Battle of the Year

For the 2013 feature film based on this event, see Battle of the Year (film).

Battle of the Year, commonly referred to as BOTY, is an annual international breakdancing competition that began in 1990. It has been regarded as the premier b-boying competition in the world [1] and has been referred to as the "World Cup of B-Boying".[2] Regional qualifying tournaments, also known as preliminaries, are held worldwide culminating in the BOTY International, the world finals event which is currently held at Sud de France Arena in Montpellier, France.

For the first twenty-three editions, Battle of the Year was a crew competition; in 2013, a one-on-one competition was added. Since 2014, the one-on-one portion of Battle of the Year is one of ten tournaments that are a part of the World BBoy Series.

The competition spawned the 2007 documentary Planet B-Boy as well as a 2013 eponymously named feature film Battle of the Year, both directed by Benson Lee. It has also gained attention for positive promotion of hip-hop culture and social unity.[3]

  1. ^ Hong 10: B-Boy Champion Archived November 1, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Retrieved August 21, 2007
  2. ^ Planet B-Boy Plot Summary, Retrieved August 21, 2007
  3. ^ Chang, Jeff. "It's a Hip-Hop World". Foreign Policy (November/December 2007): 58–65. "Hip-hop events such as the Battle of the Year create spaces for a globalization from the bottom, bringing people together across the barriers of geography, language, and race."