Matthias Laukart - Germany's European Champion Shooter | Player Profile

Matthias Laukart - Quick Facts

Germany's European Champion Shooter

Matthias Laukart is the most successful competitive petanque player to come out of Schopfheim, a small town in Baden-Württemberg, and one of the central figures in German petanque's biggest breakthrough on the international stage. As tireur on the national triplette, he helped Germany win the 2025 European Championship - a title the Deutscher Pétanque-Verband (DPV) described as the federation's first major adult international success in more than 40 years.

Career Overview

Laukart has played boule since 1998 and joined his hometown club, BSG Le Cochonnet Schopfheim, at age 14. He moved to Bundesliga club PCB Horb am Neckar in 2020, the same year he was called up to the German national squad, and helped Horb win three consecutive German club championships from 2022 to 2024. At national level, he won German Championship (Deutsche Meisterschaft) gold in Doublette Mixte in 2021 and in Triplette in 2024, having earlier taken silver in Tête-à-tête at the 2019 German Championship in Tromm, Hessen.

His first international medal came at the 2023 World Championship in Cotonou, Benin, where he partnered Moritz Rosik in men's doublette. The pair reached the semifinal before losing to home favorites Marcel Gbetable and Marcel Bio, who went on to lose the final to France; Laukart and Rosik took the bronze medal, only the second World Championship medal in German men's petanque history. Laukart described the tournament's extreme heat, saying the team retreated to their hotel's air conditioning between matches despite being told it was the rainy season. In 2024, partnering Anna Lazaridis in Doublette Mixte, he added a European Championship bronze medal.

Laukart's breakthrough came in July 2025, when he was the tireur on the German men's triplette - alongside Tobias Müller, Daniel Reichert, and Moritz Rosik, coached by Sascha Koch - that won gold at the European Championship in Santa Susanna, Spain. Germany beat defending world champions Italy 13-11 in the round of 16, Luxembourg 13-5 in the quarterfinal, a Netherlands side featuring Moussa Agzoul 13-1 in the semifinal, and France 13-7 in the final. Laukart trained daily for six weeks beforehand, splitting his preparation between boule practice and fitness work. His hometown of Schopfheim formally congratulated him on the win, with the mayor praising the "endurance and concentration" the sport demands. In 2026, Laukart's team received an invitation to the prestigious Masters de Pétanque - the first German team ever invited to the event.

Playing Style and Technique

Laukart is a right-handed tireur (shooter), playing 680-gram, 74mm competition boules. His role on both the 2023 World Championship bronze-medal doublette and the 2025 European Championship-winning triplette was to provide precision shooting under pressure, displacing opposing boules in tight, high-stakes matches - including two rounds against a defending world champion and a reigning finalist on the way to the 2025 title. He also holds the German national federation's boule-sport skills-badge record (101 of 126 points, set in 2021) and equaled the DPV's 2015 individual ranking-points record (417 points) in 2024.

Achievements and Honors

• European Champion, Triplette (Santa Susanna, Spain, 2025) - Germany's first major adult international title in more than 40 years
• World Championship bronze, Doublette (Cotonou, Benin, 2023), with Moritz Rosik
• European Championship bronze, Doublette Mixte (2024), with Anna Lazaridis
• German Champion, Triplette (2024) and Doublette Mixte (2021)
• Three consecutive German club championships with PCB Horb am Neckar (2022-2024)
• German boule-sport badge record, 101 of 126 points (since 2021)

Legacy

Matthias Laukart's 2025 European Championship title, won by beating a defending world champion and a reigning finalist en route to defeating France in the final, gave German petanque its most significant adult result in over four decades - and it followed a genuine international breakthrough two years earlier, when his 2023 World Championship bronze became just the second World Championship medal in the history of German men's petanque. Still tied to the small Baden-Württemberg club where he started at 14, Laukart has become the clearest example yet that Germany's petanque scene, long overshadowed by its larger western European neighbors, can compete at the top of the sport.