World School Team Chess Championship 2025 – Washington

Following the first edition in Kazakhstan in 2023, the second World School Team Championships took place in Washington from 2 to 7 August.

The initiative is funded by a (wealthy) Kazakh school chess organisation, and in addition to the 45 national champions who were the first to register, 15 schools were also able to participate via a wild card.

It was quickly decided that the secondary school champion, the Royal Athenaeum Charles Rogier from Liège, would represent our country, and they were among the first to register. In the end, 55 teams participated: interest in the wildcards was high, so the two other interested Belgian teams were ultimately unable to participate.

The captain of the Belgian team, Alberto Battistelli, father of player Fausto, had the excellent idea of making such a school chess championship as instructive and educational as possible outside the playing hall as well, so he took the opportunity to not only let the children discover the White House after the tournament, but also to take them to nearby New York.

Of course, such a tournament would not be complete without a school chess conference, which once again emphasised the benefits of chess for children’s development.

For those interested, here are the website and the results: https://worldschoolteam2025.fide.com/ & https://worldschoolteam2025.fide.com/teams-ranking/

Here is the captain’s report :

A magnificent human adventure has come to an end for our five champions from Athénée de Liège I in Washington. After a strong start to the competition, where they managed to compete with the strongest nations (draw against the United States in round 3), Fausto, Ambroise, Khanh, Lou and Basile finished in 32nd place (two defeats against Mongolia and Georgia and a draw against Kyrgyzstan – three countries where chess is almost a national sport – weighed heavily on their final ranking). The campus allowed them – beyond their chess performances – to ‘project’ themselves towards a university future, sharing their daily lives with Poles, Cypriots, Americans, Mongolians, Greeks and Slovaks, opening and closing ceremonies worthy of the Olympics, perfect playing conditions, and, as a highlight, the discovery of New York City during the last three days (a visit to Bobby Fischer’s legendary club, hours of blitz chess against the famous hustlers in Washington Park, Manhattan, etc.). A series of photos to illustrate how travel shapes young people, and to thank the FRBE for their unreserved support of our five players!

(Alberto Battistelli)