The final day of EuroSkills 2025 came to an emotional close with floods of tears from Team UK, families, supporters, and even reporters.
The 19 students and apprentices had expertly navigated months of training in their 17 disciplines.
After three days of intense competing, Team UK were cheered on by swathes of supporters at the MCH Messecenter Herning as they completed the final moments of the competition.
Some finished with embraces with their family members and training managers who had patiently supported them during their uncompromising training schedule.
Others were more stoic; competitors such as Patrick Sheerin and Caolan McCartan in industry 4.0 shook hands with each other and their training manager Marcin Regulski after the 10-second countdown.
And level-headed health and social care contestant Grace Longden finished earlier than anticipated and returned to her workshop so Team UK officials and friends could celebrate her achievements.
Meanwhile, training manager for mechanical engineering CAD, Ryan Sheridan, reportedly had “tears streaming” on a videocall when Team UK champion Stuart Lyons finished earlier in the day.
Sheridan had to drop out of the competition for personal reasons, and additive manufacturing expert Bryn Jones stepped in for pastoral care at the last minute.
Restaurant services champion Yuliia Batrak was also emotional at the finish line with her mother, younger sister and Batrak’s training manager Shyam Patiar was also seen wiping tears of joy.
Batrak told FE Week she was so proud of herself on her final task of the competition: cocktail serving duty, where she was asked to make a manhattan, a tequila sunrise and two daiquiris.
Leaky ducts have been an issue elsewhere in the competition. At the beginning of the hairdressing contest, competitors were reportedly given extra time following a leakage in the roof above the competition floor, impacting some of the hair models.
Meanwhile, joinery champ Jamie Mathews said he kept the “constant pressure” on himself in the final day.
“Then towards the last half hour of day three, I really had to go very hard to get it completed,” he said, adding that he had to sacrifice the tidiness of his work that he would normally uphold outside of a competition.
“It wasn’t too bad. A couple of errors, but I was happy enough,” he said.
Minister makes it
Skills minister Jacqui Smith cheered on Team UK for two days this week.
Yesterday she arrived at the exhibition hall and spoke with Team UK competitors, families and officials.
Smith is the first skills minister to travel to a WorldSkills event on foreign soil since 2017, when then minister Anne Milton visited Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates for the global competition.
She was due to come to WorldSkills Lyon in France last year, but was called last minute to vote in the House of Lords.
“I wanted to come to support our team and our competitors who are demonstrating the highest levels of excellence in the skills that they are competing in,” she told FE Week.
The UK last hosted a WorldSkills event in London in 2011, and Smith said she would have to think “quite carefully” about considering it again.
She added: “This competition isn’t just about the five days that it’s been happening here in Denmark.
“It’s important for us to be able to support them, and how that then impacts back into the skills system in the UK and through the Centre of Excellence.”
Regarding the 15 per cent cut in grant funding the Department for Education made to WorldSkills UK in 2025-26, Smith told FE Week it wasn’t the only organisation that had experienced a DfE funding chop.
“To govern is to choose in a time of real financial and fiscal challenge for the government,” she said.
“We had to make that cut, but we have also of course boosted the support for WorldSkills through the links that we made into the tech programme for WorldSkills, through the presence of ministers, and through the continued work that we will do with them, including in the forthcoming white paper.”
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