European Individual Chess Championship 2023 – breaking the titled players record

Established in 2000, the European Championships are among the strongest open tournaments taking place yearly in the chess calendar. Since the pandemic prevented the organization of the 2020 event, this year marks the 23rd editions of both the open and women’s championships. The open is set to start on March 3 in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, while the women’s tournament will kick off on March 18 in Petrovac, Montenegro. The top six seeds are Gabriel Sargissian (Armenia), Haik Martirosyan (Armenia), Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), David Anton Guijarro (Spain), David Navara (Czech Republic) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 Alexandr Predke (FIDE). Two highly respected veterans also included in the lineup: Boris Gelfand (Israel) 𝘢𝘯𝘥 Vasyl Ivanchuk (Ukraine) .

The European Individual Chess Championship 2023 is a qualifying event for the FIDE World Cup 2023. According to the FIDE regulations for World Cup and the ECU Board decision, 23 players* will qualify. The total prize fund of the tournament is 100.000 EUR with 20.000 EUR reserved for the Winner of the event. Besides the prizes for the best-ranked 23 players, the organizers provided special prizes for best-ranked Juniors (U18), Seniors (S50+) and doubled the prize fund for the best-ranked female players.

Total number of 498 players have already registered for the tournament and the event is breaking the participation record previously set in Rijeka 2010 with 408 participants. The home side Serbia is presented by biggest number of players – 98, followed by players from Russia (playing with FIDE flag, because of the war in Ukraine), Turkey – 33, Israel -31.

Federation statistics

In the tournament are expected to participate 374 titled players, which is record for European Individual Chess Championships.

Title statistics