Inside the brutal, bloody world of the Peckham Conker Championships

“We play Battle Royale rules, which basically means that there are no rules,” founder Chris Quigley says over the phone a few days before the event. “It can get violent.” Quigley was inspired to create the competition after walking on Peckham Rye and seeing thousands of conkers on the ground going spare. The inaugural championship took place with a few friends outside the Montpellier pub in 2017, but he says it was the pandemic that supercharged attendance. This year, Quigley says 500 people have entered, up from 300 last year.

In the crowd are Jacob, 29, who hasn’t taken the opportunity to “pimp his nut” with superglue or vinegar as others have, but instead has one of the many conkers on a neon shoelace string that are handed out to rookie contestants. “I saw a poster for the event on a tree and was like, conkers? Not something I’ve played for a long time. Let’s go down,” he says. “I played as a kid, it’s nostalgic.”

Nostalgia was part of the draw for Anita, 52, who thought it sounded like a “fun, retro thing to do” and so made a rare trip down from north London where she lives. “I invited Anita who took the piss out of me and sent me a picture of a pipe and slippers,” says her friend Michelle.

“Actually, that was when you told me you were going to a board games evening,” Anita replies.

But anyone hoping for a cosy, nostalgic day out might be disappointed. In fact, there is carnage, with scenes of biting, blood spraying and adults wrestling on the concrete. I speak to Emily, 39, who has entered the contest with her husband five years in a row. “It’s a lot of fun,” she says. “We bring our kids every year which is confusing for them because you spend your time telling them not to hit and fight and then suddenly mum and dad are being pulled into a headlock.”

Michelle, Anita and Emily are all in group two, a bad draw considering they are up against the defending two-time champion Pietro the Pummeller, now a local celebrity at the event. Leaning into superstition, Pietro is wearing the same Asics trainers and red sailing smock he won in previously. “I grew up in Milan so playing conkers wasn’t part of my upbringing,” Pietro tells me the night before the event. “In 2023, I signed up for the game, drank a couple of beers and put superglue on some conkers.” Pietro ended up winning but broke a tooth in the process after the previous year’s victor, Harry the Hard Nut, wrestled him to the concrete and his mouth filled with blood. Pietro returned in 2024 and won again. “Now I’ve got two Golden Nuts, which sounds weird to say.”

This year, as he heads for the treble, his brother has flown over from Milan to support him and stays close by, holding multiple iPhones in his hands like the harried publicist of a movie star. In Battle Royale conkers, you can get away with being less skilled at striking the conker when it’s held still on a string if you’re adept at wrestling. As Pietro says, “My aim is pretty shoddy, especially after three or four pints.” Instead, he describes his style of play as a crafty combination of “strategicness and impulsiveness” when wrestling the conker to the ground and stamping on it to claim victory. “Though, I guess they are opposite qualities,” he adds.

When I first saw posters for the event, I was reminded of the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike competition in New York last year, when the actor surprised the crowd by turning up. It spawned multiple global copycat events, including a Paul Mescal lookalike contest in Dublin at which the winner received a giant cheque for “€20, or three pints”. The conker championships are a similarly random throwing together of people and an opportunity for chaos. It’s a viral moment you can watch unfold in real life, and an offline event that’s perfect for posting online.

Hanging back a little from the crowd are Laura, 24 and Jess, 28, who have heard a lot of buzz about the championships. “People at work have been talking about it and I feel like it’s going to be big,” says Laura, who works at a nearby school. “There are so many local events going on in this bit of London and I’m trying to do all of them.”

Part of the draw is also what Pietro describes as a perfect mixture of comedy and violence. Though there is a children’s competition held before the adult event, Quigley points out that there aren’t a lot of families in attendance. This violence begins early, with Pietro wrestling a moustachioed man in The Big Lebowski sunglasses in the group stages as cries of “Andiamo! Forza!” ring around the clearing. These early rounds weed out the less violent competitors and, as night falls, the knockout rounds commence on a stage under a makeshift sign for “the theatre of dreams”. Up next is a crowd favourite and returning competitor, Juliette, who plays as Conkertrix and whose calling card is to eat her opponents’ conkers as a way to end the game.

The event feels vaguely lawless and decidedly unpolitical. Around the corner, the social space Set Social has become a similarly unlikely hipster destination, thanks to its chess club and craft nights. For a generation starved of affordable places to congregate, often only coming together either to party or protest, the conker championship feels like a relic of a simpler time. But as Conkertrix was defeated by rival Timmy Nuts – who managed to get her conker into his mouth – and she bid farewell to the crowd by flashing her breasts, I wondered if perhaps I was overthinking the whole thing.

For the final round, Pietro went head-to-head with Timmy Nuts, with Quigley officiating on stage in a black-and-white cat costume. It’s a match of tangled strings and frayed nerves – then suddenly Pietro’s conker falls victim to Timmy, who is handed the victory belt in front of the screaming crowd, with heads poking out of windows to film the chaos beneath.

“My name is actually James,” Timmy Nuts tells me on the phone the following evening. “My conker name was Jimothy Chestnut but Chris said Tim has a better ring to it. I’m a bit embarrassed because I’m now just Timmy Nuts, but it helps with anonymity.”

James is a 27-year-old bespoke furniture designer and sculpture artist, who last year was knocked out in the group stages by Pietro. James entered with a group of friends all clutching finely aged conkers, some of which were decorated with painted frogs and fish. After his victory, he slipped off with some friends for pizza and an early night. Will he be back to defend his title in 2026 and face Pietro again? “This year was honestly a little too crazy for me, I won’t lie,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of crowds.”

Photographs by Andy Hall for The Observer