The Queens Festival: Connecting Women in Chess

The Global Women’s Online Chess Challenge “The Queens’ Festival”, will be a series of continental and global women’s online chess tournaments and educative side events held in June.

The festival, organized by FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess in cooperation with FIDE Events Commission and with the support of the Asian Chess Federation, African Chess Confederation, European Chess Union, and Confederation of Chess for Americas, 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.

The online tournaments will be held on Tornelo and female chess players who represent USA with FIDE can register to participate in the event for $15 (entry fee of $12 and a $3 administrative fee). The deadline for USA players to register for this event is June 10, 2021.

REGISTRATION LINK: https://www.events4chess.com/events/?event_ID=1395

The American Online Blitz Qualification tournament will take place on June 20, 2021 (starting at 2pm EDT) with the top 3 players in each category (Category A: >=2100, Category B: 1800-2099, Category C: 1500-1799 and Category D: <1500 or unrated) qualifying for the Queens' Online Final Individual Blitz to be held on June 26, 2021 (starting at 8am EDT).

There is also a team component to the Qualification Tournament with the top score in each category counting towards a federation's team score. If the USA team finishes in the top 3 in the Qualification Tournament then the players with the best score in each category will form Team USA and participate in the Queens' Online Final Team Blitz on June 27, 2021 (starting at 8am EDT).

For those interested in various chess-related topics, there are also 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. You can register for the side events at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MKtgExtcfzoulMfBdoZS_Z8NE0Mc1utVa4VnGPg4kV0/viewform?edit_requested=true.

A dedicated website with more detailed information is available at http://queensfestival.fide.com. Keep an eye on it to be informed of the latest updates.

We invite all female chess enthusiasts to participate, play, learn and connect. Doing what we love, together we can make a difference in our global chess community!