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

From 24 April to September 2026 the Museum of Sport and Tourism in Warsaw told the history of Polish chess in five parts, for the centenary of the Polish Chess Federation, founded on 11 April 1926.

What to expect

The display was divided into five parts. The story began with the thirteenth-century Sandomierz chessmen, that is with the beginnings of the game on Polish lands. Visitors then met 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 was accompanied by antique books, porcelain figurines with chess motifs and a chessboard from the end of the nineteenth century at which Józef Piłsudski used to play.

The next part was devoted to the founding of the Polish Chess Federation and the growth of chess between the wars, with figures such as Dawid Przepiórka, Ksawery Tartakower, Kazimierz Makarczyk and Mieczysław Najdorf. The exhibits included 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 was shown through a few exceptional objects: a letter from the Łódź 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 presented memorabilia connected with Włodzimierz Schmidt, Hanna Ereńska-Radzewska, Aleksander Sznapik and Agnieszka Brustman, including medals from chess olympiads and trophies from Polish championships. The final part covered chess in present-day Poland: Bartosz and Monika Soćko, Mateusz Bartel, Jolanta Zawadzka, Kacper Piorun and Oliwia Kiołbasa, along with the trophies of Jan-Krzysztof Duda, among them the World Cup.

The exhibition opened on 24 April 2026 at the Museum of Sport and Tourism in the Olympic Centre, on the Vistula embankment in the Żoliborz district. It also showed photographs, diplomas, bills and posters, and chess clocks from various periods. The exhibits came from the collections of the Museum of Sport and Tourism and other museums, as well as from collectors and the players themselves. Alongside the show the museum announced blitz chess demonstrations, simultaneous exhibitions and a Chess Night of Museums on 16 May 2026.

Updates

• 2026-10-01 - the exhibition has closed; the museum announced it only “until September 2026” (“Ekspozycja będzie czynna do września 2026 r.”) and never published the closing day, so we take 30 September 2026 as the end date (source: exhibition page, in Polish).

After the show

The exhibition came with an album-style book, “Historia figurami pisana. Stulecie Polskiego Związku Szachowego”, by the curators Tomasz Lissowski and Piotr Banasiak, published by the Museum of Sport and Tourism in Warsaw (95 pages, paperback, ISBN 978-83-974086-3-0, in Polish). It costs 45 PLN in the museum’s online shop (book page). According to the museum it includes a selection of the most famous games played by Polish players over the past century. Chess notation needs no translation, so a reader without Polish can still replay them on a board.

The Polish Press Agency covered the opening in a report without a byline, “Wystawa w 100-lecie Polskiego Związku Szachowego w stołecznym Muzeum Sportu i Turystyki” (24 April 2026) - dzieje.pl, in Polish. It listed exhibits not in the museum’s description: a chess set made in 1939-1940 by a Polish officer interned in the Soviet camp at Starobielsk, and a set used by Polish prisoners of war in the German camp at Prenzlau. The agency also noted a crocodile-leather chessboard dedicated by Mieczysław Najdorf to Jerzy Giżycki, and memorabilia from the 1964 Chess Olympiad in Tel Aviv and the 1968 Women’s Chess Olympiad in Lublin.

The current show at the Museum of Sport and Tourism:

• By Bicycle on the Roads and Byways of the Kingdom of Poland - in the same building in the Olympic Centre; for the 140th anniversary of the Warsaw Cyclists’ Society the museum shows 19th-century saddles, carbide lamps, a plaque from the Dynasy building and a 1920 courier’s kit.

Other current shows in Warsaw on a related theme:

• The Parnassus of Warsaw. A Century of the Literary Award of the City of Warsaw - at the Museum of Literature until 18 October 2026; another centenary: the award was established in 1926, with manuscripts and pre-war editions from the same interwar years in which the chess federation was born.
• No Hands. How the Bicycle Changes Warsaw - at the Wola Museum until 2 July 2027; a century and a half of the bicycle in Warsaw, shown not only as a sport and a means of transport but also as a social phenomenon.