FIDE ELO migration – updated proposal for General Assembly Meeting

The General Assembly of December 6th, 2025 approved this migration proposal.

Background

This topic was first presented at the General Meeting of November 23, 2024. Four votes were held at the meeting, with the results shown below.

The first two votes aimed to prepare for the migration to FIDE ELO by moving national reporting closer to FIDE requirements:

• Vote 5 Pre-registration of tournaments (valid from 01/01/2025) → approved and in effect since 01.01.2025
• Vote 6 Deadlines + Fines (valid from 01/01/2025) → approved and in effect since 01.01.2025

The other two votes were a vote of intent on the one hand, and an initial proposal for implementation in the tournament regulations on the other hand:

• Vote 7 Migration from national Elo to FIDE Elo: intention vote → approved
• Vote 8 Only if Vote 7 is OK, then the following articles valid from 01/07/2025 → rejected

As vote 7 was positive, your National Rating Officer has continued working together with FIDE to modify the proposal as to take into account the main objections from the clubs.

From the discussion at the General Assembly Meeting and the prior feedback from the clubs, the main argument against the proposed rule changes emerged as the administrative impact of FIDE ELO reporting on club operations. This was in addition to concerns about finding sufficient (FIDE registered) arbiters and the costs associated with FIDE ELO processing.

Updated administrative flow

The clubs’ main concerns involved reporting requirements for long (> 30 day) tournaments, impacting mostly local club championships. Flexible pairing systems typically allow postphoned games, in which case reporting become cumbersome. Our current software tools have limited support to report partial rounds, and on top these postphoned games are hard to match with FIDE’s strict reporting deadlines.

We have discussed these concerns with FIDE, and are happy to come up with the below updated decision tree. Compared to the previous proposal, the reporting requirements are significantly softened:

• There is no change for tournaments that run over a short period of time (<= 30 days). In this case, a single registration and report are always required and sufficient
• For long (> 30 days) tournaments without postphoned games, one report per month (no longer needed per round) suffices.
• For long (> 30 days) tournaments, in which the pairing system allows for postphoned games, we give the tournament organiser the option (= responsability) to determine the best way to report. We advice to report the rounds in order, and only report once all round results are known. In other words: you register your tournament round dates on the ultimate date in which the games have to be played. You submit your reports accordingly. It is important to note that the reports always have to follow the registration form.

Let’s look at some examples:

1. You organize a summer tournament of 5 days, e.g. July 7th – July 12th.
   → You complete the tournament registration respecting registration deadlines. After the tournament, you submit a single FIDE ELO report, latest 3 days after the tournament end. All results will be processed for the FIDE August rankings
2. You organize a local club championship running over 5 months, with the Swiss pairing system. You pair the people present in the club on the round dates. You play 2 rounds per month.
   → You make a tournament registration, and split the registration in 5 parts, one part for each month you have games played. Latest 3 days after the last round of each month is played, you submit a FIDE ELO report. The results of that month will be processed for the next month FIDE ranking list.
3. You organize a club championship in a round-robin format, running from September till June. You allow for players to postphone games. All games have to be played latest end of June.
   → You determine deadlines for each round to be completed, e.g. final deadline for all rounds and games July 15th. You make a tournament registration using July 15th as the deadline for all rounds. Latest July 18th, you submit a single FIDE ELO report. All games will be included in the August FIDE ranking list.
   → Alternatively, you impose a deadline to your players to play the first 4 rounds by January 15th latest. You make a tournament registration using two reporting periods (January & July). You submit the first 4 rounds latest January 18th, for FIDE February ranking list. The remaining rounds are reported in July.

Note: in the exceptional case that a tournament covered by these rules is a title tournament, it is important for the organizer to carefully report the match dates. After all, FIDE checks the games played when awarding the title. In that case, it is essential that the match dates correspond exactly with the dates in the title application.

Registration of national arbiters in the FIDE database

We propose that the RBCF pays all registration costs – from the approval of this proposal – for national arbiters registered as national-level arbiters in the FIDE database. The current registration fee is € 20.

Currently there are 245 national arbiters active in Belgium, of which already 124 arbiters are registered in the FIDE database.

Rating costs

We propose that RBCF pays all rating costs – from the official transition up to June 2027 – for tournament registrations and rating fines, insofar as the latter can be attributed to the RBCF.

Tournament organizers pay FIDE fines related to late registrations, late submission of results, and reporting errors (incorrect results, incomplete reports, etc.).

This rating cost compensation is valid for the first 12 months of FIDE reporting (July 2026 – June 2027).

As we have seen through previous analysis, reporting all games to FIDE that are currently included in the national ELO ranking, would result in an additional average cost to the clubs of less than € 100. We propose that RBCF covers these costs in the first phase of the migration.

Timing

When approved during the General Assembly Meeting end of 2025, objective for conversion to FIDE system only is July 2026. This is the earliest date to perform the migration, so as not to disrupt most local (club) tournaments. Criterium to advance with the migration is that the national ELO conversion formula is available and approved by the RBCF board.

When this migration takes place, how will it affect my ELO?

• Players with existing FIDE ELO will keep their FIDE ELO as is
• Affiliated players without FIDE ELO but with national ELO will have their national ELO converted to FIDE ELO using a standardized formula based on statistical analysis by FIDE. National ELO and FIDE ELO are very similar, so no significant changes should be expected.
• Players without a national ELO but with a game history (<5 games played) will only have their FIDE games converted to the FIDE ELO game history
• Non-affiliated players with LastGames since 2015 (10 year history), without FIDE ELO but with old national ELO, will have their national ELO converted to FIDE ELO, provided they already have a FIDE ID.

Why this migration proposal?

Abandoning our national ELO system makes sense because:

• the international chess community needs a uniform and internationally recognized rating system,
• previous arguments in favor of national ranking systems have largely faded in view of the expansion of the FIDE ranking system
• the maintenance of a national ELO system next to an international system duplicates both registration and processing efforts

Comparing FIDE ELO vs national ELO

Various

• Tournament organizers are free to choose whether or not to report the tournament for ELO processing
• Reported players must be affiliated with the RBCF for the results to be processed.

Feedback

We are convinced that this updated process flow gives great responsibility to the tournament organizers, allowing them to significantly reduce reporting efforts.

As before, the RBCF is open to feedback on this proposal. Comments are open. You can also contact us regarding this topic through ratings@frbe-kbsb-ksb.be.