Liverpool will play host to a festival of chess this summer alongside the prestigious 2025 British Chess Championships as organisers hope to put on the strongest event in its 121-year history.
Britain’s top chess players will converge on Liverpool from 31st July to 10th August as the English Chess Federation’s flagship annual event comes to the city for only the second time.
It will culminate in new British champions being named in all age groups.
A series of tournaments featuring the cream of Britain’s chess talent, including the Open and Women’s championships, will be held in Liverpool’s landmark St George’s Hall. A weekend congress for amateurs will also be held at the nearby Liverpool Holiday Inn in Lime Street.
Alongside the competitive events Liverpool will host a festival and social programme promoting the wider game. It will include outdoor social chess, simultaneous displays, team events, chess masterclasses, a chess film festival, and a range of cultural events organised by the historic Liverpool Chess Club.
This will be the 111th British Chess Championships—a series that has run almost unbroken since 1904.
The last two British Chess Championships, held in Leicester and Hull, have seen record numbers competing. Continuing growth is expected this year.
UK chess has also been experiencing a boom in participation among amateurs and success at the top level. In 2024, two new English grandmasters were named: teenage sensation Shreyas Royal and England’s newest grandmaster Ameet Ghasi.
The event is being put on by the English Chess Federation in partnership with Liverpool City Council and St George’s Hall, with support from the Chess Trust and the John Robinson Chess Trust.
It is a welcome return to Liverpool, a city steeped in chess culture. Liverpool boasts a thriving local league and, in Liverpool Chess Club, one of the oldest chess clubs in the world, founded in 1837. Atticus Chess Club, based in the Cross Keys Pub in Earle Street, is also a former winner of the national club championships.
Chess was also a key theme as the city hosted the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine, with school children encouraged to learn the game to honour the link with Liverpool’s sister city, Odesa. Schools were tasked with producing Eurovision-themed chess pieces, and a unique chess event featuring players from Liverpool and Ukraine was held at St Luke’s Bombed Out Church.
Liverpool last hosted the British in 2008, the year the city was named the European Capital of Culture. That year, Grandmaster Stuart Conquest emerged victorious as the 2008 Open champion, while International Master Jovanka Houska won the first of her nine Women’s titles.
Amos Burn, one of the world’s strongest chess players in the 19th century, was a member of the Liverpool Chess Club from 1867 until his death in 1925, serving as its president for many years.
Among the top players Liverpool has produced are four-time British Women’s champion Sheila Jackson, the 15th Correspondence World Championship winner John Carleton and international masters Gary Quillan and Malcolm Pein, a former British junior champion. Nearby Southport has also produced two grandmasters in Nigel Davies and Stuart Haslinger.
Nigel Towers, the English Chess Federation’s Director for Home Chess, said, ‘2008 was recognised as a strong event with many titled players. However, we expect the return visit in 2025 to provide an even more competitive championship, and one of the strongest British tournaments ever, given the increasing numbers of active British grandmasters and international masters and the current generation of top-level juniors.’
Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Health, Wellbeing and Culture, Councillor Harry Doyle, said, ‘Liverpool has a long and rich connection with chess, and it’s a hugely popular activity in schools and communities, so we are delighted to be hosting the British Chess Championships later this summer. St George’s Hall, with its incredible architecture and acoustics, will offer the perfect backdrop, lending itself perfectly to quiet, focused gameplay, which is sure to result in a thrilling competition for contestants and spectators alike. This is yet another coup for Liverpool as we continue to position ourselves as a versatile events city, and we look forward to working closely with the English Chess Federation and Chess In Schools and Communities’