Four Years, Nine Finalists, One Chair: Hasan Sümer Takes the DACH Crown
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Competition
Nine finalists, two days on the fair floor and one deliberately unexpected model. How a 24-year-old from Neufahrn took the Ultimate Barber DACH title.
Düsseldorf
The chair sat under fair lighting, which is nothing like shop lighting, and that is the first thing every finalist has to solve. Over two days at the TOP HAIR fair in Düsseldorf, nine barbers worked in front of an audience for the Ultimate Barber DACH 2026 title. The one who walked away with it was Hasan Sümer, twenty-four years old, from Neufahrn in Bavaria.
Sümer had been working toward the title for four years. He has described the win as the fulfilment of a long-held dream — the kind of line that sounds like a formality until you count the qualifying rounds behind it.
The road to the final
Eight of the nine finalists earned their place through regional battles held in Frankfurt, Zürich and Vienna. The ninth qualified on the fair floor itself, during the two days in Düsseldorf — a late entry into a field that had already been narrowed for months.
Behind Sümer, Chris Juric of Switzerland took second place and Krystian Kowalczyk third. The programme also handed out side honours that say something about how the format is judged: a Fastest Barber Award and a Best Duo Award, rewarding speed and partnership rather than the single showpiece cut.
Four years of preparation, one final, and a model chosen to break the pattern.
The decision that stood out
For his final performance, Sümer chose a female model. In a discipline where the competition floor tends to fill with fades, beards and the same silhouette repeated nine times, that was a calculated move to stand apart creatively — and it worked.
It is a useful reminder for anyone watching the barbering scene from a shop rather than a stage. Competition barbering rewards technical control, but it rewards a point of view just as much. The judges are looking at the finish; they are also looking at whether the barber had an idea.
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From the chair
Stage work and shop work meet in the finish. A cut that reads clean under fair lighting has usually been styled with something that holds without shine — the same reason a shop's shelf products matter as much as the technique that came before them.
Source: TOP HAIR International. Written for The Barber Journal.