn
gorillaboybjj
BJJ, skate and surf, delivered as comedy and the occasional motivational reel. Self-described as "a big, hairy American winning machine."
Adam Forster
40 Licks BJJ
Chris Vazquez
burro_bjj · 10th Planet Goodyear
Sparring intensity, heel hook etiquette, and the mechanics of tapping.
The two names that came up most
Neither of them is a content creator in the sense the question implied, and that is the finding.
Shawn Melanson
The single most-recommended name across both communities, and he does not make vlogs, skits, commentary or documentaries. He teaches. Melanson is a black belt who owns Precision Jiu Jitsu in New Hampshire, and what he posts to 261,000 Instagram followers is instruction, mostly on integrating wrestling into jiu-jitsu.
The work that made his name is not on social at all. It is the instructional catalogue on BJJ Fanatics: Precision Wrestling for Jiu Jitsu, and Precision Attacks and Sweeps from Butterfly, Half, and Knee Shield. The Instagram account is the shop window for the instructionals, and the instructionals are the shop window for the gym.
That is worth saying plainly, because it is the opposite of how the creator economy is usually described. Melanson did not build an audience and then find something to sell it. He is a coach who films his teaching, and the audience is a by-product.
Instagram · Precision Jiu Jitsu · BJJ Fanatics
Chris Burns
Second most-mentioned, and the same story with a different accent. Chris "Bones" Burns is the owner and head instructor of Zero Point Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and his own coach profile documents him as a second-degree black belt under Rickson Gracie and Jason Roebig. What he teaches is the Rickson material, the connection-and-base work usually filed under "invisible jiu-jitsu," which is exactly the kind of thing that does not demonstrate well in a fifteen-second clip and gets posted anyway.
He was an artist before he was an instructor, and still is one. The Thinker Monkey and the Chess Gorilla, both of which you have seen on a rashguard whether or not you knew whose they were, are his drawings.
If Melanson is a coach whose audience is a by-product, Burns is a coach whose audience arrived because he keeps explaining a version of the art that most of the internet has stopped teaching. Neither of them is optimising for a platform. Both of them outranked every full-time creator we asked about.
Instagram · The BJJ Project profile
And then there is Craig Jones
He was the third most-mentioned name in the Facebook thread, behind only Melanson and Burns, and it would be dishonest to leave him out on the grounds that everyone already knows who he is.
He is also the clearest example of something this whole exercise kept running into. Jones is an elite competitor, an ADCC medallist and a genuine threat to anyone in his division. He is also, at this point, one of the most-watched entertainers in the sport, and the second thing is now doing more work than the first. He cancelled his own tournament in May, kept the money, joked about it, then un-cancelled it for 2027. He is building a training resort in Tulum. He said he would rather watch ADCC from a cave in Mexico than fly to Poland for it.
Nobody who named him was thinking about his guard passing.
If you want the fuller picture, we have covered him at length: the 2027 CJI announcement, the Zamaya resort in Tulum, the B-Team tour, and Mo Jassim's response to the ADCC Brazil situation.
Where they train
We asked everyone the same closing question: the best open mat you have ever dropped into.
Nathan hosts one himself, at Core BJJ in Stanhope on the last Wednesday of every month, and his instruction was simply "All are welcome."
You can find an open mat near you on the map, or start from the state directories if you already know where you are headed.
Who we missed
Every creator got asked the same last question: who should people follow that nobody talks about?
Nathan named Sluke on the go on YouTube, who makes running content, and who is also his brother. "He is the guy that all these people who follow me should follow." Xavier named Charles Harriott.
Making something and think you belong here? Tell us.
A disclosure
I shoot BJJ content myself. Highlight reels and skits, at @everyday24seven, and I run Open Mat Locator, which is the site you are reading.
That is why this article exists in the shape it does. I have walked into gyms with a camera and had to ask permission, so I knew to ask everyone here how they handle it, and the answers turned out to be the most interesting thing in the piece. I also know what it feels like to post something you worked on for three weeks and watch it do nothing, which is why every person here got asked what they were proudest of that failed.
I am not on this list. Nobody nominated me, and putting yourself in your own roundup is how these things stop being worth reading. But if you want to follow along anyway, here is the page.
