English Chess Forum

Sunday 20 July 2025 is World Chess Day.

The existence of international days predates the establishment of the United Nations, but the UN has embraced them as a powerful advocacy tool.
So helpful of the UN to have such a day for chess.

Last year, the day coincided with the 100th anniversary of FIDE, which gave a wonderful opportunity for marketing chess and growing the membership of every chess club. Apart from Colchester, where we made a thing of it, the event apparently passed with little engagement by chess clubs. This year, I have been looking for dog owning chess players who have Dalmatians but I have yet to spot enough for the event I wanted to put on.
Consequently, I have had to resort to not celebrating FIDE's birthday.

Instead, the celebration of World Chess Day 2025 is through a county-wide chess invitation event. The prizes to fight for are substantial, and an early commitment to entry is essential if you want the right outcome on your score sheet.

The event is advertised in the appropriate part of this forum: 'Congress Diary - Details of upcoming UK events, please provide working links if possible.' See https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.ph ... 17#p318417

Some links for further reading here:
World Chess Day 2004 ColCHESSter event '100 Handshakes' (in this forum) https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=14085

How to grow a chess club:
Article in Chess Moves September 2024 (page 31) https://www.englishchess.org.uk/wp-cont ... tember.pdf
Press coverage https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/sport/24 ... oric-rise/
or in this forum https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.ph ... 73#p315773

Promoting social OTB chess ('It is great on its own and as far as clubs are concerned it is a feeder, as the wider base that grass roots chess has, the more people will come through to club level.') https://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.ph ... 30#p310830

Happy World Chess Day! Despite the early rain, chess players in Colchester are celebrating the day in the best way possible - offering chess to everyone.
Here is the set up for E2-E4 Colchester Chess Club's open session at one of the city's great art (and other stuff) venues: The Minories.
E2-E4 https://colchesster.org.uk/docs/e2-e4-chess-club/
The Minories https://colchesster.org.uk/docs/the-com ... gh-street/

And here is the lead up to all this... https://colchesster.org.uk/2025/06/08/world-chess-day/

It seems bizarre to celebrate chess on a July date. Surely chess is predominantly a winter activity? Many English chess clubs are inactive over the summer. The English club season runs from September through to May. June to August are traditionally fallow months. This could be an indication of how detached elite chess players are from the average club player. Or am I missing something?

"It seems bizarre to celebrate chess on a July date"

I think it's the date FIDE was formed, and a prime mover was Leonard P Rees of Redhill Chess Club.

Ian Cross wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 30, 2025 9:03 pm

It seems bizarre to celebrate chess on a July date. Surely chess is predominantly a winter activity? Many English chess clubs are inactive over the summer. The English club season runs from September through to May. June to August are traditionally fallow months. This could be an indication of how detached elite chess players are from the average club player. Or am I missing something?

I think that the summer is the perfect time to host a once-a-year event where you celebrate chess and try to attract new members. It's daylight for a lot longer, the weather is warmer and you can host outdoor events. I'm certainly very grateful that my birthday is in July, my outdoor birthday blitz events would have been more problematic in the middle of winter.

"I think that the summer is the perfect time to host a once-a-year event"

Indeed, but it depends where you are...