Major chess tournament with a new look: Amsterdam Chess Festival opens registration
Tuesday 12 May
Peter Doggers
Amsterdam – Registration for the Amsterdam Chess Festival (ACF), taking place July 10-19 at the Montessori Lyceum Oostpoort in Amsterdam, is now open. The tournament is the successor to the Amsterdam Science Park Chess Tournament and continues the tradition of a major annual summer chess event in the capital.
The main component of the Amsterdam Chess Festival is a nine-round open tournament for strong club players, masters, and grandmasters. On the opening day, there is a blitz chess tournament, and there are also four-player round-robins during the week and in the final weekend, alongside other chess events. There is even an opportunity to play Freestyle Chess (Chess960) during the final weekend.
Important parts of the festival include the Open Dutch Student Championship and the Open Dutch Student Blitz Chess Championship. In these tournaments, a total of six tickets are up for grabs for the FISU World University Championships in October 2026 in China.
The Amsterdam Chess Festival is organized by the Amsterdam Chess Open Foundation, which previously organized three successful ACO weekend tournaments in Amsterdam in the autumn of 2023, 2024, and 2025. The foundation is now also responsible for the organization of the former Science Park Chess Tournament, the summer chess tournament that was held in Amsterdam in July in recent years.
“We are delighted to now be able to organize a summer festival in Amsterdam as well,” says Jan Timmerman, Chairman of the Board of the Amsterdam Chess Open Foundation. “We thank the organizers of the Science Park tournament and hope to set up a new festival that will be at least as wonderful. The new location, the Montessori Lyceum Oostpoort, will undoubtedly contribute to that.”
The Amsterdam Chess Open Foundation is collaborating with Bar Blitz for the organization. Bar Blitz is an organization that holds chess events at informal locations with the aim of bringing people together through over-the-board chess. Bar Blitz has taken care of the tournament website and offers participants with their own account the opportunity to view in-depth statistics regarding ratings and results.
The Amsterdam Chess Festival (ACF) will take place July 10–19, 2026, at the Montessori Lyceum Oostpoort in Amsterdam. Players can register on this website.