Bayegan Pendik beat defending Open champion SuperChess Romania 3.5–2.5, while Monte-Carlo won 4–0 to retain the women’s title. Both championships were settled on tiebreaks.
Bayegan Pendik Chess Sports Club won the 2026 European Chess Club Cup Open title, and Cercle d’Echecs de Monte-Carlo retained the women’s crown after the seventh and final round on 23 October. FIDE’s final account places SuperChess Romania fourth on tiebreaks, securing a European Super League qualification place.
Three teams had shared the lead in each competition before the final round. Bayegan Pendik defeated defending Open champion SuperChess Romania 3.5–2.5, while Monte-Carlo’s 4–0 victory secured its ninth women’s title. Both champions finished level on match points with another team, leaving tiebreak scores—the measures used to rank teams with equal points—to decide gold.
Six Open teams finished on 11 match points, making their tiebreak scores decisive for fourth place. SuperChess had the best tiebreaks among those teams and took the position that guaranteed entry to the inaugural European Super League, according to FIDE.
FIDE also confirmed Rishon LeZion A’s Open bronze with 12 match points. In the women’s competition, Sirmium Sremska Mitrovica took bronze ahead of Odlar Yurdu on tiebreaks after both finished on 10 points.
Anish Giri beat Nodirbek Abdusattorov after allowing his opponent to capture a rook. Chess.com’s account says Abdusattorov accepted the piece but overlooked the tactical moves that followed; by move 22, Giri had a winning position.
Amin Tabatabaei gained a near-winning position against Haik Martirosyan in the opening. Martirosyan extended the game into a rook endgame—a late stage centred on rooks and pawns—but remained a pawn down. Tabatabaei converted that advantage into Bayegan Pendik’s other decisive victory.
The Armenian grandmaster took an individual medal at the women’s tournament in Budva, while her Luxembourg club CE Gambit Bonnevoie finished second.
1 min
Novy Bor Chess Club beat Elektroprivreda 4.5–1.5 to finish alongside Bayegan Pendik on 13 match points. Both teams recorded six wins and a draw, but Bayegan Pendik’s first tiebreak score was 8.5 points higher. Boris Gelfand-led Rishon LeZion A finished with a 5.5–0.5 victory over Cheddleton Savills Catering.
| Place | Team | Match points | First tiebreak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bayegan Pendik Chess Sports Club | 13 | 261.5 |
| 2 | Novy Bor Chess Club | 13 | 253 |
| 3 | Rishon LeZion A | 12 | 227.5 |
| 4 | SuperChess Romania | 11 | 259 |
The three women’s leaders had already played one another, so each faced a lower-placed opponent in the final round. Monte-Carlo won all four games in its match. CE Gambit Bonnevoie beat Crvena Zvezda 2.5–1.5 but finished second on tiebreaks with the same 12 match points as the champion.
Bonnevoie had beaten Monte-Carlo in round four and defeated all three highest-seeded teams during the event, Chess.com reported. Those results were not enough for gold. Sirmium Sremska Mitrovica finished with a 3.5–0.5 victory over Odlar Yurdu.
| Place | Team | Match points | Tiebreak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cercle d’Echecs de Monte-Carlo | 12 | 159.5 |
| 2 | CE Gambit Bonnevoie | 12 | 145 |
| 3 | Sirmium Sremska Mitrovica | 10 | 136 |
| 4 | Odlar Yurdu | 10 | 107 |
SuperChess Romania’s qualification takes the club into the 2027 European Chess Super League, the next competition secured by its fourth-place finish.
The Guardian reports that the 11-year-old beat Viktoria Johansson in 32 moves at the European Club Cup to surpass Judit Polgar’s 38-year-old record.
1 min
Bayegan Pendik won after the Open leaders drew, while Odlar Yurdu beat the women’s leader, Chess.com reports, leaving both title races level before the final round.
3 min
