Tournament calendar, online registration, pairings and live standings. Find a tournament to join — or run your own with free software that's compliant with FIDE 2026 rules.
Below you'll find chess tournaments currently running or recently finished on our system. The list updates automatically: standings, pairings and results are public and viewable without an account.
Want full live standings and round-by-round results? Go to live results or open the app and browse all public tournaments.
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Find chess tournaments in your area or abroad. The calendar includes events from clubs, schools, regional federations and international opens. Register online when the organizer enables it.
Run your tournament for free, from small club events to regional championships. Swiss system, round robin, team tournaments. Automated pairings, live standings, and public pages ready to share with players.
Follow a live tournament without being entered. Standings refresh round by round, pairings are public, and games are viewable. Works on desktop, tablet and mobile — nothing to install.
A chess tournament is a competition between multiple players run under the standardized rules of FIDE, the World Chess Federation. Unlike a friendly game, every result in a tournament is recorded, every pairing follows precise criteria, and the final standings rely on tiebreak systems that determine the order when two or more players finish on the same score.
Most chess tournaments use one of three main formats.
The Swiss system is by far the most common when there are many participants (20 or more). At each round, players are paired against opponents on similar scores, without everyone needing to play everyone else. It's the format used for national championships, international opens and weekend festivals. The Swiss system makes it possible to finish a 100-player tournament in 7-9 rounds instead of 99.
A round robin (all-play-all) has every player face every other player. It's the format for finals, invitation events and club championships in smaller clubs. It works well up to 12-14 players.
A knockout (single elimination) eliminates the loser of each match: every round halves the field until a two-player final. It's less common in classical chess but standard in many rapid and blitz events.
In classical chess and FIDE-rated events, Swiss-system pairings follow technical rules that minimize the score difference between opponents and balance colors (White and Black) over the tournament. Five recognized variants are in use: Dutch, Dubov, Burstein, Lim and USCF — each with its own nuances.
When the tournament ends, players on the same score are ordered by tiebreak systems. The most common are Buchholz (sum of opponents' scores), Buchholz Cut-1 (excluding the lowest opponent), Sonneborn-Berger, and Performance (average opponent rating). The order of tiebreak criteria is set by the organizer before the tournament begins.
Read more in our guide to tiebreak systems and the Swiss system guide.
Every official chess tournament has an arbiter responsible for applying the rules, validating pairings, handling disputes and submitting the final report to the federation. For FIDE-rated tournaments the requirements are specific: a qualified arbiter, a minimum number of rounds, and a registration procedure with FIDE through the national federation.
On ChessPairings.org, the arbiter has a dual pairing engine for verification, TRF export for FIDE rating reports, and all the tools to run large tournaments — with nothing to install.
See also: the arbiter's role and getting your tournament FIDE-rated.
Chess tournaments are organized worldwide — from local club nights to international super-tournaments. National federations affiliated to FIDE coordinate the official calendar in each country, while regional federations and individual clubs run most of the events on the ground. The typical season includes national championships and age categories, weekend opens, summer festivals (often in tourist locations), evening rapid and blitz events at clubs, and a thriving scholastic scene.
In recent years, official online tournaments and hybrid events (part online, part over the board) have grown rapidly. Many federations now run online qualifiers and youth circuits in parallel with classical events.
ChessPairings.org is free to use for arbiters and organizers anywhere in the world. It handles every tournament format, from club championships to festivals with hundreds of participants. The software is multilingual (English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Polish and more), and produces TRF files automatically for FIDE rating submission.
Create your tournament on my.chesspairings.org: if you set visibility to "public", it will appear automatically on this page.
Create a tournament for freeIf you want to run a tournament, create a free account and get started in minutes. If you just want to follow one, browse the list at the top of this page.
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Egypt
Georgia
Germany
India
Indonesia
Italy
Philippines
Poland
Romania
South Africa
Spain
Turkey
USA