A History Written with Chess Pieces. A Century of the Polish Chess Federation

The exhibition marks the centenary of the Polish Chess Federation, founded on 11 April 1926, and presents a panorama of the history of the royal game - not only over the past hundred years. It opened on 24 April 2026 at the Museum of Sport and Tourism in the Olympic Centre in Warsaw.

The display is divided into five parts. The story begins with the thirteenth-century Sandomierz chessmen, that is with the beginnings of the game on Polish lands. Visitors then meet outstanding players of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as Szymon Winawer, Jan Herman Zukertort, Dawid Janowski and Akiba Rubinstein. This section is accompanied by antique books, porcelain figurines with chess motifs and a chessboard from the end of the nineteenth century at which Jozef Pilsudski used to play.

The next part is devoted to the founding of the Polish Chess Federation and the growth of chess between the wars, with figures such as Dawid Przepiorka, Ksawery Tartakower, Kazimierz Makarczyk and Mieczyslaw Najdorf. The exhibits include a badge from the 6th Chess Olympiad held in Warsaw in 1935, posters, and Najdorf’s chess set made of crocodile leather.

The Second World War is shown through a few exceptional objects: a letter from the Lodz ghetto containing the record of a chess game, and a chessboard belonging to one of the Polish prisoners of war murdered at Starobielsk, recovered during exhumation work. The section on the communist period presents memorabilia connected with Wlodzimierz Schmidt, Hanna Erenska-Radzewska, Aleksander Sznapik and Agnieszka Brustman, including medals from chess olympiads and trophies from Polish championships. The final part covers chess in present-day Poland: Bartosz and Monika Socko, Mateusz Bartel, Jolanta Zawadzka, Kacper Piorun and Oliwia Kiolbasa, along with the trophies of Jan-Krzysztof Duda, among them the World Cup.

The exhibition also shows photographs, diplomas, bills and posters, and chess clocks from various periods. The exhibits come from the collections of the Museum of Sport and Tourism and other museums, as well as from collectors and the players themselves. The museum states that the display will remain open until September 2026.