48th Scarborough Congress - 2025

This year will be Scarborough's 48th Congress and will once again be held at the Spa Complex from Friday 24th to 26th October 2025.

Our aim this year was to try and exceed 400 entries for the first time so extra effort has been put in to try and achieve this with the following changes .....

• An extra section (Challengers) has been added so we now have 6 sections in total.
• Extra prize money - now over £7000 in total. £1000 first place prize in the Open.
• Entry fees have remained the same as last year but we've added a discount to juniors and seniors.
• A recent addition has been to include a 'Club tournament' where the best performing 6 players from each club will compete in a league to determine the best performing club

ChessPick.com are will be sponsoring the juniors by offering credits for training through their site for the best performing juniors at the congress

Important Update

As of 3rd October with 3 weeks to go we reached 330 entries which is far higher than any other year at this stage. With just over 2 weeks to go we now have over 360 so it is predicted that we'll achieve our goal of 400 which now imposes a problem .... the Ocean Room at the Spa probably has a maximum capacity of 416 and it's now too late to book the Sun Lounge for this year so we'll now have to impose a limit to entries of 416! So for all the people who like to enter at the last minute, it's probably be best if you enter sooner than later to avoid disappointment. 

Thanks

Thanks go to Douglas Vleeshhouwer for his work over the past 2 years but this year we welcome back Lara Barnes and we also have Matthew Carr joining the arbiter team who will also be providing the live boards for all the Open boards.

Thanks also go to all the people who have entered so far along with all the generous donations - in particular special thanks go to Zak Tomlinson who is now a regular attender but is sadly unable to make it this year due to other commitments but he's still gone and paid the entry fee he would have paid had he entered!

Also thanks go to Sean Parker for his hard work going through peoples score sheets and creating a PGN of the games - all the games from 2023 & 2024 are available through our games menu.

Accommodation

With the Spa not having any accommodation, we've been able to secure a group booking with the Crown Spa Hotel - details of which will be sent in acknowledgement of entry. We'll look at expanding on this in future years in our aim to help with costs.