Chess in Cologne and the towns around it
Chess around Cologne is mostly Verein chess: clubs with a fixed weekly evening and league teams, from Worringen and Porz to Bonn, Leverkusen, Kerpen and the towns below the Siebengebirge. Around them sit school chess groups that play the NRW finals, library and senior-network afternoons in Mülheim, Chorweiler, Sülz and Riehl, a monthly bar night with music, summer opens in Leverkusen and Hennef, and the Brühl Open in February.
Play nearby 66
Clubs 71
School chess 23
Courses 7
Opens 5
Chess960 around Cologne
At a board, Chess960 has one dated trace in the region so far: the 1. Schach-Klub Troisdorf played a Schach960 tournament in October 2026, next to its cup and blitz events. Schachverein Turm Bergheim 25 keeps a Schach960 item in the menu of its site, though no dated page sits behind it yet.
In Chess960 the pieces of the back rank are shuffled into one of 960 starting positions before each game, which takes prepared openings off the board and leaves both players to their own ideas from the first move. Between club evenings it can be played online at ch960.com.
Chess960 at a board in the region, with the date the page gives:
- Schach960 tournament of the 1. SK Troisdorf, 20 players — 6 October 2026
Order and markings
This guide lists 91 entries, 91 of them current or waiting for a newer dated trace, across Köln, Bonn, Leverkusen and the towns of the Rhein-Erft and Rhein-Sieg districts. They draw on the club database of the German Chess Federation, the league portal of the Schachverband Mittelrhein, the Cologne Chess Association, the FIDE tournament list, the NRW school chess results and the pages of clubs, schools, libraries and neighbourhood networks, all read on .
Every list puts the entry with the most recent dated trace first; there are no scores, no rankings and no paid places. A detail that no page states is shown as “not stated by sources” rather than guessed. What the source marks and the two status lines mean, and where the covered area ends, is set out on how we check each listing.
A club, a group or a course missing?
Club evenings move when a school hall or a Bürgerhaus changes its timetable, school groups start afresh every school year, and new meetups appear in libraries and neighbourhood centres. If something here is out of date, or a chess place in the region is not listed yet, a short note with a link to a page that shows it is all it takes.