The European Individual Chess Championship is a chess tournament organised by the European Chess Union. It was established in 2000 and has since then taken place on a yearly basis. Apart from determining the European champions (open and women's), another objective of this tournament is to determine a number of players who qualify for the FIDE World Cup and the FIDE Women's World Cup (formerly the knockout Women's World Championship).
The European Individual Championship consists of two separate tournaments, an open event and a women's event, held at different times of the year and hosted in different cities. Both are Swiss system tournaments, with a varying number of rounds. Historically, the only exception to this was the first Women's Championship tournament in 2000, which was held as a knockout tournament.
Apart from the first edition in 2000, where in case of a tie the Buchholz rating was used as a tie-breaker, rapid play playoff matches are used to determine the medal winners as well as the world championship qualifiers.
There have been a number of controversies associated with the tournament:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 European Championship in Podčetrtek, Slovenia was postponed to 2022. [6]
For complete tables / results, refer to The Week in Chess website:
