The Gibraltar International Chess Festival is a chess tournament held annually at the Caleta Hotel in Gibraltar. Its eleven days of competition usually run from late January to early February. The inaugural edition, then known as the Gibtelecom Gibraltar Chess Festival, took place in 2003, when fifty-nine competitors took part, of whom 24 held the FIDE Grandmaster title. In 2011 the festival was renamed to the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival when Tradewise Insurance Company Ltd became the new primary sponsor. Beginning in 2019 Tradewise no longer sponsored the tournament and the name was changed to the Gibraltar International Chess Festival
The main event, the Masters, is open to all, and was voted the best open event in the world by the Association of Chess Professionals in 2011, 2012,2013 and 2014. Since 2011 an annual Gibraltar Junior International Chess Festival, also held at the Caleta Hotel, has been organised. It lasts five days and takes place in August and it comprises two events: under-16 and under-12. The Director of the Gibraltar International Chess Festival has been Stuart Conquest since 2011.
Year | Winner(s) | Leading Female(s) |
---|---|---|
2003 |
Vasilios Kotronias Nigel Short |
Nora Medvegy |
2004 | Nigel Short | Pia Cramling |
2005 |
Levon Aronian Zahar Efimenko Kiril Georgiev Alexei Shirov Emil Sutovsky |
Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant Viktorija Cmilyte Pia Cramling Iweta Radziewicz Almira Skripchenko |
2006 | Kiril Georgiev | Antoaneta Stefanova |
2007 | Vladimir Akopian | Jovanka Houska |
2008 | Hikaru Nakamura | Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant |
2009 | Peter Svidler | Nana Dzagnidze |
2010 | Michael Adams | Natalia Zhukova |
2011 | Vassily Ivanchuk | Nana Dzagnidze |
2012 | Nigel Short | Hou Yifan |
2013 | Nikita Vitiugov | Zhao Xue |
2014 | Ivan Cheparinov | Mariya Muzychuk |
2015 | Hikaru Nakamura | Hou Yifan |
2016 | Hikaru Nakamura | Anna Muzychuk |
2017 | Hikaru Nakamura | Ju Wenjun |
2018 | Levon Aronian | Pia Cramling |
2019 | Vladislav Artemiev | Tan Zhongyi |