The 2024 Chessboxing World Championships are to be held in Erevan, Armenia.

The 6th WCBO World Championships will be held in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, from 23rd to 28th October 2024. Organised by the Russian ChessBoxing Federation it follows the very successful 5th Championships Riccione 2023 that brought this competition in tournament format to higher levels.

The world of chessboxing is warming up to this year championships: only about six weeks to go. The chessboxers from around the world are looking forward to the news that this year Championships will bring: will there be new nations entering the frame of chessboxing? will more nations have specialised on chessboxing Light and chessboxing-fit, the two “other” versions of chessboxing?

One novelty of this year is that Iran will participate, en mass, at these Championships. From 12th to 15th September 157 Iranian chess boxers will compete in the qualification stage to be brought to the world championships. Other big teams, in terms of numbers, are expected to be the Russian team that in Riccione 2023 won every single team standing, the Indian team that won the national standings in 2022 and, the French team that won the standings in 2019. Possibly a bit behind might be the Turkish team, the Kazakh and the Latvian.

The main organiser Petr Zhukov, was reached by SPQeR and told us that he expects to have a record number of athletes and also some new countries, such as Lebanon and Armenia, represented at the Championships. He said that in a week time we should have a better idea of the number as the deadline to enrol in the championships is 20th September 2024. The Vice-president of the Russian Chessboxing Federation, Rishat Sayapov told us that among the new entrants there should also be Tajikistan, Lithuania and Georgia.

FISP, the Italian ChessBoxing Federation, was the first national team to release publicly the names of the people composing the national delegation at the Championships. Three days ago it has released the news that its delegation for Erevan will be composed by eight people: four athletes, two referees, one coach and one head of delegation. Interesting is the fact that none of ten chessboxers that represented Italy at Riccione 2023 will be present this year. A novelty is that Italy will have a female athlete competing in chessboxing and chessboxing Light: previously only had a junior female athlete competing in chessboxing-fit. There will be the come-back of Gianpiero Sportelli after a 5 year interruption; Gianpiero was present in 2017 in Kolkata, India, at the first edition of these World Championships in tournament format; he was then present again at the 2019 World Championships in Turkey and has not fought since in chessboxing.

Tomorrow, 13th September, it will be the 21st anniversary of the birth of chessboxing: on that day in 2003, in Berlin, the first chessboxing fight was done, organised and fought by Iepe “The Joker” Rubingh. It is therefore a great date to publish this article to publicise this year WCBO World Championships.