Sacramento man wins world beard competition. ‘I’ve reached the pinnacle’
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trevor Mustafa won top honors at the 2025 facial hair championship in Pittsburgh.
- Mustafa’s natural beard beat styled entries, emphasizing health over design.
- He champions facial-hair acceptance and raises charity funds through local events.
When he began growing out his beard, Trevor Mustafa said his own image scared him.
“I’d look in the mirror and I’d be like, ‘Oh no, it’s too wild, it’s too scary,’” Mustafa said. “When I let it go, I started getting compliments for the first time in my life ... A lot of comments (on a beard webpage) were saying, ‘Oh, you’re a future world champ, and you should be a competitor.’”
At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships earlier this month in Pittsburgh, roughly 2,200 miles away from Sacramento, where the 44-year-old Mustafa has lived his whole life, the commenters’ predictions came true.
Among 37 competitors in the 20-30 cm full beard natural category — a non-styled event judged mainly on thickness, shape and hair health — Mustafa took home the win.
On stage among his naturally-bearded peers, Mustafa, who has a dark beard, felt another competitor with a lighter gray beard was slightly better than his own thanks to its curls.
So after feeling like he edged out the divisional win, Mustafa wasn’t expecting anything as he stood next to the other 30 division winners, from a field of roughly 500 total competitors, for the best of show announcement.
His friend, who was watching at home, had turned off the live stream.
“I was looking around, getting ready to clap and applaud for whoever it was that they chose and then they called my name out and I was like, ‘What?’” Mustafa said. “I’m still kind of in shock, but I’ve reached the pinnacle of beard competitions.”
‘We’re helping to change that stigma’
While Mustafa was happy to call himself a world champion and embrace the bragging rights that come with the title, he emphasized the win’s importance for what he called facial-hair acceptance, both for himself and those around him.
Mustafa said the Sacramento Moustache and Beard Social Club, of which he is a member, will sometimes hold small beard and mustache competitions in order to donate to men’s health issues and other charitable causes. On his public Instagram profile, Mustafa describes himself as an “MS (multiple sclerosis), autism, and mental health advocate.”
He said the group is made up of people across a variety of professions who are working to do good in the community, hoping to change negative stereotypes around men with facial hair that impacted many, like Mustafa, when they were growing up.
“We’re not all cowboys and scary guys, we’re all fully functioning members of society and we’re showing that,” Mustafa said. “If you just let go of the care of what other people think, and just focus on what you want to do, that works a lot.”
While he acknowledged his relationship with his father is “complicated,” Mustafa said he started growing his facial hair as soon as he possibly could because he looked up to his father, who earned many compliments for his beard.
Now as a single father of two, including a son with a disability, Mustafa wants to make his kids proud. While neither were able to attend the event in Pittsburgh, he said he accomplished that goal.
“They’re very happy and probably in about as much shock as I am.”
Not his first rodeo
Mustafa was no stranger to competitive facial hair competitions before heading to his first world championship.
He had previously won competitions in Sacramento and Los Angeles, as well as a North American regional competition, but the world championships — which the event’s own website admits is typically dominated by Europeans — marked a major accomplishment.
For best in show, Mustafa had to compete against competitors who styled their beards with designs and curls galore, but his natural, groomed style won the day.
“I came to the natural thing because I just felt like I can,” Mustafa said. “I’m not a hair stylist and I’m kind of scared of putting any heat or flat ironing on my beard so I don’t try to do any crazy designs.”
Preparation for a beard competition is more complicated than many would think, according to the newly crowned world champion.
Mustafa uses supplements like collagen, drinks lots of water and makes sure to eat what he called a “really healthy” diet so both his body and hair are healthy heading into the competition. Beard conditioners and hair masks are also important to keeping his hair in competition shape, he said.
“The way that I approach beard growth is from the ground up. So it’s from what I eat, what I ingest, all of that plays a big part in hair health,” Mustafa said. “The more healthy your body is, the more healthy that everything else is.”
Looking back on his competitive journey, Mustafa acknowledged that it might seem silly to some but said it has been an important part of his and many others’ journey toward self-confidence. And it has created a strong community.
“I’m meeting all these different competitors and we’re becoming instant friends because we’re all in this kind of ridiculous but also important work, for charity — showing off our facial hair and being judged for it,” Mustafa said. “It’s just been a thing about widening my horizons and accepting myself.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
