COPENHAGEN (AP) — Business in the front, party in the back.
A packed Danish crowd celebrated on Saturday the much-maligned but enduring mullet hairstyle, defined by very short hair at the front and longer hair at the back.
Denmark’s raucous 2026 Mullet Championship, presented on an outdoor stage in central Copenhagen, attracted 12 well-coiffed competitors and more than a thousand spectators to the evening’s “mane” event.
Organizer Steffen Stiw Weber,
a 37-year-old electrician, said the championships, now in their fourth year, began after he had a hair transplant and chose to grow out a mullet.
After realizing he couldn’t compete in a mullet competition in the United States because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen, Stiw Weber started his own in Denmark.
“I was like, OK, I have to do it on my own here in Denmark,” he said while smiling.
Competitors in Saturday’s championships were evaluated on their cuts’ style, uniqueness, and overall performance and “mullet moves,” explained judge Bobby Agren.
Contestants were given 60 seconds each to perform on stage to showcase their cuts.
“I like the finesse, the twist, the nostalgia. I like it if it looks ridiculous or maybe ugly in a beautiful way,” said Agren, who owns two hair salons in Copenhagen.
“I think in our culture, when everything must … be perfect on social media and everything like that, I think that’s why people have to stand out from the crowd,” said Stiw Weber.
The event featured an array of over-the-top performances, including beer-swilling, body-popping, and a live saxophone show. One competitor even wore a mullet haircut styled to resemble the Danish flag.
The crowd screamed and chanted with their energy seemingly feeding directly into the various performers on stage.
After every performance, judges held up scorecards to distribute points to the competitors.
Forty-three-year-old construction worker Thomas Berg eventually took home the top prize after wowing judges by frantically jumping on a trampoline while clad in neon green gym wear. He completed his mullet haircut with an orange headband. “I think it’s just funny. It’s just a big party,” said a smiling Berg after collecting his prize. “It’s just nice to be a bit outside the box.”
Though mullets have likely been around longer than there have been barbers, the Oxford English Dictionary cites hip-hop legends the Beastie Boys for helping popularize the term mullet with the song “Mullet Head” on their 1994 recording “Ill Communication.”
The short-in-the-front, long-in-the-back coiffure was popularized by ice hockey players and ’80s musicians, but later fell out of favor.
Fashion magazine Vogue reportedly once described the mullet as “history’s most divisive hairstyle.”
But in recent years, the mullet has seen a global resurgence — British magazine i-D declared 2020 “the year of the mullet” as the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered hair salons and lockdown-weary citizens let their locks flow.
Numerous mullet competitions are now staged around the world. Belgium hosted the European Mullet Cup last month.
“It comes back every 20-30 years. There’s always a circular motion in fashion,” said Agren, the Denmark mullet competition judge.
