Chess Mail logo Friend of ICCF award  
Editor: Dr Tim Harding
  Dr. Tim Harding   J. H. Blackburne     Paul Morphy   Correspondence Chess history book   Captain W. D. Evans

Calendar: senior tournaments to come in 2023/2024

For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors news and Seniors introduction pages.

Two tournaments next March at Wesel-Undeloh (south of Hamburg) were recently added to the calendar. One of them is for players born 1949 or earlier (i.e., a 75+ tournament) which we shall certainly consider entering.

Small events in Austria and Switzerland later this year were added today but they may not be attractive to overseas entries and there is no information in English.

The Hamburg Senior Open and some other German tournaments later this year were added two weeks ago, along with two Irish tournaments in the New Year and Easter which are open to overseas entries. The 2024 dates for one of the popular ACO holiday tournaments in Greece were lso added.

FIDE has taken provisional decisions about venues for the 2024 World events (see our news page) but these tournaments will not be added to the calendar until they are confirmed.

A welcome novelty is that a Senior congress near Frankfurt in November will have three sections, including one for players aged 75+, which is most welcome although unfortunately we cannot go ourselves. We should like to see more such events organised and otherwise 65+ events should have 75+ prizes.

Tournament organisers, please send us your announcements in good time. We know from talking to players at last year's World Seniors that these pages are widely read but we don't have much time to research events.

Newly announced events are added to this page when we find out about them. Please inform us if you know of an international senior tournament that is not mentioned. In our calendar we include only those tournaments which are described as Open and FIDE-rated, and we omit events restricted to players from one country.

For tournaments run on FIDE Senior rules, you do not have to wait for your birthday; you are qualified from 1 January in the year in which you reach the qualifying age.

The qualifying years for the two FIDE age groups in 2023 are 1958 (for 65+ events) and 1973 (for 50+) but some German senior organisers have different rules. Note that the eligibility rules for German-language Senior events vary. It is usually 60+ for men and sometimes 50+ or 55+ for women. Check the particular details for any event that interests you.

The German Senior tournaments calendar does not seem to be curated very carefully at present, though we check it regularly. It is now about two months since the European Chess Union announced new Spring dates for their 2024 senior team championship but the German calendar still hasn't made the change.

We also regularly search on chess-results.com and sometimes find a few events (mostly in Austria) which we add below if relevant.

Tournaments are usually removed from our listings once their start dates are reached, or soon after.

** A double asterisk in the list below indicates new or recently updated information.

 

Tournaments upcoming during 2023