EL2025 - European League Rules

The European League is a team match tournament between European national teams on chess.com. The main purpose of the European League is to provide as many players as possible the chance to play against people from all of Europe in friendly competition. All players are asked to choose one European League team to play for at the beginning of the year, and to stick with that team for the rest of the season.

In 2025, there are 5 round robin divisions. The top 4 divisions have 9 teams and 9 rounds. Division 5 has 7 teams and 7 rounds. The rounds are scheduled every 3 to 4 weeks as follows:

- January: Round 1,

- February: Rounds 2 and 3,

- March: Round 4,

- April: Round 5,

- May: Rounds 6 and 7,

- June: Round 8,

- July: Round 9

.

Teams can agree to play their match earlier or later, but all matches need to be started by September 15 2025. Final standings will be taken on December 31 2025. The dates in the schedule are recommendation, but if the teams agree to start match beyond this recommendation, we would like to be informed about plans to make tracking progress easier.

World League 2025 matches can be used to count as matches for the European League 2025. Teams can agree to play two separate matches. When joint match is played, both teams agree that larger requirement on the minimum number of players from the two leagues will be used for the match. If one of the teams fails requirement and EL2025 has lower requirement, they can arrange replacement provided it is started within deadline (recognising that this might be good option and arranging match is on team's admins).

Scoring System: Teams will be awarded 1 point for every match they win, and ½ point for every match they draw. Ties will be settled by the European League tiebreak, which is B*C for each match, where B is the percentage of board points won, assuming all unfinished games are draws, and C is the fraction of finished games in the match. When a team wins a match by forfeit, the average EL tiebreak per match for this team in this season is added to this team's tiebreak.

Team match scores will be adjusted for all closed accounts and for players that are playing for multiple teams (in 2 or more matches for each of 2 or more teams). A player whose opponent is subject to an adjustment will receive 2 points. If both accounts are subject to an adjustment, the points will be split 1:1 regardless of the actual result.

The aim of the European League is to keep to divisions of 10 teams. If this aim makes it possible, there will be 2 promotions and 2 relegations per division.

Admins are asked not to delete players from the roster or group, and they may lose matches by disqualification if they do.

Admins have the option to remove players from the roster when these have a timeout percentage of 25% or higher.

Multiplayer lists will be provided. Please make sure to regularly check them and use them to fix all multiplayer cases quickly. Tell all your players they have to choose one single EL team for all of 2025, and make sure they will only remain on the rosters of one single EL2025 team.

REMARKS

We are happy to see that thanks to the European League organizer work over many years, very nearly every European country is represented in the European League with one team! Each team please kindly show their flag in the group profile and insert the following to their group description: “This team represents [name of country or nationality] in the European League.”
Make sure that at least 1, or better 2, active admins from the team join the European League group, so as to receive all relevant information. When there is a change, find new active admins and post an update to your list of admins in the European League List of Teams and Active Admins.
Current standings and tables will be shown during the season, on https://chessteams.info --- thanks to puremind for implementing this great website! If a match is not shown in these standings when they are updated, or if a wrong match is shown there, please report it with the correct match link and information to the European League 2025 Match Links thread.
The European League is designed so that the admins have great flexibility and great responsibility for organizing their matches nicely with each other, in fairness and with good communication. When you observe rule infractions that need fixing, please report them to the European League 2025 Problem Fixing forum thread.
If you have any suggestions about how the European League can be improved, you can post them to the EL2026 Suggestions thread.
For chatting and discussions, please use the European League Open Discussions thread. Help us to keep group notes to a useful and workable minimum.

TEAM MATCH SETTINGS

Please make sure to use the following parameters on all your EL2021 matches:

Match Name: EL2024 Rx: Team ... vs Team ....

(Example: EL2024 R1: Team Italia vs Team Romania)

If your match is a WL2024 match counting also for EL2024, please kindly help the organizers by putting also EL2024 in the match name whenever possible.

Game Type: Standard chess
Days per Move: 3
Quick Description: leave blank
Rating: Min / Max: leave blank
Minimum Games: 10
Players per Club:
Min:

- Division 1: 75 players per team
- Division 2: 50 players per team
- Division 3: 25 players per team
- Division 4: 15 players per team
- Division 5: 3 players per team

Max: leave blank
Concurrent games per Opponent: 2
Start Date and Start Time: Make sure you use a start date and start time. Please always allow for at least 10 days and at most 20 days for the match to be open for registration when sending your challenge.
Auto Start tournament when registration is full: OFF
Games are rated: select yes

EL2025 Schedules and Match Links

EL2024 Schedules and Match Links

EL2023 Schedules and Match Links, and results

Division 1 1. England 2. Holland 3. Spain
Division 2 1. Scotland 2. Czechia 3. Denmark
Division 3 1. Croatia 2. Azerbaijan 3. Galicia
Division 4 1. Switzerland 2. Latvia 3. Norway
Division 5 1. Lithuania 2. Vatican City 3. Estonia

EL2022 Schedules and Match Links, and results

Division 1 1. England 2. Holland 3. Serbia
Division 2 1. Romania 2. Slovenia 3. Denmark
Division 3 1. Belgium 2. Greece 3. Azerbaijan
Division 4 1. Finland 2. Slovenia 3. Norway
Division 5 1. Latvia 2. Switzerland 3. Lithuania

EL2021 Schedules and Match Links, and results

Division 1 1. England 2. Holland 3. Russia
Division 2 1. Bosnia and Herzegovina 2. Bulgaria 3. Romania
Division 3 1. Scotland 2. Iceland 3. Belarus
Division 4 1. Albania 2. Belgium 3. Finland
Division 5 1. Ireland 2. Wales 3. Switzerland

EL2020 Schedules and Match Links, and Results

Division 1 1. England 2. Russia 3. Spain
Division 2 1. Czechia 2. Italy 3. Romania
Division 3 1. Bosnia and Herzegovina 2. Galicia 3. Moldova
Division 4 1. Iceland 2. Israel 3. Albania
Division 5 1. Turkey 2. Finland 3. Wales

EL2019 Schedules and Match Links, and Results

Division 1 1. Spain 2. France 3. Ukraine
Division 2 1. Bulgaria 2. Armenia 3. Germany
Division 3 1. Denmark 2. Sweden 3. Portugal and Galicia
Division 4 1. Bosnia and Herzegovina 2. Greece 3. Belgium
Division 5 1. Iceland 2. Latvia 3. Wales

EL2018 Schedules and Match Links, and Results

Division 1 1. Russia 2. Ukraine 3. Spain
Division 2 1. Romania 2. Italy 3. Bulgaria
Division 3 1. Kazakhstan 2. Croatia 3. Sweden
Division 4 1. Denmark 2. Scotland 3. Bosnia and Herzegovina
Division 5 1. Vatican City 2. Iceland 3. Austria

EL2017 Schedules and Match Links, and Results

Division 1 1. England 2. Russia 3. Ukraine
Division 2 1. Slovakia 2. Holland 3. Poland
Division 3 1. Belarus 2. Italia 3. Galicia
Division 4 1. Kazakhstan 2. Portugal 3. Catalonia
Division 5 1. Denmark 2. Vatican City 3. Iceland

European League Hall of Fame

European League

Super Admins