How Long Does It Take to Get a Black Belt in Taekwondo?

A girl of ten can pass a black-belt test under the roof of the Kukkiwon, the tiled hall in Seoul's Gangnam district that has certified World Taekwondo dan grades since it opened in 1972, and still not be allowed to wear a black belt. She ties on one that is half red and half black, and the certificate calls her a first poom. Five years later, without another test, the same certificate becomes a first dan. It is an unusual arrangement, and it tells you most of what you need to know about how taekwondo thinks about time.

The short answer: three to four years to first dan for an adult training twice a week, a little less at three sessions, a little more with gaps. Under 15 you get poom instead. After the first dan the waiting periods are written into the rules, and they grow with every grade. Here is the ladder, where the numbers come from, and how the two big federations differ.

Key facts

Typical time to 1st dan

3–4 years at two sessions a week

Colour grades

10 geup (Kukkiwon/WT) or 10 gup (ITF), counting down to 1st

Under 15

Poom instead of dan, 1st to 4th, worn as a red-and-black belt

Dan waiting periods

The number of the dan in years: 1 year to 2nd dan, 2 to 3rd, 3 to 4th

Who certifies

Kukkiwon for World Taekwondo, the ITF for its own lineage, both via national bodies

Belt colours

Not fixed by Kukkiwon; white, yellow, green, blue, red, black is the common backbone

Two federations, two ladders

There are two taekwondos, and the belt question has a slightly different answer in each. The International Taekwon-Do Federation was founded in 1966 by General Choi Hong-hi, the man who named the art, and today exists as several organisations claiming the name. The Kukkiwon opened in Seoul in 1972 as the national academy, and the World Taekwondo Federation, now World Taekwondo, followed in 1973 and took the sport to the Olympic programme, where it has been a medal sport since Sydney 2000. Both systems use ten colour grades counting down and dan grades counting up. Both put a black belt at the end. They differ in the patterns you learn on the way, the Taegeuk poomsae under Kukkiwon and the 24 tul of the ITF, in the names of the grades, and in who signs the certificate. If your club says ITF, the numbers below are close and the differences are marked.

Ten geup, counting down

A beginner is 10th geup and works towards 1st. Kukkiwon sets no colours for these grades at all; it registers dan and poom and leaves the colour belts to national associations and clubs. The result is a common backbone with local variations, and the table below is one widely used version, not a rule. The ITF ladder is more fixed: white, yellow, green, blue, red and black, with a coloured tip on the belt marking the half-step to the next colour, so that 9th gup is white with a yellow tip and 1st gup is red with a black tip.

Grade	Belt (one common WT club order)	Usual gap to the next test
10th geup	White	2–3 months
9th geup	White, yellow stripe	2–3 months
8th geup	Yellow	2–3 months
7th geup	Yellow, green stripe	3 months
6th geup	Green	3 months
5th geup	Green, blue stripe	3–4 months
4th geup	Blue	3–4 months
3rd geup	Blue, red stripe	4–6 months
2nd geup	Red	4–6 months
1st geup	Red, black stripe	6–12 months
1st dan or 1st poom	Black, or red-and-black for under-15s	–

Red before black surprises people who come from karate, where brown fills that slot. In taekwondo the red belt is the warning colour: the student is dangerous now and not yet in control, which is a fair description of most 2nd geups I have met, myself included.

Where three to four years comes from

Ten gradings at an average of three to four months is about three years; at four to five months it is four. Most clubs grade the low geups every two or three months and slow down through blue and red, where the poomsae get longer and the sparring gets real. The first-dan test itself usually covers all eight Taegeuk poomsae, or the ITF patterns up to the grade, plus kicking combinations, sparring and breaking. Three sessions a week instead of two puts you near the bottom of the range. Six months away with an injury puts you near the top. Kukkiwon does not set a minimum time for the first dan; the clock that matters is the club's own gap between gradings and the examiner's judgment of whether your side kick has a hip in it.

First dan, and what the belt says

The first dan learns Koryo, the first black-belt poomsae, and joins the part of the club where the instructor stops counting in tens. That is the meaning. As in karate, the first black belt marks the end of the beginner's syllabus rather than any kind of mastery, and Olympic competitors are typically several dan grades above it. What the belt gives you is standing. What it does not give you is anything you did not have the week before the test.

Poom: the black belt you cannot wear yet

Kukkiwon draws a line at 15. Below it, a candidate who passes the black-belt test receives poom, from first to fourth, and wears the red-and-black belt; above it, the same test gives dan. First to third poom convert to the dan of the same number when the holder turns 15, and fourth poom converts at 18, with no further test. Poom holders are in every respect black belts with a date on them. Below poom, children's colour belts are where clubs improvise most: half-steps, extra stripes, junior versions of each grade with a shorter syllabus. A six-year-old with three stripes on a white belt is on no federation's register, which is fine as long as the club says so. The register starts at poom, and the ITF has its own junior rules, so ask which one your child is on.

After first dan: the waiting years

This is the part Kukkiwon writes down precisely. The minimum wait to the next dan equals the number of the dan you hold: one year from first to second, two from second to third, three from third to fourth, four from fourth to fifth, and so on up to ninth. Add them up and a fourth dan, the grade at which Kukkiwon recognises a master instructor, takes at least six years after the first; a seventh takes at least twenty-one. There are minimum ages attached to the higher grades as well. The ITF has its own waiting periods of the same order, slightly longer at the lower steps. The arithmetic is the point: it makes the fast-track master impossible on paper before anyone has to say so in person.

The same colour in other arts

A karate shodan takes about the same time and means about the same thing, which is no accident: taekwondo's founders learned their grading system from Japanese karate. A BJJ black belt takes eight to twelve years and means something else entirely. The comparison beginners make between the two is not really about difficulty. It is about which end of the road each art chose to paint black.

Sources

• Kukkiwon. Promotion Test Regulations (current edition). https://www.kukkiwon.or.kr
• World Taekwondo. Competition Rules and Interpretation (current edition). https://www.worldtaekwondo.org
• International Taekwon-Do Federation. Rank and pattern syllabus.
• Choi, Hong-hi. Taekwon-Do: The Korean Art of Self-Defence. International Taekwon-Do Federation, 1965 and later editions.
• Wikipedia. “Taekwondo” and “Kukkiwon”.

Where to go next

• How the art was assembled after 1945: History of Taekwondo.
• The same question next door: karate and BJJ.
• The two Olympic striking arts side by side: Karate vs Taekwondo.
• The taekwondo hub.