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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:
9 August 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.
There is a new link to the lists of teams and players entered for the European Senior Teams Championships on chess-results. These tournaments will be played in Hersonissos, Crete, over nine rounds in Crete during late August and early September.
We we look forward to meeting many old friends at this event again.
Fourteen teams (including a English Women's team) have entered the 50+ tournament and 18 teams are in the 65+ section. The lists are now sorted by starting rank with the two categories on separate tabs.
The first teams of England and Italy (all titled players) will almost certainly contest the top positions on the 50+ podium with teams from Slovakia and the Netherlands also having a rating average above 2200.
In the 65+, England-1, Slovenia and Italy are the highest ranked teams. Of the total of 32 teams entered, eight are from England, four from Israel (including two club teams) and three from Sweden. Ireland have a team in each section but Scotland and Wales are not going.
The British Senior Championships have just finished 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 als 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.
Meanwhile the European Chess Union has announced that the 2027 European Senior Team Championships will be played at Acqui Terme in northern Italy, at the same venue where last month's European Senior individual championships (and where several other championships in the past eleven years) were held.
We believe that FIDE has over-used this venue as senior players would like more variety. We have played twice in Acqui Terme and will certainly never go there again. There is a good congress hall but there is not much to do in the town and some of the hotels are not great.
More importantly, there is a serious problem about the announced dates which are now even closer to those for the World Senior Team Championships than the originally announced dates.
We were told some time ago that FIDE has made its decision that the 2027 World Senior Team Champonships will be Magdeburg just after Easter. This was published a long time ago on the German chess federation website. Yet this is still not announced on the FIDE website, which is often slow to update seniors information.
If the dates in their press release are correct (and the date-span seems slightly too long), then the ECU will have to switch their event. Many readers will recall that this clash also occurred in 2026. Isthere no coordination between ECU and FIDE about senior events? It seems not.
We give you here in English the gist of the announcement. It was published by DSB president Ingrid Lauterbach so we would be surprised if it is not true. Ingrid will be familiar to many readers as she often represented England in the past but changed her affiliation to her native country in recent years.
Following an inspection in February, the FIDE Council has accepted the bid submitted by the German federation and the Saxony-Anhalt Chess Association to host this major annual event at the Maritim Hotel in the historic eastern German city of Magdeburg. Next year will be the 150th anniversary of the German federation which last hosted these championships in 2018.
The dates of this nine-round event have been announced as 31st March to the 11th of April 2027. So it will start just after Easter, which falls next year on Sunday 28th March. As usual we can expect that there will be separate 50+ and 65+ tournaments for teams of four (with an optional reserve) and with separate awards for the best all-female teams.
Teams can represent nations, cities, regions, clubs or just be groups of friends so long as all players on a team are from the same federation.
The Germans have a budget of half a million Euros and are expecting that as many as 150 teams may enter. There are sure to be many German regional and club teams because senior chess is so popular in that country. So far there have never been enough women's teams to have separate female tournaments but perhaps that may be different next year, a least in the 50+.
Meanwhile the European Chess Union, which had announced dates in May for their own senior team event, have now brought their dates forward so that their event would start less than two weeks after the world team championships end.
Clearly this is totally unacceptable and if the Magdeburg dates are correct then the ECU needs to switch its event to the autuumn, and preferably not in Acqui Terme.
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