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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
5 October 2026
For more information about chess for over-50s, please see our Seniors calendar. Newcomers to 50+ chess should read our Seniors introduction page. We also have pages for specific British Seniors and Irish Seniors news.
The situation concerning the 2027 World and European Senior Team Championships has somewhat been clarified since we last updated this page.
The President of Deutscher Schachbund Paul Meyer-Dunker has kindly written to us to confirm that the 2027 World Senior Team Championships will indeed be hosted by DSB from 31st March to 11th April at the Maritim Hotel in Magdeburg. He says that they expect the official invitation document will be published very soon.
The Deutscher Schachbund celebrates its 150th anniversary next year. So they were the logical choice to host the World Teams event, although there was also an attractive bid to host from Brazil. The DSB have now started a web page with photographs and a countdown clock.
Theodoros Tsorbatzoglou of the ECU has also been in contact with us and other senior players, as well as the federations of Scotland and England, about the regrettable situation that the European Senior Team Championships are scheduled to start only a few weeks later at Acqui Terme in north-west Italy.
As the ECU already released the official invitation for their senior team it may be that their dates cannot be changed.
Mr Meyer-Dunker wrote to me that:
With the ECU we are standing in close contact since we saw their invitation, as they also are not happy that FIDE never put this on their calendar and that they were not aware of the potential scheduling conflict. We are looking to resolve this, as this is indeed not good for both competitions and the players and federations that are interested in playing both.
It is evident that the ECU and the Italian organisers did not read our pages way back in the early summer when we posted the German press release announcing the event in Magdeburg.
Mr Tsorbatzoglou says they had seen the German bid on the Events Commission website, which only mentioned the originally proposed dates during the winter and they were were unaware that FIDE had asked the DSB to change to the post-Easter dates.
The principal blame for the clash, it seems, must lie with FIDE which never updated its main 2027 calendar or Events Commission website to make a clear announcement about the World Senior Team Championships. We can only hope that lessons have been learned all round and that the new FIDE management, when it is in place, will be much more efficient than the old one.
As the Scots have suggested, there really should be one person coordinating the dates and venues for the four senior championships run annually by the ECU and FIDE to achieve sensible scheduling of these events twelve months in advance. Moreover FIDE need to be much more efficient at updating their calendar and event pages which perhaps are delegated to third parties.
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As noted on our calendar page recently, the Asian Seniors Championships were also only belatedly announced a few weeks ago, just a couple of months before the event will be held (in mid-October).
We received a comment from New Zealand that they are frustrated by the late announcement of dates and fairly obscure venue which makes it almost impossible to make arrangements for players with a long way to travel.
Unfortunately this, too, is just typical of the awful FIDE of recent years under Dvorkovich's management. We can only hope that things may improve eventually, now that FIDE is coming under new management.
The individual World Senior Championships will be played next month in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia. Entry lists are now available on chess-results. So far we see 97 entries for the Open 50+, 23 for the Women's 50+, 164 for the Open 65+ and 27 for the Women's 65+.
Your editor and many of his friends will play instead in the Cap Negret Seniors in Altea, Spain.
The British Senior Championships were played early in August in Coventry. GM Keith Arkell is the new 65+ champion and FM Stephen Dishman won the 50+. For details see our British Seniors page.
The inaugural European Rapid and Blitz Championships will be played at the Novotel in Monaco from 10-14 Januay 2027 with a good prize fund for both the 50+ and 65+ with separate women's sections is the entry is large enough. See also our calendar page for links.
The rapid championship will be played on the 11th and 12th of January over 11 rounds with the rate of play 15 minutes plus 10 seconds increments. The blitz, on the 13th, will also be over 11 rounds at the rate of 5 minutes plus 3 second increment. (The 3/2 rate, which is understandably less appropriate for seniors, was shown on the website but the orgamisers have confirmed the slower rate is correct.)
The total entry is restricted to 150 players. There is no restriction on the number of entries from any federation but male entrants must have a FIDE rating of at least 1800 in one of its categories (classical, rapid or blitz). There is no rating restriction for women.
This is potentially a popular event with the potential to be an annual competition. For stronger senior competitors, this could be a good chance to meet and even play some famous masters without having to spend ten days away from home. We understand that many entries ahve already been submitted so don't delay toolong if this interests you.
There seems to be a contradiction in the document which needs to be clarified. It says that the registration deadline is 20th December, but it also states that: "Entry fees and accommodation payments shall reach the below bank account no later than 1st December 2026. After this we don’t guarantee the rates of the hotels."
Monaco is of course expensive but it is also possible to commute there by train quite easily from Nice or other towns in south-east France and Nice is the most convenient airport.
The German senior individual championships were played in Dresden in late July. GM Rainer Knaak is the new 65+ champion, scoring 8/9 in a field of 230 competitors. The 50+ tournament had a field of 75. Untitled Dieter Kaiser and IM Cliff Wichmann scored 7/9 with Kaiser taking the title on tiebreak. IM Klaus Klundt won the 65+ blitz and FM Karsten Schulz had the best tiebreak of the top four finishers in the 50+ blitz. The German regional team championships are currently in progress.
The only bid listed to host the 2027 World Senior individual championships is from Italy (1-17 October) proposing Orosei on the east coast of Sardinia as the venue. The ECU calendar says that its 2027 European individual senior championships are scheduled for Chotowa in southern Poland at unspecified dates in July. (The nearest international airport is Katowice, about 36km).
Back to our Seniors introduction page