The Global Women’s Online Chess Challenge “The Queens’ Festival”, a series of continental and global women’s online chess tournaments and educative side events, will start on June 11, 2021.
The Queen’s Festival is a unique all-inclusive event with the aim to develop a strong global community of women in chess and enhance participation of women in all aspects of chess life.
Built on the recent success and appeal of the Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit”, this event promotes female players, organizers, arbiters, influencers, leaders, and rising stars of all levels, backgrounds and countries.
Players from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas will first be able to participate in the Continental Online Blitz Qualification Tournaments and those who qualify will advance to the Queens’ Online Individual and Team Finals.
European Online Blitz Qualification Tournament will be played on 19th of June. The event will be played in 11 rounds, Swiss System, with time control: 3 min + 2 sec per move starting from move 1. Top three teams will qualify for the Queens’ Online Final Team Blitz.
Players will compete in four rating categories
Category A: > 2100
Category B: 1800-2099
Category C: 1500-1799
Category D: < 1500, unrated
Each country can register four female players (one in each category) free of charge, see the Tournament Regulations for more details.
Registration deadline for Qualification Tournaments in Europe and America is extended until Wednesday, June 16, 2021, while the registration deadline for Qualification Tournaments in Africa and Asia is extended until next Wednesday, June 9, 2021.
You can view the Regulations here.
Registrations for the tournaments are made by the National Federations by filling this Excel file and sending it to the organizers’ email address: queensfestival@fide.com.
For those interested in various chess-related topics, we have prepared seminars and networking events with special guests including Dana Reizniece-Ozola, Dinara Saduakassova, Jennifer Shahade, Susan Namangale, Regina Pokorna, Sarkhan Gashimov, Dr. Gnounewou Fopa Seraphin and others.
Registration form for side events can be found here.
The festival is organized by FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess in cooperation with FIDE Events Commission and with the support of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), as well as Asian Chess Federation, African Chess Confederation, European Chess Union, and Confederation of Chess for Americas.