Ranking
Jiujitsu belt ranks, in order.
The adult jiujitsu belt order is white, blue, purple, brown, then black, with degrees beyond black belt awarded over decades. Most academies also award up to four stripes on a belt to mark progress within a rank.
What each belt roughly means
White belt is where you learn to survive: escapes, frames, not panicking under weight. Blue belt usually means you have a working game and can hold your own with untrained people comfortably.
Purple belt is where a personal style appears and you become genuinely dangerous to lower ranks. Brown belt refines and closes gaps. Black belt is not an endpoint; it is the rank at which people generally consider you able to teach, and degrees continue to accumulate for the rest of a career.
Stripes, and why nobody agrees on timelines
Most schools mark progress inside a rank with stripes, commonly up to four before the next belt. Not every academy awards them, and the stripe itself carries no formal weight outside the academy that gave it.
Timelines vary enormously and comparing them is mostly a waste of energy. Promotion depends on training frequency, whether you compete, the size and standard of the room, and the individual instructor's criteria. The often-quoted figure of around ten years to black belt is an average with a very wide spread on either side.
What ranks are actually for
Two practical purposes: they tell a stranger roughly what to expect from you when you shake hands, and they sort tournament divisions so people compete against comparable experience.
They are not a ladder to be climbed at speed. The most common piece of advice from people who have been through the whole sequence is to stop watching the belt and count mat hours instead. The belt is a description of the hours, not a substitute for them.
What a coach is actually watching
Belts get awarded on what somebody can do, not on what they can recite. That sounds obvious, and it is still worth saying, because it is the difference between a rank that means something and a rank that means attendance.
A coach who teaches through live training has an easier time of this. If every round is against a resisting partner, then what you can and cannot do is visible every single week. There is no gap between the version of you that looks good on a cooperative partner and the version that has to find the answer against someone who does not want you to.
It also changes what progress feels like from the inside. You notice it as positions that used to be impossible becoming survivable, rather than as a list of moves you have collected.
Common questions
Do you wear a belt in no-gi jiujitsu?
No, there is no jacket to tie it around. Your rank still exists and still determines your competition division; you simply do not wear it on the mat.
Who decides when I get promoted?
Your instructor, using their own criteria. There is no universal exam. Criteria and timing differ from academy to academy, so ask directly at the gym you train at.
Are kids' belts the same?
No. Youth ranking uses additional colours such as grey, yellow, orange and green, and those ranks convert into the adult system when a student is old enough.