More Than a Half-Year Update 2025

Your donations and support have allowed us to do many awesome things this half-year that we hope you will enjoy. We will continue to work hard to give you the best free, libre, and open-source chess experience, and that is only possible because of the chess community's trust in Lichess. We are excited to announce work on a lot of different areas of Lichess, so read on to see how we have changed for the better!

If you want to find out more about what we've done in the last six months, you can find our (rather lengthy!) changelog here.

Internal Improvements

Lichess has become one of the largest free/libre open source software (FLOSS) projects on the internet, and also one of the biggest sites on the internet in terms of user volume and traffic. One of our most important goals has always been to show that passion and community can do amazing things, and that there are other ways to make an impact beyond relying on private capital. And, as we continue to grow, we require more consistent stewardship over various aspects of the website and charity.

We're pleased to announce that earlier this year, we hired three part-time coordinators. One coordinator will help us manage more of our administrative burden; for example, across our events we paid out $4,500 in prize fund money last month, to 25 different chess players, representing around 10% of our total monthly expenditure. Another will grow our content including social media, to help us develop a long-term content strategy, consistent with our charitable purpose of "promoting and encouraging the play and study of chess". The third coordinator role will advocate for our community, helping to build and expand on our initiatives and projects, building a positive and inclusive space for everyone interested or potentially interested in chess, FLOSS, and everything in-between.

This has only been possible because of the generosity of our donors, our patrons, contributors, and advocates who help promote the work we are able to do. We look forward to going from strength to strength with you, contributing back to the chess ecosystem and representing FLOSS ideals globally.

Mobile Updates

Community support has also made it possible to hire a full-time mobile developer to work on our new mobile app. The new mobile app is very nearly ready to come out of "beta". Our developers are still hard at work, but we want to make sure the app experience is great for all users, on all devices. Some less popular features are not yet ready in the new app, and some older devices will only support the old app. In the meantime, we encourage all of our users to feel free to express their feedback, which they can give now and when the new app is released as well.

Site Updates

Our developers work tirelessly to improve Lichess and maintain its many features. Coding is a collaborative process, and being an open source project, Lichess is greatly indebted to the work of countless developers who maintain the codebase, manage updates, and fix bugs. If you're interested in contributing to the behind-the-scenes Lichess operation, join us on Discord and read our contribute page for more information.

Our site saw a lot of important updates from January 2025 to June 2025. Our tournament aficionados may have already noticed that arena standings can change up to 3 days after a tournament has taken place. This is to make our events more fair, by adjusting the time fair play violations are considered for the final tournament standings. That means that after 72 hours, the arena standings will not change, regardless of what happens to users' accounts. And if you're a tournament enthusiast who notices that there's a bot in one of your favorite arenas, don't worry; you're not in the Matrix, not yet anyway. Bots can now play arena games, as long as the tournament creator enables that setting. Bot and human arenas of course include a warning to make sure users are aware that they're joining such a tournament.

For our titled players, your public titled accounts are now linked to your FIDE profile, and your FIDE ID will thus be available with PGN exports. Titled players are entitled to one public and one private titled account, though, so the games played on your private accounts will remain unlinked and make it harder for your opponents to prepare against you. Speaking of titled players, one feature that many titled players enjoy is hosting simultaneous exhibitions. Now, any member of a team can create team simuls.

Other site updates include updated links to our Spreadshirt shop and adding a reply button in non-game chats.

Blog Updates

The Lichess blogging world has seen some major updates that we hope will make Lichess blogs better for authors and readers alike. For authors, it is now mandatory to disclose sponsored content, affiliate links, or commercial advertisement in posts, helping users get a better understanding of what the author's potential conflicts of interest are. Authors can also now sticky their own blog posts, helping promote their favorite posts to their readership. Blog enjoyers will love our new blog recommender system, which recommends blogs to users based on previous blogs they've enjoyed. Yet another major update has been the addition of blog automoderation. The blog carousel now also includes control buttons (thanks yassine-safraoui), and YouTube clips can now be embedded in blogs.

Broadcast Updates

Broadcasts have received a lot of attention lately, and for good reason. We have continued to work on broadcasts, refining and tweaking them to make them transmit the love of chess to all our users. Our users will be happy to know that you can show or hide broadcast results, and a broadcast button to return to live position is also now available. Moreover, we have recently added broadcast games to our database. Exotic broadcast results are also live, and up to 12 alternative boards on the broadcast gameplay page are now displayed.

Accessibility Updates

As we've mentioned before, "The Lichess team strives to provide a top class chess site that is accessible to all players." In recent months, a lot of work has gone into improvements to the non-visual user interface (NVUI). The work has been immense and has included such changes as supporting all variants when using accessibility mode, better support for the viewing of broadcasts, and numerous new keyboard shortcuts, input commands, and options to aid players when playing/viewing/analysing games. Finally, we are continuing to place language tags, meaning that a screen reader will correctly pronounce English when you use Lichess in a different language. Many thanks to our countless contributors, especially allanjoseph98 and yafred!

We also now have a detailed blind mode tutorial, thanks to the work of ikrami1!

Translation

Many language translations have been added/updated thanks to many CrowdIn contributors. Some major translator milestones: Júlíus Gunnars wrote/re-wrote more than half of the Icelandic translation, jlandin completed 8% of the Swedish translation in a single day, double-beep overhauled and significantly expanded the Greek translation, and Odovacrius completed more than 15% of the Luxembourgish translation, as well as doing extensive proofreading. These represent just a few of the 100,000+ translated words which have been contributed so far in 2025, by our volunteer translators on Crowdin.

At a higher level, a lot of work was put into language mapping, which improved how we work with constructed languages especially. Esperantistos will be happy to know that Esperanto has been fixed on mobile.

Events

The interconnected web between online and offline chess always gets Lichess' focus, so we have continued to cover all kinds of chess events.

FIDE Women's World Championship 2025

Lichess covered the 2025 FIDE Women's World Championship with daily streams and annotated blog posts. Check out the start and end of the coverage as well as an interview with the 2025 Women's World Champion, GM Ju Wenjun!

Sharjah Masters

For the second year in a row, Lichess has also collaborated with the Sharjah Masters, streaming the event every day with live camera feeds, in addition to posting highlights on our feed and social media channels.

Tata Steel

Lichess has also provided written coverage of the thrilling Tata Steel Chess 2025. You can find the coverage, starting from round 4 and ending on round 13 here.

Event Collaborations

Lichess also closely collaborates with online and offline chess events to provide support and bring our community fun tournaments that they can enjoy. If you are a tournament organizer and are interested in collaborating with Lichess, email us at events@lichess.org.

Arab Chess Federation

Our director of operations, Theo Wait, has recently signed a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding for Cooperation) on behalf of Lichess with HE Sheikh Dr. Khalid bin Humaid Al Qasimi, the President of the Arab Chess Federation. The memorandum oversees tournament cooperation and general promotion.

ChessMood

Lichess has also collaborated closely with ChessMood to host the ChessMood 20/20 Grand Prix, which sees one qualifier tournament every 20th of each month, and rounds off the year with a final on December 20. The next qualifying arena will be held on the 20th of August; you can sign up by emailing events@lichess.org.

Kazakhstan Cup

After the 2023 Kazakhstan Cup saw Lichess hosting the Aktobe Open, Uralsk Open, and Pavlodar Open qualifiers on Lichess, we have once again collaborated with the Kazakhstan Cup to bring you the 2025 Aktobe Open Qualifiers. The 2025 Aktobe Open Qualifiers started off with 8 arena tournaments, which qualified players to a Swiss tournament. The top 7 players from the Swiss, plus a Lichess wildcard, then played a round robin tournament, where GM Zhamsaran Tsydypov, GM Aleksandr Rakhmanov, and IM Eldiyar Orozbaev finished in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, respectively, thus earning monetary prizes and qualification to the Aktobe Open with all expenses covered. The Aktobe Open was covered on our channel

Optiver

Lichess has once again cooperated with Optiver, which sponsors GM Anish Giri and IM Eline Roebers, to host the virtual qualifiers of the Optiver Chess Championship 2025. The championship qualifies students to a live event where players get to meet GM Anish Giri and IM Eline Roebers, and have a day at the Optiver HQ in Amsterdam.

Lichess Events

We are also proud to bring you our own Lichess events, which continue to receive increased attention and support. We work diligently on improving these events to bring a competitive and fun spirit to our beloved community.

Titled Arena

A fixture of Lichess events, the Titled Arena continues to pit the strongest players in the world against each other twice a month. Don't miss the next warm-up and titled arena!

Streamer Arena

The Streamer Arena started off as a trial event which sought to gauge streamers' response to a team battle featuring their very own teams. As it was clear that such an event was well-received by both Lichess streamers and players alike, we have continued to host a monthly Streamer Arena. The next arena will be held on the 11th of August; you can sign up by emailing events@lichess.org.

Game of the Month

Our game of the month competition continues to grow thanks to the community's amazing support. With over 100 games posted each month, our team takes careful consideration to judge these games and bring you the Lichess GOTM. Check the General Chess Discussion subforum at the start of the month for the stickied post where you can submit your own brilliant games!

Lichess Bundesliga

The two-time weekly Lichess Bundesliga recently crossed its 550th edition after more than 5 years. The German Chess Federation recently won the 559th edition. Will we see more federations joining in the future?

Lichess Mega Battle

The Lichess Mega Battle, which is running its 119th edition next week, runs every second Friday and frequently welcomes around 2000 players.

Variant World Championships

Lichess continues to support variant communities by collaborating with them to host world championships in all of the variants Lichess offers, excluding chess960. So far, the following world championships are under way:
Atomic World Championship
Crazyhouse World Championship
Horde Bullet World Championship
With more coming along the way in the latter half of 2025!

Charity Drives

As a charity, Lichess appreciates the work of all different sorts of charities around the world. As chess and the human connection cannot be separated, Lichess believes in supporting all of its users from all corners of the world. To that end, Lichess has hosted a charity campaign to support Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders, with fundraising streams running from May 3 to May 11. We are very grateful for the Lichess team's effort to make this campaign a reality, the hard work of our streamers, and the generous support from the kind Lichess community.

Conclusion

Lichess continues to steadily improve and prove that community-driven efforts are not only viable, but can also thrive in an anti-competitive environment. We will continue working diligently in the second half of 2025, for we are privileged to bring forth and maintain this labor of passion. We once again thank our users and contributors alike for believing in Lichess and helping it be the site that it always strives to be. Remember: free, libre, and open source. Now and forever.