An exciting year ahead of us!

In our board meeting from January 6th, all administrators got assigned their areas of responsibility. You can read about each one’s ambitions and focus points in their respective action plans. Updates and details will be shared in this blog in the coming weeks. Here is a non-exhaustive list of initiatives that the team will kick-off and/or continue – next to the ones I’m adressing directly below:

• work on articles of association, internal and tournament regulations, refinement of composition of the various commissions, GDPR compliance
• setup and growth of online chess community, linked to the RBCF
• growth of our online social media presence
• iterate on the new interclub regulations and activate the workgroup
• organize, support, report on and activate the belgian chess community on the various international participations we have during the year (youth, elite, seniors)
• bringing structure and clarity and gathering community feedback in the trainings and arbiters education program
• liaise with FIDE and prepare our community for upcoming changes to the laws of chess
• advance chess in schools, in combination with ECU

Below, I’d like to share some words on my own responsibilities, both as president, and (national) rating officer.

The creation and publication of the action plans (see details in the board meeting notes) aims to improve visibility in the work done by the RBCF administrators. All this volunteering work deserves visibility and credit. We welcome all constructive feedback from the community on these action plans, in order to move forward together!

As your new president, I’m putting focus on connections between the administrators, and creating visibility of their work towards the community. To strengthen our team spirit, we’ll start with both on-site board meetings and two team building activities in the first year. Our next board meeting takes places at and during the Belgian Youth Championship in Blankenberge. Should you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to myself or the other administrators and collaborators.

From a governing point of view, I’ll work – together with our treasurer and vice-president Yves Moreels – on a structural comparison of the chess landscapes in Belgium and its neighboring countries.

Next up are various ideas we’ll be exploring in the next weeks. They include the support and organization of chess events in partnership with industry, and the active participation in european and/or international tournaments. Stay tuned for more!

For the first time, we’ll be hosting a club day for the broad chess community. More details to follow later. We are still looking for volunteers to shape this project together with the RBCF board!

I’ll be driving myself the further implementation of our new (Odoo-based) membership system. A public project link is available to follow along on the progress of this project. Our new membership system aims to bring significant benefits to both the RBCF organization and the broader chess community.

Last but not least, I’d like to draw you attention to two supporting initiatives that we published already:

• A budget of € 5 000 for the (financial) support of chess activities. The first application deadline is March 31st, 2026. We encourage all clubs, players and organizers to both apply (if relevant) and give us feedback on this framework.
• Support for the creation of chess content. Writers and influencers can submit their content directly through this website and file a request for support subsequently.

Questions or remarks on any or all of the above can be adressed to myself personally (steven.bellens@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be), or to the whole team (info@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be)

Rating officer

As for my responsibility on the national rating system, I’ll be working on the practical implementation of the migration to FIDE ELO, as approved in the General Assembly meeting from December 6th 2025. We expect to publish two more national ELO rankings (April – July), after which we’ll switch to a FIDE only ranking system. Major topics to handle in this migration are:

• definition of the migration formula to convert affected players ELO from national ELO to FIDE ELO (details in the migration proposal)
• creation of FIDE IDs for players that don’t have one (yet) and are impacted by the migration
• modification of our most popular tournament management software, SWAR
• archiving of our national ELO system

A public project link is available to follow along on the progress of this migration project.

We encourage clubs to – already now – start exploring the practical requirements to register and report tournaments for FIDE ELO. As we expect an increased workload in this area, we are developping an updated way of working to allow multiple volunteers to work together on this massive job.

Questions or remarks on this topic can be adressed through ratings@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be (for national ELO ranking topics) or fide@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be (for FIDE ELO ranking specific topics).