FIDE school chess survey spans 100 countries and highlights evaluation gaps

FIDE published findings from its 2026 Global Chess in Schools Survey on 15 October, presenting responses from 239 participants in 100 countries. The online questionnaire ran between October 2025 and June 2026 and contained 33 questions. National federations, schools and specialist school-chess organisations contributed accounts of how their programmes are structured, financed and assessed.

The findings identify a substantial gap between delivering lessons and evaluating their outcomes. Among the 195 programmes answering the evaluation question, 94 (48.2 per cent) reported having no evaluation system. Funding, written curricula and trained instructors were recurring concerns. The report describes different stages of programme development without treating those stages as a ranking of countries.

Its limitations are important. Respondents volunteered, so their answers are not a representative census of all school chess. Participation totals are largely estimates, while reported academic and social benefits express perceptions rather than demonstrated causal effects. FIDE's education commission says the wider survey initiative is intended to inform future educational strategy; stronger assessment remains necessary to test the benefits attributed to school programmes. The underlying report by George Chitiyo and Rita Atkins is dated August 2026; 15 October marks FIDE's summary article, not new data collection.