The European Youth Team Chess Championship 2026 is set to take place from 25 July – 2 August in Pardubice, Czech Republic.
The event will be played in two age categories: U12, and U18, open and girls sections separately, with teams consisting of four players and one reserve in the open competitions and two female players and one reserve in the girl competitions. Each tournament will be played in 7 rounds, swiss system, with the time control of 90 min. + 30 sec. increment for every move played starting from move 1.
The Championship gathers 65 teams, a new participation record, and a total of 218 players representing their federations.
The top seeded teams in the Open U18 section are: Ukraine (average rating of players 2404), Armenia (average rating of players 2384), and Czech Republic (average rating of players 2375). The Girls U18 section is headlined by Germany 2 (average rating of players 2186), Czech Republic A (average rating of players 2151) and Serbia (average rating of players 2149). The rating favourites in the Open U12 category are: Netherlands (average rating of players 2045), Serbia (average rating of players 2031) and Hungary (average rating of players 2020), while the Girls U12 section features the following top seeds: Poland (average rating of players 1912), Germany 1 (average rating of players 1864) and Romania (average rating of players 1851).
Starting list of teams and team compositions can be found here.
The Championship will be played at the multi-purpose “Enteria Arena” in Pardubice.
The Captains meeting of the event is scheduled to take place on Sunday, 26th of July, at 11:00 CEST, and the Opening ceremony of the event is scheduled shortly before the start of the first round, at 14:45 in the playing venue of the event. Detailed tournament schedule can be found below.
Detailed information can be found on the official website of the event.