Riding helmet rules: who made them compulsory, and when.

This page reports rules and their dates. It does not say that any helmet is certified, safe or allowed at a particular competition: the body's current rules, its hat tag where it uses one, and its officials decide that. The standards themselves are explained on the helmet standards page.

How the US standard came about

Drusilla Malavase, a past chair of the ASTM equestrian headgear committee and of the US Pony Club Safety Committee, published a history of US helmet use on the US Pony Club blog in September 2023. Her account gives this sequence:

• 1970s: the United States Pony Clubs board, under president Rufus Wesson, set up a task group to find better riding helmets after reports of rising serious head injuries.
• 1978: a photograph of an Advanced-level event rider in an unsecured show helmet being struck by a falling rail led USCTA (now USEA) board member Clarke Cassidy to call for action.
• January 1979: the Pony Club and USCTA brought together sport leaders and manufacturers. The US Polo Association offered its newly completed helmet standard, and a football helmet standard and the Snell Foundation's laboratory were also offered.
• Early 1980s: a laboratory in western New York tested prototypes and published a list of those that passed. Several governing bodies required listed helmets, which was controversial.
• 1984 to 1988: ASTM held its first meeting on an equestrian helmet standard in August 1984, and F1163-88 was completed in 1988 after six drafts, with certification through the Safety Equipment Institute (SEI).
• January 1990: The Chronicle of the Horse printed reader complaints about the new helmets' bulk, weight, fit, retention systems and availability, starting what Malavase calls the riding helmet wars, which lasted into the 2000s.
• 1999 and 2000: the UK Transport Research Laboratory ran comparison tests sponsored by the Mark Davies Injured Rider Foundation, and on 8 May 2000 a Canadian facility, Biokinetics, compared helmets from the US, the UK and Australia and New Zealand.

Malavase also records that US Olympic dressage rider Courtney King-Dye fractured her skull and suffered a traumatic brain injury in March 2010 when a horse she was schooling tripped and fell. She was not wearing a helmet. Reports that her accident started an annual helmet awareness campaign could not be confirmed.

Europe: a standard withdrawn and replaced

On 13 October 2014 the European Commission withdrew the reference of EN 1384:2012 from the Official Journal, so it no longer gave presumption of conformity under the PPE Directive. The Commission listed shortcomings in shock absorption, shell penetration, side stability, temple protection, field of vision and stability on the head. A December 2014 trade report said UK bodies would allow (BS) EN 1384 hats in 2015 but not after, and that BETA said riders not competing need not change their hats. CEN announced EN 1384:2023 on 18 December 2023, describing it as the first harmonised equestrian helmet standard in nine years.

The FEI rules

The FEI's list of accepted helmet standards, published 1 July 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, phases in a requirement for helmets meeting at least two accepted standards from 1 January 2028. We read it as reproduced in Equestrian Australia's 2026 rules, because the FEI's own site refused our requests. The detail is on the helmet rules by body page.

National bodies

• US Equestrian: rule GR801.2 makes fastened headgear compulsory for everyone mounted anywhere on the grounds of licensed hunter, jumper and hunter/jumper competitions, meeting the standards the Federation publishes and carrying the quality tag or label. Rule change 030-22, approved by the Board on 20 June 2023, added Snell certification alongside ASTM. The effective date was first 1 December 2023; US Eventing reported that the Board brought it forward to 1 August 2023 at a special meeting on 24 July 2023, and USEF's posted list gives 1 August 2023. The same rule lets any exhibitor in any division wear an ASTM/SEI helmet or a protective vest without penalty from the judge. USEF's list states that no headgear can prevent serious injury or death in some circumstances. For dressage, rule DR120.1.1 in US Equestrian's 2026 dressage attire and equipment booklet (dated 1 May 2026) requires anyone mounted on the grounds of USEF licensed or USDF recognized dressage competitions from the time horses are admitted, including non-competing riders and para dressage athletes, to wear headgear that complies with GR801.
• Equestrian Canada: then called Equine Canada, it required approved helmets for all riders at its sanctioned national dressage competitions from 1 January 2012, which it called a first for a national federation.
• Equestrian Australia: its General Regulations update effective 1 January 2022 (Article 122) requires every athlete mounted at an EA or FEI event in Australia to wear fastened headgear to an approved standard carrying a current visible EA tag. Tagging became mandatory for eventing from 1 January 2020, jumping from 1 January 2022, and dressage, driving and endurance from 1 July 2022.
• British Riding Clubs, British Eventing and The Pony Club: from 2026 they use one pink hat tag, each carrying the logo of the body that applied it, and accept each other's tags but not other organisations'. BRC's 2026 rules say a rider may not ride anywhere at a BRC event in an untagged hat. The Pony Club states that a tag checks the label, not the hat's fit or condition.

In UK law, the Horses (Protective Headgear for Young Riders) Act 1990 applies to children under 14 riding on roads; that rule is on the riding on roads page.

What bodies say helmets can and cannot do

• The BHS (page reviewed 2 January 2026) states that riding hats reduce the risk of head injury but that no hat can protect every rider in every situation.
• Equestrian Canada states that helmets protect against many head injuries but do not prevent concussion, because they cannot stop the brain moving inside the skull.
• Meredith, Ekman and Brolin (Chalmers, 2018) found evidence that helmets could perform better than they do.

For the FEI's and The Pony Club's published replacement recommendations, see helmet and protector lifespan. To check a helmet's marked standard against a body's list, the helmet standards checker shows what each list says; the body's officials make the final decision.