Gibraltar Open

The Gibraltar International Chess Festival is a chess tournament held annually at the Caleta Hotel in Gibraltar. Its eleven days of competition usually run from late January to early February. The inaugural edition, then known as the Gibtelecom Gibraltar Chess Festival, took place in 2003, when fifty-nine competitors took part, of whom 24 held the FIDE Grandmaster title. In 2011 the festival was renamed to the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival when Tradewise Insurance Company Ltd became the new primary sponsor. Beginning in 2019 Tradewise no longer sponsored the tournament and the name was changed to the Gibraltar International Chess Festival

The main event, the Masters, is open to all, and was voted the best open event in the world by the Association of Chess Professionals in 2011, 2012,2013 and 2014. Since 2011 an annual Gibraltar Junior International Chess Festival, also held at the Caleta Hotel, has been organised. It lasts five days and takes place in August and it comprises two events: under-16 and under-12. The Director of the Gibraltar International Chess Festival has been Stuart Conquest since 2011.



Gibraltar Open

Year Winner(s) Leading Female(s)
2003
Vasilios Kotronias
Nigel Short
Nora Medvegy
2004
Nigel Short
Pia Cramling
2005
Levon Aronian
Zahar Efimenko
Kiril Georgiev
Alexei Shirov
Emil Sutovsky
Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant
Viktorija Cmilyte
Pia Cramling
Iweta Radziewicz
Almira Skripchenko
2006
Kiril Georgiev
Antoaneta Stefanova
2007
Vladimir Akopian
Jovanka Houska
2008
Hikaru Nakamura
Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant
2009
Peter Svidler
Nana Dzagnidze
2010
Michael Adams
Natalia Zhukova
2011
Vassily Ivanchuk
Nana Dzagnidze
2012
Nigel Short
Hou Yifan
2013
Nikita Vitiugov
Zhao Xue
2014
Ivan Cheparinov
Mariya Muzychuk
2015
Hikaru Nakamura
Hou Yifan
2016
Hikaru Nakamura
Anna Muzychuk
2017
Hikaru Nakamura
Ju Wenjun
2018
Levon Aronian
Pia Cramling
2019
Vladislav Artemiev
Tan Zhongyi