Dear chess friends,

The 2019 FIDE budget is adopted and published. It implements the two fundamental planks of my electoral campaign. When I ran for the FIDE President, I promised you that the budget would increase while the FIDE fees charged to federations, players and organizers would decrease dramatically.

You can see it in black and white now.

First of all, the 2019 FIDE annual budget reached 5.5 million Euros while the previous, 2018 budget had only 2.3 million Euros. It means that total expenses in the 2019 budget increased 2.4 times compared with the previous year.

Secondly, I promised a significant, across-the-board reduction in FIDE fees. Unfortunately, it is only the General Assembly that can change the fees specified in the regulations. Still, when there’s a will, there’s a way. After deliberations with the Presidential Board members and our legal counsel, we decided to divide all contributions payable in 2019 into two parts, the second of which shall be due only in December 2019. At the same time, we decided to submit to the FIDE General Assembly (planned for Fall 2019) an amendment to the Financial Rules that would reduce the fees and will be applied from January 1, 2019. If the General Assembly approves our proposal, no federation, player or organizers will have to pay the second part of the fees due. This way, a significant reduction will be achieved in the manner that benefits everyone.

More money for development and for national federations. Less fees for everyone, especially for seniors and juniors. These are the tangible benefits that the new FIDE management team brings you in 2019. We continue working with all of you for the benefit of chess worldwide.


Arkady Dvorkovich
FIDE President

Download the 2019 FIDE Budget (pdf)