The first year of archery involves two kinds of expense. The first is the membership of the federation your club is affiliated to, and each national federation sets its own fees. For the 2027 sporting year FITARCO has written its fees down in an official document: €10 for an athlete's first membership and €35 for a renewal, €20 for the youth classes, as long as the club registers it by 15 November 2026. In FIARC the membership is called the FIARC Pass and is valid for the current year; its fee does not appear in the federation's regulations, and your club will tell you what it is. The second kind, which weighs more, depends on your club and on your own choices: the course, the club subscription, equipment and competitions. I do not give figures for those, because they change from one club and one town to the next and no official document collects them; instead I explain what they are made of and whom to ask.
I will say one thing straight away, because it changes the order of everything else: you do not need to buy anything to start. In my experience the club lends bows and arrows during the beginners' course, and spending on equipment comes later, once you know you enjoy the sport.
The beginners' course
The usual way in is a course run by a club affiliated to the national federation. The club sets the price, and there are three questions to ask at once: how many sessions it includes, whether equipment is provided and whether federation membership is already in the price. The course is also where you find out things that help you spend well later: which eye leads your aim, and so which hand you draw with, how long your draw length is and which kind of bow you like most. How to choose a club and what the course involves I cover in how to start archery.
In FIARC the course follows rules set out in the Education Sector Regulations (Regolamento Settore Istruzione), updated on 2 December 2023, and some of them affect what you spend. Before the first lesson you need federation membership and a medical certificate for non-competitive sport, so in FIARC those two costs come at the very start, before you have shot an arrow. The course lasts at least 18 hours, with no more than six pupils per instructor, and the instructor, helped by the club's equipment technician, the Master Archery Equipment, guides the pupil in choosing and setting up their first equipment: that is the right moment to ask about costs.
For people coming to try the sport, at an open day or in their first few weeks, FITARCO introduced a cheaper membership from the 2027 sporting year, the taster membership (praticante): it costs €1, lasts 60 days and in any case no later than 31 December, and provides insurance cover from the day the membership is entered in the federation's system. It lets you take part in the club's introductory activities without a medical certificate, but not in anything on the federal calendar, competitions included. It cannot be renewed: anyone who decides to carry on converts it into an athlete membership at the first-membership fee. It is a FITARCO membership: in FIARC, archers still in training hold a green FIARC Pass, which I describe below.
Federation membership
In FITARCO the sporting year runs from 1 January to 31 December, and an athlete's membership expires with it. For 2027 the fees set by the Federal Council are these: €10 for a first membership, meaning for someone who has never been registered before; €35 for a renewal and €20 for a youth-class renewal if the club registers it by 15 November 2026, rising to €50 and €30 after that date. Anyone joining for the first time while the club is processing renewals, that is from 1 October and by 31 December 2026, can choose to cover 2026 only, 2027 only or both years.
These are the fees the club pays to the federation, and they usually reach the archer as part of the club subscription, so ask whether membership is included or paid separately. Outside Italy the amounts and the categories are your national federation's own, and they appear on its website.
In FIARC the federal sporting year also runs from 1 January to 31 December, and the membership is the FIARC Pass, valid for the current year, which you can show at competitions on your phone or through the federation's app. The Technical Regulations (Regolamento Tecnico), updated on 2 December 2023, distinguish two kinds: with a red pass you can enter every competition, while with a green pass you compete in the Training Class until you have completed your training, and the federal instructor writes on the pass the date from which you can enter ordinary competitions. The regulations do not give the fee for the pass: ask your club, and ask too whether it is already included in the club subscription.
The two international federations, World Archery and IFAA, have national federations as their members, and it is the national federations that pay them an annual fee. For World Archery the amount is decided by Congress; IFAA sets it in its Constitution at €100 a year for each member association. For the archer, then, the membership to pay for is the one with the national federation the club belongs to, which in Italy means FITARCO or FIARC.
The club subscription
The club subscription varies more than anything else from place to place, because each club (in FIARC a compagnia) decides it internally, under its own rules. It pays for what makes shooting possible: the outdoor range, often an indoor hall for the winter, the target faces and bosses that wear out, and sometimes a coach on certain days of the week. When you compare two clubs, then, look at what the subscription includes more than at the figure: how many days you can shoot, whether there is somewhere indoors in winter, and whether a coach also looks after people who have just finished the course.
The medical certificate
This is a matter of rules, and they differ from country to country, so I report the Italian ones as the two federations write them, because FITARCO and FIARC do not ask for the same thing. In FITARCO, according to Federal Circular no. 38/2026, which refers to Circular no. 22/2026, non-competitive archery does not require a medical certificate, although the federation still recommends a check-up before starting. Competitive activity can begin from 1 January of the year in which you turn 9, and to compete you need a certificate of fitness for competitive sport, which for archery is valid for two years; anyone who also competes in other sports has a single examination every year. Members of the pulcini class, under 9, need a certificate of fitness for non-competitive sport for the activities designed for them; for children up to 6 there is no such requirement, except in cases indicated by the paediatrician. The circular makes the club responsible for its members' certificates, so when you sign up ask which one it requires. The federation does not set the cost of the examination: ask the sports medicine centre you go to, and for a child under 18 ask the centre or the local health authority (ASL) whether the competitive examination is exempt from charges. If you shoot outside Italy, your national federation or your club will know what applies to you.
In FIARC the certificate comes earlier. The Education Sector Regulations list a valid certificate of fitness for non-competitive sport among the conditions for starting the course, so the examination is a cost from the outset. For competitions, the Technical Regulations require entries to come from the club, on the federation's forms or through its online system and with the FIARC Pass number, precisely so that only archers holding the prescribed sports medical certificate take part; those regulations do not specify which certificate is needed to compete, so ask your club. In FIARC too, the sports medicine centre sets the cost of the examination.
Equipment, in two stages
Once the course is over, your first equipment of your own usually begins with the personal items: a tab or glove for the fingers, an armguard and a quiver. Then comes the bow, and for the recurve the choice that saves most over time is a riser that takes interchangeable limbs, because draw weight goes up during the first year and at that point you only change the limbs. Last come the arrows, which have to be cut to your draw length, which you can estimate with the draw and arrow length calculator and then confirm with your coach, and which need a spine that suits both the draw weight and the length: in the registry the rule that arrow spine has to be matched to draw weight and arrow length is reported, and I explain how to choose it in practice in how to choose arrow spine. Arrows are also the cost that comes back, because in the first year a few get lost, a few break and have to be retired, and when the draw weight goes up a good deal you may need a stiffer spine. What to look for in a first bow I have set out in which bow to buy when you start.
In FIARC and IFAA what you spend depends above all on the category, because each one sets what may be fitted to the bow and which arrows you shoot. In FIARC's historical bow category the bow may not contain synthetic materials, apart from glue, and the arrows must be made of natural materials, and in IFAA the longbow and historical bow styles require wooden arrows with natural feathers. In FIARC a sight is allowed only in the compound categories that provide for one: Stile Libero and Stile Libero Illimitato, with a hunting sight of no more than five fixed pins, and Freestyle, where any sighting system is allowed. Arrows have rules that affect the bill as well. In FIARC they must all be identical in every component, except in Freestyle, joined or repaired carbon arrows are banned, and your membership number has to be written on the shaft; at targets where two or three arrows are shot, they must also be numbered with rings near the fletching. In IFAA, for the styles that allow only one set of matching arrows, from barebow and bowhunter to traditional recurve, longbow and historical bow, the Executive Clarifications of 1 June 2026 state that the set may not be changed between targets, rounds or days of competition; and in the woods arrows get lost, so the rules ask you to carry enough to keep shooting and come back for the missing ones once shooting has finished. That is why it makes sense to choose your category with your instructor before you buy.
In FITARCO the second stage arrives when you start competing: a sight, stabilisers, higher-range arrows for distance. In FIARC the first step towards competition can cost less: in Regional Championship events and friendly competitions the host club may enter pupils with a green pass in a Training Class, accompanied by a federal instructor who is also competing, and the pupils may shoot with teaching equipment even if it is outside the rules, without appearing in the results. It is with equipment of your own that spending grows, and young archers say so too. That for young archers the biggest obstacle is the cost of equipment comes from the accounts of ten archers at a Philippine secondary school interviewed one by one: resources emerge as a theme among their difficulties, and two of them name money as the main problem, because the higher you go the more the equipment you need costs. In the registry the claim is reported and remains a hint, because nobody has counted or ranked the obstacles. To decide when moving up a range makes sense, I have written separately about how many points a better bow brings. In the meantime, my advice is to ask at your club: in my experience buying second-hand from archers at the same range is the simplest way to move from one draw weight to the next without buying everything again.
Competitions
In FITARCO, to compete you need a full athlete membership, since a taster membership does not allow it, and in Italy the competitive fitness certificate. On top of that comes the entry fee for each event, which the organiser sets and which is stated in the event's invitation, and then travel, which for a distant event can cost more than the entry. In the first year it usually makes sense to start with competitions close to home: you learn how a competition day works and the spending stays under control.
In FIARC you do not enter on your own: the club sends the entries, with your FIARC Pass number. For Regional Championship events the Technical Regulations state that the entry fee may not exceed the amounts set by the Federal Council, and that the club is answerable to the organiser for unpaid fees even if the archer then fails to turn up. The regulations do not put a figure on that ceiling: your club will know it.
International events come later, and there too the organiser sets out the fee. For its own events World Archery allows Congress to set a maximum entry fee. IFAA asks that entry fees for its world championships cover the actual cost of hosting the event and that the organiser present them in advance, two years ahead for the World Field Archery Championships and one year ahead for the bowhunter and indoor championships; and when a tournament accepts more than one entry from the same archer, each style is paid for separately.