No Stamp of Approval: FEI's New Tack Rule System

The FEI's Tack and Equipment Requirements for Jumping 2027 went online for review this summer, the last of the federation's major disciplines to make a move that Eventing, Dressage, Driving, and Para-Dressage completed on January 1, 2026. Starting February 1, 2027, the rules governing what bit, bridle, noseband, and boot a horse may wear in FEI show jumping will no longer live primarily in the printed rulebook, amendable only once a year by a vote of FEI member federations at the General Assembly. They will live in a database and a mobile app, the FEI TackApp, which the federation updates on a rolling, monthly basis.

The FEI has been candid about why: tack changes constantly, and a rulebook that reopens once a year cannot keep pace with a market that does not wait for it. That is a real problem, and a real justification. It is also, on the record of the four disciplines that have already lived under this system, an incomplete one.

What "Amended When Necessary" Has Already Done

The FEI TackApp did not arrive with the 2026 rule change. It has been the working reference point for FEI stewards for years, and its record predates the formal restructuring by a wide margin. In November 2022, the makers of the Quantum Welfare Bridle — an anatomically designed cavesson bridle launched in 2018 by children's-saddle maker Jill and Doug Hick and bitting specialist Gill Batt — were told by the FEI that the bridle would be banned from international dressage, a prohibition that took effect in 2025. The bridle had been on the market, unchallenged, since 2018; when the company first approached the FEI, it was told the design was similar enough to an already-approved bridle that no formal application was required.

The FEI's own equipment expert group has said the bridle's noseband functions differently from a conventional one: because the noseband is linked to the cheekpiece and its height is set by the size of the bit rings rather than the horse's own anatomy, rein tension is transmitted through the cheekpiece onto the nasal bone. That is the federation's stated technical objection. It sits uneasily next to the bridle's own testing record. In 2020, University of Copenhagen researchers Emilie Gertz, Karim Gebara, Vibeke Elbrønd, and Adrian Harrison published a study in the Open Journal of Veterinary Medicine comparing muscle activity in horses ridden in the Quantum bridle, a second anatomical design called the Finesse, and a standard bridle. Using acoustic myography to track the m. splenius and m. brachiocephalicus — muscles running through the horse's neck and shoulder — across gaits, the Quantum group showed a significantly more regular muscle-activity pattern than the standard-bridle group. A federation banned a bridle whose only independent, peer-reviewed test found it easier on the horse, not harder, than the equipment that replaced it.

Same Bit, Two Rulings, One Season

The inconsistency is not confined to one product. In April 2024, Canadian eventing rider Katie Malensek was eliminated from the CCI4*-S at the Kentucky Three-Day Event after a steward judged that the Myler combination bit on her horse, Landjaeger, had been modified from its approved form. She appealed; the FEI Tribunal ruled the appeal inadmissible. A month later, in Belgium, British show jumper Charlotte Penny was stopped from competing on Landown Cruise On Air until the same model of bit was modified. Both riders told Horse & Hound that FEI stewards had previously cleared the bit unaltered. An FEI spokesperson later explained that the bit fell into a category the TackApp lists as items "changed from their primary concept by the manufacturer and/or athlete," affecting leverage action or pressure over the nasal bone — a technical judgment call that two separate stewards, weeks apart, appear to have applied two separate ways.

Riders had already told the federation this system was straining. At the International Jumping Riders Club's annual meeting in December 2023, jumping athletes raised concerns about the pace and unpredictability of app-driven changes. An FEI spokesperson acknowledged the problem directly: "We understand that since its launch, frequent changes to the items in the app and their status, have been felt as overwhelming and abrupt by jumping athletes." Horse & Hound has also reported that the FEI itself describes its review process as having "no certification system" — no mechanism by which a manufacturer can submit a product and receive a formal stamp of approval before bringing it to market. An item is simply permitted, or it is not, until an expert group decides otherwise.

The Federation Is Listening — Which Is the Point

To its credit, the FEI did not ignore the December 2023 complaint. It created a jumping-specific Tack Advisory Group, alongside its existing Equipment Expert Group, and invited the IJRC to select some of its members — a direct response to exactly the confusion this article describes. That responsiveness is real, and it deserves to be stated plainly rather than waved away. A federation that hears "this feels chaotic" from its own athletes and stands up a new advisory body in response is not acting in bad faith.

But an advisory group is not a certification system, and speed is not the same as due process. The annual General Assembly vote that jumping's tack rules are about to leave behind was slow, but it was public: every member federation had a vote, a rule change proposal was published in advance, and a rider or manufacturer knew exactly when and how the rules could change. The system replacing it moves faster and consults fewer people at each turn — an equipment expert group, in consultation with technical committees and outside experts "when appropriate," reaching a decision that reaches competitors as an app notification rather than a ratified rule. Two riders eliminated weeks apart over an identically shaped piece of metal is not a one-time glitch in that system. It is what a system with no certification path and no fixed review calendar looks like when it runs for a full season.

What It Means Before February 2027

Nothing in the jumping rulebook changes today. But the document governing every bit, boot, and noseband a horse wears at an FEI show jumping competition is already online, and the mechanism that will enforce it after February 1, 2027 is not a new one — it is the same TackApp that banned an independently tested welfare bridle and produced two different rulings on one bit in one season. A buyer outfitting a horse for international competition, or a rider building a show trunk around what is legal today, should treat that app as the actual rulebook well before the effective date arrives, because compliance will not wait for the printed edition to catch up. The FEI is not wrong that tack needs faster oversight than an annual vote can give it. It has not yet shown that faster oversight and fair oversight are the same thing.