Join us now on YouTube and Twitch for our live stream coverage of Round 2 of the 2024 Candidates and Women's Candidates! Among others, Ian Nepomniachtchi will play against Alireza Firouzja and Aleksandra Goryachkina will face Anna Muzychuk.
Check out our recap of Round 1 of the 2024 FIDE Candidates including annotations for selected games by IM Lasse Løvik!
Day 1 of the 2024 Candidates and Women's Candidates ended with 7 draws: The only decisive result of the first round was Zhongyi Tan's victory with the black pieces over 2022-23 Women's Candidates winner and Women's World Championship runner-up Tingjie Lei.
The 2024 Candidates and Women's Candidates to determine the challengers for the next World Championships start at 18:30 UTC in Toronto, Canada! Lichess will stream all 14 rounds on YouTube and Twitch, hosted by IM Irene Sukandar with co-hosts GM Matthew Sadler, IM Eric Rosen, IM Laura Unuk, and many other guests!
Broadcast improvements continued to be a main focus of our development efforts over the past month. See what else our developers and community contributors have been working on in our updated changelog.
Are you ready for the Women's Candidates? Check out this great preview blog by @OnTheQueenside.
Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş achieved his third GM norm in the GRENKE Chess Open and is now the youngest GM in the world and the fourth youngest GM ever at the age of 12 years, 9 months and 29 days! Hans Niemann was the clear winner of the Open, beating Velimir Ivić in the final round and scoring 8/9 points.
Congratulations to IM Mahdi Gholami Orimi for winning the Sharjah Chess Masters online qualifier series, $400 and an invitation to the Sharjah Chess Masters 2024 from 13 to 24 May, with accommodation and full board covered, after defeating GM Boris Savchenko in the Knockouts final!
Magnus Carlsen is the winner of the GRENKE Chess Classic 2024, holding runner-up Richard Rapport to a draw in the final playoff game! Maxime Vachier-Lagrave took 3rd place against Vincent Keymer in the tiebreak, and world champion Ding Liren finished 5th with a 1.5-0.5 victory over Daniel Fridman.
Our Game of the Month March Contest has started: Share your best Lichess standard game played in March 2024 until 5 April! The winner will be announced one week after the deadline, followed by a blog post with commentary on the game.
Stage 3 of the Sharjah Chess Masters online qualifier series is underway! 8 players are competing for a prize fund of $1,100 - and an invitation to Sharjah Chess Masters 2024, with accommodation covered. You can follow all the chess action here.
The 10-game knight odds exhibition match between @LeelaKnightOdds and GM David Navara is taking place on Lichess right now! You can watch it in our broadcast and tune in to GM Matthew Sadler's live commentary on YouTube. Update: GM David Navara has won the match 7 to 3.
Stage 2 of the Sharjah Chess Masters online qualifier series, a 5+2 Swiss tournament, will start on Saturday, 30 March at 14:00 UTC. It is open to all titled players and the qualified untitled players from the Stage 1 arenas, with the top 8 advancing to the final Knockout Stage the following day!
Learn how to develop middlegame and endgame plans in two new instructive studies by @NoseKnowsAll: Particularly in the 1500-2000 Lichess rating range, you can learn to Talk to your pieces in Part 1. Players with a Lichess rating between 1900-2400 will get to know that Pawns aren't people in Part 2.
GM David Navara, the 12-time Czech Chess Champion and current number 65 in the FIDE rankings, will play a 10-game exhibition match on Lichess against the open source neural network based chess engine Leela Chess Zero with knight odds on Saturday, 30 March at 14:00 UTC!
The GRENKE Chess Classic 2024 has just started in Karlsruhe, Germany and features former and current world champions Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren among others competing in a rapid 45+10 double round-robin format until 1 April.
With many countries on holiday, there is plenty of chess to watch: The prestigious Fagernes Chess International is underway, a new Danish champion will be crowned, the final rounds of the Menchik Memorial and the Magistral Osasco are approaching, and the Mar del Plata Open is also taking place.
If your internet connection to Lichess seems unreasonably bad, try our new CDN routing network setting, which can improve reliability for some regions and ISPs.
Congratulations to GM Daniel Naroditsky for winning the Titled Arena March '24! GM Oleksandr Bortnyk came in second, just 4 points behind, and GM Emin Ohanyan took third place.
In 2 hours, you'll have the chance again to face some of the titled players in our 1+0 Bullet Warm-up Arena before they enter the Titled Arena!
GM Bogdan-Daniel Deac has emerged as the clear winner of the Reykjavik Open 2024, defeating GM Alisher Suleymenov with the black pieces after 118 moves in the final round.
The first Sharjah Chess Masters qualifier will start on Friday, 22 March at 06:00 UTC. The top 10 untitled players will advance to Stage 2, titled players are directly qualified. The second Stage 1 arena will start on Saturday, 23 March at 22:00 UTC and the third one on Sunday, 24 March at 15:00 UTC.
Registration for Season 39 of the Lichess4545 League is now open! Join us to celebrate 38 successful seasons of weekly classical 45+45 games with over 400 active players in the faster 15+15 Season 39 Kick-Off Arena starting on Saturday, 23 March at 23:00 UTC.
The 2024 African Chess Championships are over: WIM Jesse February won the Women's Championship with 7.5/9 points ahead of WIM Lina Nassr and WGM Shahenda Wafa. GM Bassem Amin clinched the Open Championship title undefeated with 8.5/9 points, followed by GM Bilel Bellahcene and IM Chitumbo Mwali.
GM Bassem Amin has topped the record four gold medals at the 13th African Games earlier this month by winning the African Open Championship with one more round to play! WIM Jesse Nikki February is leading the African Women's Championship after round 8 of 9, on her way to her second title after 2021.