The popular online chess platform Lichess has published a one-year retrospective looking back at the three-day meetup held by some of its team members in Toronto, Canada, over the weekend of October 17, 2025. Combining chess, intensive development work, and plenty of fun, the event saw significant technical steps that directly impacted the platform's user experience, alongside the excitement of an over-the-board (OTB) tournament.
Major Updates to the Broadcaster App and Variant Tournaments
One of the most notable technical outcomes of the gathering was the development updates made to the Lichess Broadcaster App, a desktop application used by tournament organizers to push OTB games to a Lichess broadcast. Listening to feedback from organizers using the software, the team improved search functionality to make it easier to quickly access broadcasts and start transmitting moves. With this change, organizers can now simply copy and paste the URL from Lichess to go directly to the broadcast. Furthermore, long-requested work to make chess variant tournaments much more frequent was finalized during the meetup. The hourly tournament coverage for the six most popular variants was increased from one-third to two-thirds of the time, an improvement that was very well received by the community.
New Features for Puzzles and Team Leagues
The development team also worked on curating the platform's puzzle system, specifically fixing issues where mate puzzles were not being properly tagged. Additionally, addressing feedback from players who wanted to download puzzles for instructional classes, the team made it possible to download a selection of them as PGNs using a small dedicated webpage. Preliminary work was also conducted during the meetup to create more official team leagues for Rapid and Bullet time controls, which have now been available to players for almost a year.
OTB Tournament Excitement at the Annex Chess Club
Beyond the technical work, the Annex Chess Club hosted a fantastic over-the-board event on Sunday. The competition featured 64 players competing in a 9-round Swiss tournament. Among the participants, FM Koosha Jaferian and CM Geordie Derraugh stood out and earned congratulations for their strong performances.
Editorial assessment
The Lichess team's Toronto meetup is significant for the chess world as it demonstrates how directly and effectively an open-source platform can translate community feedback into tangible features. The URL update simplifying the broadcasting process for over-the-board tournament organizers, along with the ability to download puzzles as PGNs for instructional classes, highlights how online tools actively support physical chess events and education. Furthermore, increasing the frequency of variant tournaments and expanding official team leagues in Rapid and Bullet time controls proves the platform's commitment to meeting the demands of diverse player profiles.