26 November, 2015
Rome
Italy

Dear friends,

I highly appreciate your kind congratulations on the 20th Anniversary of my Presidency in FIDE.
I have been fortunate and honored to work with you all these years and will be happy to continue our collaboration in the future.
As you know there are 186 members in our big family and more than 600 millions of chess fans. I would like to increase this number up to 1 billion. I hope that together we will manage to do it.
Due to your great support the FIDE's unique educational program 'Chess in Schools' has been successfully developed and has been implemented in many countries.
It is difficult to estimate your kind help during all these 20 years for the sake of chess. You are making an outstanding contribution to the popularization of chess in the whole world.
I am sure that together we can complete our mission and achieve our goals. I have invested my time, my money and energy on FIDE - all these has been done in the name of chess because chess is my life, chess is my passion, chess is my love! I wish you all the best of health, success and prosperity.

Gens Una Sumus! - We are one family!

Sincerely yours,

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
FIDE President

Thank you letter from the FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov (pdf)