The FEIF Committee meetings 2025 took place from October 17-18 in Frankfurt, Germany. The feedback from all committees was that the discussions were constructive, interesting, and fruitful. Below you will find a short summary of the discussions in the different committees.
The FEIF Leisure Riding Committee meeting in Frankfurt was spent by planning for the upcoming years work and forming the agenda for the Leisure meeting in Budapest in January 2026. There was of course discussions about the usual operational work of the committee and pondering about topics like the horse welfare among the leisure riders, Feif virtual ride, photo competition, and communication in different ways.
The very first steps of organising a Feif Leisure Camp took place, a big challenge that the committee is very excited about.
There was also a joint discussion with part of the Youth committee about what Leisure can offer for the youth members in the countries.
The members of the FEIF Sport Committee and the Sport Judges Committee discussed a wide range of topics during their joint meeting in Frankfurt.
Some of these topics will be put forward as proposals at the upcoming Delegates’ Assembly, while others will be presented at the annual meeting of the national Sport Leaders.
Among the subjects discussed were the use of cards and disciplinary measures, weighting factors in PP1 and five-gait tests, the minimum time between pace rounds, the weight of protective material, and the use of hoof boots.
In addition, the participants addressed various items in the Judges’ Guidelines, including certain firewalls, the description of slow tölt, and the description of good transitions in pace disciplines.
Overall, it was a productive and constructive meeting.
The FEIF Breeding Committee and Breeding Judges Committee met together as usual and had interesting discussions that based on a varied agenda.
After finalizing the proposal for the Delegates’ Assembly in 2026, new proposals and new topics were prepared for the Annual Breeding meeting 2026. The Wordchampionship 2025 was reflected with the next Worlchampionship in mind. Several points were discussed regarding breeding shows, as for example the requirements for breeding horses at WC and the health check of horses at breeding shows in general.
Topics like assisted insemination methods in the Icelandic Horse breed created new steps to further information and knowledge in this field of opportunities as well as thoughts about ethic and responsibility.
Further agenda points were the guidelines for the description of foals and young horses, the organization of a seminar for breeding judges and ringmasters, partly as a joint meeting and the revival of a young breeding horse trainer seminar.
This year’s FEIF Education Committee meeting in Frankfurt was partially a working session on the topics that were worked on during the online meetings in the past year and partially an opportunity to discuss topics that need a perspective for the future.
We looked back on the successful combined seminar for trainers and sport judges, Elevating Equestrian Awareness: advancing Icelandic Horse sport through research and education, in Århus in March 2025. The mix of scientific presentations and their translation to the practical work were very inspiring.
We looked forward to the education seminar 2026 to be held in Iceland on 23-25 September 2026 and the combined Education-Youth seminar in 2027 in Germany.
The choice for Trainer of the Year’s central theme for 2025 was chosen: ‘Riding instructors up to the age of 30 that serve as a role model for the young riders in our community’.
In a joint meeting with the Sport Committee and Sport Judges Group the idea of launching a project on the position of transitions in our competition- and judging system was presented and mutually discussed.
The work that was done in the past year on revision of the trainer matrix including the incorporation of the input of the member countries that responded to the first concept, was wrapped up. We prepared the steps necessary to present the final version at the coming conference in Budapest.
The Youth Work Committee focused mainly on our future FEIF youth events. The growing challenge seems to be to get participants to live events. (such as with the young leaders seminar this November). We worked on strategies how to make the event more interesting by adding some highlights to get more people signing up. Meanwhile the planning of the FEIF Youth Cup 2026 is in their final stages and we are extremely looking forward being in Rieden next summer. In collaboration with the breeding committee we are working on the idea to re-invent the young breeders seminar in 2026. Further we are in collaborating with the education committee to organize a joint education and youth seminar for trainers. We feel that cross committee work from a youth perspective is key to keep young people involved with the Icelandic horse.