Chess in Sofia
Sofia’s chess shows itself on its tournament calendar. Clubs in Iztok and Ilinden run children’s cups through the school year, a rapid cup meets in a restaurant on Vitosha boulevard, company teams play a league in the Metropolitan hotel, and the student finals are held in Students’ Town. Most clubs are known by the events they organise rather than by an open door. Pernik, to the south-west, adds two clubs and its Palace of Culture.
Chess clubs 14
Cups and opens 8
Places to play 26
Chess960 around Sofia
Bulgarian tournament titles on the server for 2025 and 2026, and the FIDE event list for Bulgaria, were read for Chess960, Fischer random and Freestyle, in Bulgarian and in English. No over-the-board event in Sofia or Pernik carries any of these names so far.
Chess960 shuffles the pieces of the back rank into one of 960 starting positions, so opening theory drops away from the first move and the game starts fresh each time. Until a Sofia club puts one on, it can be played online at ch960.com.
No over-the-board Chess960 event in Sofia has turned up yet.
How these lists are put together
The cards draw on the Bulgarian federation’s 2021 list of member clubs, the federation’s news page, the Bulgarian Chess League’s own site and the rows of the public tournament server chess-results.com, where Bulgarian organisers enter their events with a venue line. Each fact keeps the day its page was read.
Within each list, the place with the newest dated trace of chess stands first; the order tells nothing about quality. A question that no page answers is marked “not stated by sources” rather than filled in. What the status lines mean, and what is left out, is set out in the editorial method.
Does your club meet somewhere in Sofia?
Many Sofia clubs have no website, and a hall or a regular evening is easy to miss. A link to a page, a tournament entry or a club post that shows where and when you play is enough to add it.