How the index is made

What the index covers

The area is the nineteen communes of the Region and the towns on its edge where Brussels players regularly go to play: Halle, Zaventem, Overijse and Wezembeek-Oppem on the Flemish side, Wavre, Lasne and Braine-l'Alleud in Walloon Brabant. Commune names are given in French inside the Region and in Dutch in Flanders, as the communes themselves use them.

No entry is graded, ranked or paid for, and none is put forward over another. Within a list, entries whose chess was confirmed most recently come first, and moved or closed places are kept at the end of the full index.

What is read for a card

The starting point is the club register of the Belgian chess federation, which gives each affiliated club's name, playing place and weekly hours. Next come the international rating federation's monthly lists of rated tournaments for Belgium and the tournament listings of chess-results, then the clubs' own websites, library and community-centre programmes, and "Chess in Brussels 2024-2025", a guide to playing chess in the city that the Brussels Chess Club published and last updated in March 2025; despite the shared title, it is the club's own document and not part of this site.

Each fact on a card ends in a small number that leads to the page it came from, with a short quotation in the page's own language, French, Dutch or English, and the day the page was read. The text of a card summarises those quotations; it adds nothing that no page states.

When pages disagree, for example when the register and a club site give different rooms or hours, or a guide prints another street number, the card says which page gives which and does not choose silently.

Three source marks

A source is marked official when it is published by the place, its organiser or a federation; secondary when a third party reports it, such as a guide, a directory or the press; unverified when it comes from users or from one isolated mention.

The mark tells who is speaking, not whether they are right. A register can still list a club that has stopped meeting, and a guide can keep a café that no longer lends boards, which is why the date of each trace matters as much as its mark.

Gaps stay visible

Few Brussels clubs publish their fee, and fewer say whether a stranger may walk in on a club night. When no page answers a question, the card shows "not stated by sources" rather than a guess, and a blank never means no.

A reader who knows a page that fills a gap can send it through the form. It is checked and added, with its date, at the next revision of the index.

What the index does not judge

• No club, café, teacher or tournament receives a grade, a score or a place in a ranking.
• The cards rest on published pages; nobody visits the venues on behalf of the index.
• Fees are copied as a page printed them on the day it was read and are not checked on site.
• Club hours change with the school year and may move before the card is revised.
• Teaching is not assessed, and a teacher's title is only compared with the FIDE profile.
• Step-free access, heating, parking and similar practical points are not examined.
• Attendance is not counted: a card cannot tell how many players come on a given night.
• An empty field means the pages are silent, never that the answer is negative.

If a card concerns you

Club officers, organisers, teachers, café owners and members can all correct a card through the add or fix form. A link to the page that shows the right information makes the correction quick.

Every accepted correction is dated in the list of recent changes and noted on the card it affects. A place that would rather not be listed can say so through the same form, and its card will be removed at the next revision.

Dates and revisions

The pages behind the present cards were read between 14 October 2026 and 14 October 2026. The date beside each source on a card shows how old that piece of evidence is.

The whole index is due to be read again about every 6 months. In between, a club can change its evening or its room without the card following at once; the club's own page always has the last word.

Who runs it

Chess in Brussels is an independent editorial project. It receives no money from clubs, organisers, schools, cafés or shops, carries no advertising for them and has no tie to any federation.

It exists because Brussels chess is spread across a federation register, rating lists, club websites in two languages and a few guides, each showing one piece. The form is the way for players and clubs to keep it right between revisions.

Reusing the data

The whole index can be downloaded as a JSON dataset, one record per entry with every source, mark and date. It is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence; please name Chess in Brussels when you reuse it.

A plain-text summary of the site for language models and other programs is kept at llms.txt.

Considered and left out

Entries looked at and not listed: 18. The usual reasons are a club outside the area with no tie to Brussels, a single event with no second edition, a café that a guide says players have left, or an online-only group.

Map pins

A card shows a pin when a source gives a map position or when its address is found as a building in the OpenStreetMap address search. A pin found by search is marked as approximate on the card.

No pin is placed by hand, the site draws no map of its own, and the map link opens openstreetmap.org. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence.